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Hi! |
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I'll take a stab at this and offer some suggestions. Please note that |
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these comments should not be considered "policy" and it should be a |
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given that any drobbins pronouncements on this issue automatically trump |
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mine. |
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On Thu, 2002-04-11 at 15:30, Terje Kvernes wrote: |
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> |
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> hi all, thanks for a great distro! |
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> |
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> now, I'm in the process of trying to contribute a little, in effect |
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> making some ebuilds. now, the technical writing of the builds isn't |
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> a problem, yet, it's more a few things I wonder about policy-wise. |
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> |
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> first off, if I see an ebuild that is out of date, do I contact the |
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> author of the out-of-date ebuild or do I submit a new one? so far |
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> I've thought "if the old one is _really_ out of date, I'll submit a |
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> new ebuild, if it's a week or two since the new version came out, |
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> I'll take it with the author." the real question is probably how |
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> "possessive" authors are / are supposed to be with regards to their |
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> ebuilds. is there any set policy on this? |
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|
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I would suggest submitting any changes to bugzilla and notifying the |
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"author" or "maintainer" by cc'ing them on the bug submission if they |
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don't happen to be the automatic assignee. Note that you should |
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probably check the Changelog for that particular package to see who has |
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been actively maintaining the ebuild, as this developer is not |
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necessarily the same as the one listed in the ebuild header. |
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|
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If the ebuild update just requires a copy of the ebuild to the new |
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revision number, it is not necessary to attach the ebuild. A comment |
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stating that "version 1.2 of foo has been released,a simple copy of |
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foo-1.1-r3.ebuild to foo-1.2.ebuild works" or something to that effect |
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is sufficient. |
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|
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If the ebuild update requires changes to the ebuild, I find it |
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convenient when people attach a diff between the original and updated |
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ebuild instead of the entire updated ebuild as this makes it very easy |
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to see the changes that are proposed. |
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|
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> |
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> second, and a bit more tricky. I thought I'd make an xgammon |
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> ebuild. all fine and dandy, but there are a few patches (from |
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> RedHat) to xgammon which are nice to have (they fix minor bugs -- |
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> void main -> int main and a few other things). what to do? if I |
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> include the patches, how do I link to them? or do I just put them |
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> in the "files"-directory with the ebuild? |
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|
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For patch files (especially large ones) include the URL to the patch in |
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the SRC_URI string so that it will be downloaded with the source tarball |
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and stored in ${DISTDIR}, i.e. /usr/portage/distfiles by default. See |
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the dev-lang/python ebuild for a good example (In fact the python ebuild |
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is a good example for a variety ebuild techniques for uncommon |
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situations) |
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|
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If the patch files are small (working definition of small not much |
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larger than the ebuild itself), placing them in the files directory is |
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ok, but the former method is prefereable. |
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Contributions are always welcome and appreciated. |
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Hope that helps, |
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|
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tod |
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