[gentoo-dev] Some thougts about portage/emerge/ebuilds...

["Claes Ström" <gentoodevlist@clabbe.com>]

Hi devs!

Here is some thoughts I have about portage/emerge/ebuilds


1.
manpage don't tell me that -D = --deep (need to read pythonsource or read
response from "emerge --help" to figure out )


2.
When new things coming up like "fixpackages" and emerge responds that you
should change "FEATURES" or run "fixpackages". When this script is outside
of normal path, it would be nice if it was some hint where it's located.
(/usr/lib/portage/bin/fixpackages)


3.
When you do a deep pretended update world (emerge -vpuD world) and finds
some updates like: [ebuild    U ] dev-libs/glib-2.2.1-r1 [2.2.1] -doc
Then when you read Changes for this package and get a diff like this of the
ebuilds:

--- glib-2.2.1.ebuild   2003-03-30 23:27:33.000000000 +0200
+++ glib-2.2.1-r1.ebuild        2003-05-29 09:39:53.000000000 +0200
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 # Copyright 1999-2003 Gentoo Technologies, Inc.
 # Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
-# $Header: /home/cvsroot/gentoo-x86/dev-libs/glib/glib-2.2.1.ebuild,v 1.9
2003/03/30 21:27:33 joker Exp $
+# $Header: /home/cvsroot/gentoo-x86/dev-libs/glib/glib-2.2.1-r1.ebuild,v
1.1 2003/05/29 07:39:53 utx Exp $

 inherit libtool

@@ -42,6 +42,18 @@

 src_install() {
        einstall || die
+
+       # Consider invalid UTF-8 filenames as locale-specific.
+       dodir /etc/env.d
+       echo "G_BROKEN_FILENAMES=1" >${D}/etc/env.d/50glib2

        dodoc AUTHORS ChangeLog COPYING README* INSTALL NEWS NEWS.pre-1-3
 }
+
+pkg_postinst() {
+       env-update
+}
+
+pkg_postrm() {
+       env-update
+}

Why should I need to rebuild the whole glib2 to get one line appended to
/etc/env.d/50glib2 ?
Wouldn't it be nice if portage could handle small file updates instead of
rebuilding from scratch!

4.
I've seen many "etc-updates" with only "cvs-header-updates"!
It would be *nice* if "ebuild-devs" check this before releases...


BTW it looks like forums.gentoo.org is down!


My 2 USE-flags
Claes Ström


PS
I'm also think that the homepage should have more news/information collected
from the Forum, IRC, Bugzilla and mailing-lists. It could be done by some
"junior wannabes" who have time to "hang out" around the clock and trawl all
sources mentioned above and do some editorial work (daily).
Things like framebuffer- and icon-"toys" should have an own track
(for all the newbies who loves that stuff).


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