Re: [gentoo-dev] common ebuild mistakes

[Paul de Vrieze]

On Friday 23 May 2003 21:15, Martin, Stephen wrote:
> Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> > - Please base the update on the latest ebuild in the portage tree, not
> > your own version. This is sometimes a problem with people who submit
> > updates to a package that they made the initial ebuild for. Those ebuilds
> > are often cleaned up, but with new versions you still get the same ebuild
> > as the initial one instead of an edited version of the official ebuild
> >
> > - Please please, do not submit ebuilds for version bumps unless necessary
> > and if necessary tell us what changed.
>
> I've a couple of questions about this.  Last night I emerged mplayer and
> noticed that aalib didn't get installed even though I had it in USE.
> Obviously, fixing this is a trivial change to the RDEPEND section of the
> ebuild (aalib is autodetected by mplayer and so no change to $myconf is
> necessary).  What's the best way to handle small changes like this?
> Should I just file a bug and state what needs to be done, or should I
> file a bug and attach a diff?  Is there a rule of thumb for how large a
> change has to be in order to warrant a diff or ebuild?

It is a matter of personal judgement when to submit full ebuilds, when diffs 
and when nothing (except a description). By the way, myconf should still be 
used to explicitly disable aalib if the flag is not present, and specificly 
enable it if it is.  mplayer is a particularly nasty package, it has a great 
amount of dependencies and apparently aalib slipped through.

In case an ebuild is rather complex, a diff might be more appropriate as it 
makes clear where the changes are, but again it is a matter of personal 
judgement. (Also not all dev's are the same).

What must allways be present though is a comment on why the made changes are 
made, and what the possible repercussions could be (if any).

Paul

-- 
Paul de Vrieze
Researcher
Mail: pauldv@××××××.nl
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net