Re: [gentoo-dev] proxy-dev (an alternative to sunrise?)

[Bruno]

On Saturday 29 July 2006 02:19, Alastair Tse wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-07-28 at 11:51 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> > Robert Cernansky wrote:
> > > If I have some application that is not included in portage why
> > > I decide to make an ebuild? Because I hope that then it will be
> > > accepted and included to portage, so maintained by developers (big
> > > thanks for this). If I have to take care of package + ebuild +
> > > dependencies, I'll rather choose not to make an ebulid but compile
> > > package right from .tar.gz archive.
> >
> > Many people disagree with you here, that's why overlays exist. Somebody
> > wants to use Portage to manage ebuilds that aren't yet in the actual
> > tree.
>
> I have to say I agree with Donnie here on this.
>
> I've been using private ebuilds for certain things that are installed on
> my work systems that will never be applicable to anyone except for 4
> people on this planet. Yet I use these because then I'm able to take
> this simple single file, plonk it into another Gentoo machine and
> recreate the same installation. Maybe it is just because making ebuilds
> is now just second nature to me.

I, as a simple user, also have my overlay, with ebuilds for software I use (at 
work also company-internal software), some driver that's not in portage, and 
whatever I need.
Big advantage of using ebuilds with portage over manually installing from 
tarballs is visible at update/uninstall time when old files should get 
deleted! Ebuild that fetch source from revision system (cvs, svn) are very 
useful too as recompiling is then as easy as typing "emerge <mysoftware>".

Ease of installation on second box comes on second position.

> Look at my overlay at the moment, half the stuff there have a less than
> 30% chance of ever making it into the main portage tree. But I still
> make those ebuilds in the off chance that either (a) I do decide to put
> them in, or (b) someone else might stumble across them and find it, and
> (c) there are just things that I cannot test because I don't have the
> hardware.

Through proxy-dev I may contribute ebuild for a few packages and maintain them 
over the time period I have use for them. E.g. drivers as long as I have 
given hardware (in use).

What would be useful is to have the option for a few users to maintain the 
same ebuild through one proxy-dev, this way when one user stops having 
usecase for the ebuild others can continue maintainership. Even maintaining 
while initial user lacks of time or is away would then not stop or fallback 
to the dev.

Regards,
Bruno
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