[gentoo-dev] ebuild policy questions.

[Terje Kvernes]

hi all, thanks for a great distro!

  now, I'm in the process of trying to contribute a little, in effect
  making some ebuilds.  now, the technical writing of the builds isn't
  a problem, yet, it's more a few things I wonder about policy-wise.

  first off, if I see an ebuild that is out of date, do I contact the
  author of the out-of-date ebuild or do I submit a new one?  so far
  I've thought "if the old one is _really_ out of date, I'll submit a
  new ebuild, if it's a week or two since the new version came out,
  I'll take it with the author."  the real question is probably how
  "possessive" authors are / are supposed to be with regards to their
  ebuilds.  is there any set policy on this?

  second, and a bit more tricky.  I thought I'd make an xgammon
  ebuild.  all fine and dandy, but there are a few patches (from
  RedHat) to xgammon which are nice to have (they fix minor bugs --
  void main -> int main and a few other things).  what to do?  if I
  include the patches, how do I link to them?  or do I just put them
  in the "files"-directory with the ebuild?

  anyhow, thanks for your time, hopefully you won't need to thump my
  head too many times in the future.

-- 
Terje - a very happy Gentoo-user, hopefully contributing a little
        eventually.