Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Graham Murray <graham@×××××××××××.uk>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Applying patches without needing overlays and modifying ebuilds
Date: Sun, 17 May 2009 08:26:12
Message-Id: 87skj4rv8g.fsf@newton.gmurray.org.uk
In Reply to: [gentoo-user] Applying patches without needing overlays and modifying ebuilds by Nikos Chantziaras
1 Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@×××××.de> writes:
2
3 > What if we could just specify patches to be applied in, say,
4 > /etc/portage/packages.patch with something like:
5 >
6 > media-video/smplayer j-random-hack.patch
7 >
8 > and portage would apply that patch automatically? That way, the
9 > hassle of updating the ebuild of a package in which I use custom
10 > patches would go away.
11
12 One problem here is the order of patches. Often the order that the
13 patches need to be applied is important, and your mechanism does not
14 allow you to specify the order with respect to those patches in the
15 ebuild.
16
17 Another problem is that when a package is upgraded, the patches required
18 can change. The patch that worked with version X might have to be
19 changed for version X+1 or may not be needed any more. So it is
20 necessary to do some work anyway when upgrading packages.