Re: [gentoo-dev] Fw: reviewboard and its bugs

[Jesus Rivero (Neurogeek)]

I originally responded to another thread. Here is what I said:
<
I gave this a try some time ago and was bummed down by some things. I dont
like nodejs enough, and npm devs seems to not care about centrally/globally
installed packages. There are some npm packages that have to be modified so
they can work when globally installed and it gets boring after a while. npm
packages tend to be really small so one package can have a really high
number of deps.

If anybody is interested in this, check out my repo with npm packages[0]
and a really simple g-npm tool[1] to generate ebuilds for them. These tools
might be outdated cause I don't use nodejs anymore and I dont care much
about it.

Feel free to ping me if you have questions.

Cheers,

[0] https://github.com/neurogeek/gentoo-overlay (I might have something
more recent somewhere)
[1] https://github.com/neurogeek/g-npm
>


On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 11:50 PM, Tim Boudreau <niftiness@×××××.com> wrote:

> FWIW, I suspect npm is here to stay, and it has a facility for installing
> system-wide utilities;  and NodeJS is both usable and convenient for
> system-level scripting which has no connection to webapps, and has the
> ability to build native code that integrates with NodeJS code as well.
>
> IMO, it would be pretty insane to write packages that duplicate npm
> packages;  support within portage for installing things with it makes more
> sense.  I've occasionally toyed with the idea of a webapp that exposes
> packages in npm as ebuilds and generates the required metadata on the fly,
> so anything in the npm repository would simply *be* a Gentoo package.  Not
> sure the idea is viable, but it might be.  If that existed, and then some
> known-stable subset of packages for which system-wide installation is
> appropriate could be mirrored in the portage tree, that would probably be
> ideal.
>
> -Tim
>
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 8:48 PM, IAN DELANEY <della5@×××××××××.au> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>> Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 08:45:21 +0800
>> From: IAN DELANEY <idella4@g.o>
>> To: gentoo-python@l.g.o
>> Subject: reviewboard and its bugs
>>
>> cancel the gentoo-python@lists, was intended for gentoo-dev@lists
>>
>> The package reviewboard has reached a stage of warranting this
>> submission to the ML.  A simple search of reviewboard in bugzilla lists
>> a few 'user submitted' bugs and no less than 3 sec bugs. This package I
>> added initially because interest was expressed mainly by my final
>> mentor and the other (prior) co-maintainer. Because of changes to
>> reviewboard upstream, we need a new eclass and category to cater to
>> certain js packages.
>>
>> Now wishing to re-write all I have already written in the bugs, in
>> summary, reviewboard has become unworkable by the developers of
>> reviewboard itself going down the path of nodejs. Enter npm.
>> npm was an unknown to me until Djblets and django-pipeline ebuilds
>> failed due to the absence of UglifyJS and some related js deps.  On
>> being informed of ebuilds for this and related deps in the overlay of
>> neurogeek, I discovered they required npm which it seems comes in
>> nodejs.  The response drawn by fellow devs over npm is in my limited
>> experience unprecedented.  The overall reaction was leave it and don't
>> go there.  What became apparent from the ebulds in neurogeek's overlay
>> was that these deps didn't lend themselves well to writing ebuilds for
>> them for portage.  In the overlay there is in fact an npm eclass to
>> overseer their installation into the system.
>>
>> After some somewhat reluctant discussion of npm in irc, it has at least
>> been suggested that the use of nodejs' UglifyJS in django-pipeline
>> could be patched out to relieve us all of any reliance or involvement
>> of npm to install these js oriented deps.  That has not ofcourse been
>> attempted or tested and allows for the probability of breaking Djblets
>> and or reviewboard which I suspect has been written by reviewboard
>> developers to explicitly depend on and call these deps. The decision it
>> seems isn't whether to allows npm into portage, it already comes with
>> nodejs correct me if I misunderstand.  The question is whether to
>> support this npm installing packages into a gentoo system by ebuilds
>> essentially outside of portage.  This requires an eclass and it has
>> been suggested a whole new category for portage under which to
>> categorise these npm type packages.  Such an eclass has already been
>> written, however, that it has never been added to portage along with js
>> style packages in the overlay, to me at least, strongly suggests the
>> author always had reservations with its addition.
>>
>> There is ofcourse the alternative; to write ebuilds to install these
>> packages without npm involvement.  This would still require an
>> eclass anyway.   Either way, nodejs and java script are totally outside
>> the realm of pythonic packages and are therefore outside my realm
>> of knowledge and experience.  Reviewboard developers have essentially
>> created a huge dilemma for users of reviewboard in gentoo by going
>> electing to use this js 'toolchain'.  While I normally go to any
>> lengths to maintain any and all packages within the python realm, this
>> reviewboard has gone way beyond that realm. Until this, its
>> underbelly was pure python and posed no real problem. Now I have a
>> growing and unwelcome list of bugs of this package assigned to me as
>> the sole remaining maintainer which are now unworkable.
>>
>> The real problem here is that there is an apparent keen set of would
>> be users of this package, one of whom is a gentoo dev, who is to be
>> found in at least one of those bugs.  To delete or mask the package
>> amounts to a clean solution, and also abandons gentoo users looking
>> to have the package made work for them.
>>
>> In summary, because of changes to reviewboard upstream, we need a new
>> eclass and category to write ebuilds to these packages and add them to
>> portage.
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> kind regards
>>
>> Ian Delaney
>>
>>
>> --
>> kind regards
>>
>> Ian Delaney
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> http://timboudreau.com
>



-- 
Jesus Rivero (Neurogeek)
Gentoo Developer