Re: [gentoo-dev] Community driven meta distribution or only distribution (was Re: Several portage trees)

[Robin H.Johnson]

On Tue, Apr 29, 2003 at 07:44:41PM +0000, Mikael Andersson wrote:
> Gentoo is moving to slow this is why this kind of ideas emerge. It might be
> moving fast, but obviously still too slow for many. I've got a few ebuilds
> done which i haven't even bothered to try to get in since i've seen the queue
> in bugzillla and I'm sure several others are in the same situation.
Seeing this. I have a specific request to make. Could you please ensure
that your ebuilds are tagged with the 'EBUILD' keyword, to make them
easier to find firstly. Secondly, just as an idea, a developer that has
some time to go thru submitted ebuilds and review them for style and
correctness (as I did for the ebuild mentioned above in this thread).

> On Friday 25 April 2003 21.00, Robin H.Johnson wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 25, 2003 at 09:57:15PM +0200, kikov@××××××××××.com wrote:
> > > Well... I'm a developer of a project. I have submitted via bugzilla
> > > several bugs of one of the packages I need ( not from the project, just
> > > a dependency ). Let see: http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2333
> > > ohh, yeah, 2002-05-02 07:28 EST... One year ago...
> > > The bug is still opened.
> > Go back and read my posting about why many ebuilds don't get into the
> > tree.
> I didn't see a lot of comments about the ebuild not being up to par in
> bugzilla. Maybe if a developer seeing a build not beeing 'good-enough' could
> add a small note about this so we - The Users(tm)  - or in another word, the
> user community [3] can fix whats wrong. We aim to please ...
My comments were included below in my previous email. I have also
attached them to the bug item now.

> > If you fix those issues, and fix that ebuild.
> > Things to fix:
> > add SLOT, add KEYWORDS, add IUSE, 'use foo' statement style, use PATCHES
> > instead of patch+src_unpack, local variable declarations, unnessicary
> > statement block in src_install, broken homepage URI, ALL documentation
> > with the package should be installed (manpages and even the guys pgp
> > key) , einstall instead of 'make install' and most importantly EBUILD
> > CHANGELOG!!!!!
> No need to yell, instead add that information to [1]. In a way it's written in
> [2] but as that is targeted for developers it's hard to know whether or not
lintool/repoman do remind you that some of those are required, but for
the most part they require a human to check. The original ebuild looked
as if it was written using only the guide, and none of the existing
ebuilds in portage, many of which server as excellent examples of ebuild
style and how things are done.
However you are partially correct that some of this should be added to
[1].
most importantly,
- say required items SLOT/KEYWORDS/IUSE/HOMEPAGE
- say that all documentation should be installed
- recommend econf/emake/einstall instead of normal variants
- patch+src_unpack is not efficent and maybe incorrect, use PATCHES="..."


Some of the things I mentioned are also partially my personal
preferences to make life easier on myself. People's code says a lot
about them generally, and if your submitted ebuilds look sloppy and
that lessens the chance that developers will even go thru them and
say what is wrong, let along clean them up.

> I'm required to add that to my update, and if i should attach another file
> with the entire changelog/changelog entry.
Attaching a simple text file with just your changelog entry would be
sufficent if you are updating an existing package, or including a new
changelog from the skeleton file for a new ebuild. (This is a personal
preference again).

> And equally important, somebody with the proper knowledge should get
> lintool online again. Apparently it's broken ( see warnings in [2] )
> and sure enough it reports errors for baselayout and other core
> packages so it's probably at least somewhat broken.
Repoman replaced lintool. I don't unfortunetly know of a tool that users
can use to check ebuilds themselves, as repoman requires a CVS checkout.
I have said previously that lintool needs to come back myself, and I
have submitted some fixes for it to bugzilla myself. That document [2]
does appear to contradict itself.

> > Is libcap even actively maintained still? If not and it is not widely
> > used, then it is not likely to get into the tree at all.
> Maybe Larry the cow will stop using gentoo then ? After all he liked being in
> control. If the users isn't in control gentoo will stop beeing bleeding edge
> and maybe end up only bleeding.
I personally try to avoid packages that do not fill at least one of the
following requirements:
1) is actively maintained
2) is widely used
3) not directly useful to myself

the reasoning behind 1) is that unmaintained packages upstream of Gentoo
do cause problems. media-plugins/avi-xmms is a recent example. It is
presently masked in packages.mask while it dies down further, at which 
point if it is no maintained again, it will probably be trimmed from the 
tree.

> What are the purpose of being a meta distribution if only widely used packages
> get into the tree ?
> > If you resolve all of the above issues, and the package is still widely
> > used (I want some proof of this), then I'll take the ebuild and maintain
> > it in portage myself.
> Well, this is a problem since not all packages wanting to be in portage will
> be widely used. But i have hopes that these kind of problems will be resolved
> with the restructuring of ebuild submission and maintainance in progress.
For 2) packages that aren't actively maintained, but are widely used
usually have enough other support and people working with them that it
is possible to support them ourselves. An active and responsive mailing
list for a package fills this well, or if there are good pages written
up about the package on the web. Several actively maintained packages that
use the library as a requirement would also serve to show that it is
still in general use.

Item 3) is somewhat different than the other two. If there is a package
that doesn't fit into the other two, and I have a personal everyday use
for it, I'm willing to put some of my time to keeping it working.

> [1] http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/ebuild-submit.xml
> [2] http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-howto.xml
> [3] http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/about.xml

-- 
Robin Hugh Johnson
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