Re: [gentoo-dev] The Plethora of Patches

[Tobias Scherbaum]

Santiago M. Mola wrote:
> I think that's all we need in order to know how were things when the
> patch was added and if it needs to be pushed/tracked upstream, removed
> in the next version of the package, etc.
>
> Some of us already put these kind of headers, or at least an URL to
> upstream bug or a meaningful source of info about the patch.

A short description possibly including a reference to an upstream or
Gentoo bugreport prefixed to every epatch call should be our minimum
standard. Working on packages whose maintainers are MIA isn't always
that simple - but it's even worse if you have to check a number of
patches to find out what they are for, since when they are in and what
their status is ...

> However, tracking the status of every patch since its inclusion in
> portage until it's removed would be a huge work overhead... and I
> doubt it's worthy.

I don't think it's a huge work overhead, it'll take an additional minute
per included patch to include a minimal description into the ebuild(s)
and use a standardized header for the patch. Compared to the time one
needs to spend when searching for information on that patch somewhen
later on it's worth every minute.

  Tobias