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Rich Freeman posted on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 07:00:15 -0400 as excerpted: |
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> Besides, I think user-patches are a GREAT feature to have, and one I use |
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> all the time (without even thinking about it if a package with a patch |
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> gets rebuilt). As I said in the meeting, if we were selling Gentoo to |
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> make money, it would be the sort of feature that you'd advertise. Why |
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> make it hard to use such a distinctive advantage of a source-based |
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> distro? |
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Agreed with everything, but focusing on the above as a jump-off point |
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for... |
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A similarly great feature to have would be epatch-ebuild. Back when |
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gentoo/kde was trying to dump IUSE=semantic-desktop[1], I was doing |
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enough ebuild patching with enough churn in the ebuilds[2] that manual |
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per-ebuild patching was simply no longer feasible. It can be noted that |
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normal sources patching (as epatch) would NOT work here, at least not |
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easily, because it was the ebuilds themselves that were forcing the |
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various semantic-desktop related config options on and forcing |
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dependencies to match, so it was the ebuilds themselves that needed that |
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patched back out. |
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I ended up with an /etc/portage/patches.ebuild that mirrored |
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/etc/portage/patches in functionality, using a sync script that |
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download-updated both the gentoo tree and the layman-managed overlays, |
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then _automatically_ applied the patches from the patches.ebuild tree and |
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redigested the ebuilds[3], then regenerating cache to account for the |
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changes. The _automatic_ bit being critical as at that point I was |
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handling enough of them that doing it manually would not have been fun. |
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Talk about a feature worth advertising, the user-level ability to |
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automatically live-patch ebuilds by simply dropping a patch in the |
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appropriate location just like we do sources was and remains great, |
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definitely something I'd love to see in the PMs at some point. =:^) |
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As we've found with user-epatched sources, this should greatly simplify |
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deployment of experimental patches. Just attach the patch to the bug and |
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tell the user what directory to drop it in, and no more worries about |
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having to tell users what to edit or how to do manual patching, in |
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ordered to test a fix. =:^) |
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--- |
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[1] Dropping IUSE=semantic-desktop: Something I'm /ever/ so glad gentoo/ |
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kde changed their minds on. =:^) |
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[2] The ebuilds in question were from the gentoo/kde overlay, before they |
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reached the tree. That overlay and the ebuilds in it get a *LOT* of |
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churn! |
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[3] Redigesting: As I run live-sources kde there were few source |
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tarballs to redigest, only the ebuilds. |
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-- |
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Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. |
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"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- |
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and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman |
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