[gentoo-dev] preference concerns over "gentoo-ization" of packages

[Jason Wever]

Hi All,

I just wanted to bring up a point and suggest a possible solution for it.

I've noticed that with some of our ebuilds, we have customized the
software it installs beyond fixing broken functionality[1].  Some examples
of this are; default themes for window managers, changes in config files
(changing default parameters and/or chunking up the configs into multiple
files), patches for non-standard functionality, etc[2].

Personally (and I'm guessing I'm not the only one), I'm not big on this
behavior being the default when said packages install.  One of the things
I liked about my pre-Gentoo days when I built my packages from hand is
that nothing was assumed for me, be it dependencies or how a program was
run.  Gentoo for a large part does this.  However there are some ebuilds
that do no do this.  This can be frustrating not only from a
configuration/maintenance point of view, but when trying to troubleshoot
software issues (i.e. bug fixes).  This is a reason we sometimes
have problems dealing with vendors/authors of programs.

I also understand that a lot of people may desire this
additional/customized functionality as well.  Therefore I'd like to
propose the creation of a new keyword that would then allow users to get
this Gentoo customization of their packages should they so choose[3]. 
This makes it still accessible to those who want it, but does not make it
the default behavior.

I think this also falls under what Gentoo wants to present to people

I look forward to hearing your responses to this.

[1] - examples that came to mind at this time are blackbox and derivatives
(particularly in relation to commonbox, which seems unneeded unless you
run more than one of these consistantly), GNU/screen (which adjusts the
default config to remove "dangerous" key bindings)and apache (which
segregates the config into multiple different files).

[2] - For clarification, I'm not opposed to  the pathing of packages when
they are setup, mostly anything that is adjusted after configure has been
run.

[3] - I'm not saying I don't appreciate the work that people have put into
the customization of certain packages, however I don't want to have to
spend time reverting those changes back to something resembling the
default configuration if I don't desire the changes.


Thanks,
-- 
Jason Wever
Gentoo/Sparc Team Co-Lead