| 1 |
* Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. <bss03@××××××××××.net> wrote: |
| 2 |
|
| 3 |
Hi folks, |
| 4 |
|
| 5 |
> > A patched-to-death kpdf? |
| 6 |
> |
| 7 |
> Yeah, ubuntu patches KDE left and right and it's a bit annoying, especially |
| 8 |
|
| 9 |
This raises the question how much patching is good for an distro. |
| 10 |
|
| 11 |
As far as I understood Gentoo's policies, ports should stay as close |
| 12 |
as possible to the upstream. In fact in some ebuilds much magic is |
| 13 |
happening to get around really broken upstream (ie. netqmail). |
| 14 |
|
| 15 |
I understand that policy, but IMHO it doesn't go far enough. |
| 16 |
|
| 17 |
My ideal would be: |
| 18 |
|
| 19 |
* The distro should not contain any broken package. If it does not |
| 20 |
run out of the box and requires additional packages, I'd consider |
| 21 |
it as broken. |
| 22 |
* An package must provide all customizability which is required |
| 23 |
for that distro (ie. specifying pathes, DESTDIR installing, |
| 24 |
switching features, etc). Otherwise: broken. |
| 25 |
* The buildsystem must be clean and easy to use. The necessary |
| 26 |
steps (unpacking/preparing the sourcetree, configuring, compiling, |
| 27 |
installing) must be doable with just an command line, without |
| 28 |
any additional logic required. Otherise: broken |
| 29 |
* Builds have to be deterministic. No hidden and unnecessary deps. |
| 30 |
And crosscompiling must be possible w/o any code changes. |
| 31 |
Otherwise: broken. |
| 32 |
|
| 33 |
Okay, these are really hard constraints (which have been proven in |
| 34 |
my embedded works), BUT: |
| 35 |
|
| 36 |
* If an package is broken and upstream release an really fixed version |
| 37 |
within reasonable time, we simply fork off an "stabelized" branch. |
| 38 |
* That branch is normally provided by an single patch against the |
| 39 |
upstream release. |
| 40 |
* Fixes here are done generic, not distro specific. |
| 41 |
* The forks are maintained in an separate project, independent from |
| 42 |
distros, but working close to them. |
| 43 |
* This project also works close to the upstream and also tries to |
| 44 |
get the fixes in. |
| 45 |
|
| 46 |
Actually that's what my OSS-QM project is all about. |
| 47 |
(ugh, just seen the wiki's still offline after I rebuild my server, |
| 48 |
so I'll post the link once I got it up again ;-O) |
| 49 |
|
| 50 |
BTW: the OSS-QM project works very close to the CSDB. |
| 51 |
(http://sourcefarm.metuxde/) |
| 52 |
|
| 53 |
|
| 54 |
cu |
| 55 |
-- |
| 56 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 57 |
Enrico Weigelt == metux IT service - http://www.metux.de/ |
| 58 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 59 |
Please visit the OpenSource QM Taskforce: |
| 60 |
http://wiki.metux.de/public/OpenSource_QM_Taskforce |
| 61 |
Patches / Fixes for a lot dozens of packages in dozens of versions: |
| 62 |
http://patches.metux.de/ |
| 63 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 64 |
-- |
| 65 |
gentoo-user@g.o mailing list |
Archives