Re: [gentoo-dev] creating ebuilds

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Tuesday 06 January 2004 08:36, Allen Parker wrote:
>
> Avenj, as I recently was interested in submitting ebuilds myself.
> Could we possibly come up with a quick and easy system for devs to pop
> in, check a list of submitted ebuilds, grab ones that look interesting
> to them, test to see if they build/self-destruct, mark them as ~ARCH
> (for ARCH they can test on), either clear the initial listing and slap
> them into the tree or kick it back to the user?

With many ebuilds the actual maintenance and bugfixing is more work than 
just committing an ebuild to the tree. Basically what most devs do is 
maintain or co-maintain a number of ebuilds and handle their bugs. If 
you would be the defacto maintainer of a number of ebuilds you would 
basically be doing the same as a real dev, but with the limitation that 
there's allways someone between you and the tree. (and less bugzilla 
power)

> Personally, I found it to be a pain in the rear to see 1 1/2 yr old
> ebuilds relating to the packages I was developing ebuilds for in
> bugzilla, yet with information so stale as to be stinking the place
> up. I think that there are a lot of things that could be offered to
> Gentoo users without too much hassle by other Gentoo users as long as
> dev says "ok, that sounds fun." I mean, I got passed back and forth
> from hardened to general and back a few times and it was all because
> the devs reviewing my bug(s) didn't understand the packages.

I'm sorry for that. It however can be a sign that the tree is not ready 
for those ebuilds, or that they are in very low demand.

> I may not know C/C++ very well (minimal understanding at most), so I
> wouldn't be able to "fix" something that was broken via diff, but I
> sure as heck have the computing power to do 100s of compiles :-D and
> thoroughly test certain things before I put them live on my OWN
> production machines. Basically, I'm not a programmer, but I can
> *still* write a darned good ebuild with the proper help (thx
> Spyderous, obz and others in #gentoo-dev). Simply because I can't
> program, I can't be a dev... does that mean I can't do thorough
> package mangling/testing? Not really... In fact, I've been told, that
> with most things, if anyone can break it, I can :-D

Writing ebuilds is programming. In ebuilds you just use a different 
language (bash shell script language), but beyond being able to write 
ebuilds there is no need for an ebuild handling dev to be able to 
program. A willingness to learn is always an advantage though. In any 
case programming is absolutely not the same as knowing C or C++.

> Basically, I just find that the entire ebuild submission process could
> definitely be streamlined as to take less dev time and be more
> rewarding for the users actually doing the submissions. Including
> having user response saying, "hey, so and so just bumped package-x.y.y
> to package-x.y.z and it builds fine with a renamed and digested
> ebuild."

I would agree with that. However I don't know how to do it in a good way 
that preserves quality.

Paul

- -- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@g.o
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net
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