[gentoo-dev] About writing ebuild files

[gentoo-dev] About writing ebuild files

[Markus Wagner]

Hi!

Of course I read the documentations and searched a little bit in the list 
archive, but there are some questions left about writing ebuild files:

Do I have to put my name and mailaddress into the maintainer entry in the 
comments or is this an entry for the gentoo people?

May I update an ebuild file originally written by a different person? What's 
then about the maintainer entry?

I've written a port for cyrus-imapd-2.0.16. Unfortunately this package needs a 
user called "cyrus", which doesn't exist in the default profile. What to do 
in this situation? 

How should the delivered /etc/services looks like, if I have to create some 
new entries in it? Should it only contain the new entries or perhaps some 
standard entries plus the new ones?

TIA,
Markus

Re: [gentoo-dev] About writing ebuild files

[George Shapovalov]

Hi

On Sunday 23 June 2002 15:27, Markus Wagner wrote:
> Do I have to put my name and mailaddress into the maintainer entry in the
> comments or is this an entry for the gentoo people?
Author and Maintainer entries in the ebuilds are discouraged and will be 
stripped out as of present. Instead information of such kind should go into 
Changelog. Please take a look at skel.Changelog for the format description. 
Every person making modification is supposed to update this file (and include 
his/her name and email).
This way you as an author will get proper credit for ebuild submission, core 
developer will get his credit for processing/cleaning up your submission and 
a person updating the ebuild will get his due.

> May I update an ebuild file originally written by a different person?
> What's then about the maintainer entry?
Yes, all the ebuilds are released under GPL-2 (see the header for release 
note). See above Re: maintainer entry.

> I've written a port for cyrus-imapd-2.0.16. Unfortunately this package
> needs a user called "cyrus", which doesn't exist in the default profile.
> What to do in this situation?
You can execute adduser command from pkg_preinst. You might want to add 
corresponding deluser entry to pkg_postremove.
However I am not sure if this is a desirable way to do so or rather should 
user addition be left to sysadmin (still probably not a very elegant solution 
as a few files likely need to be chowned). On the other hand you might prefer 
other username for this package - in case this is covered by any standart.

> How should the delivered /etc/services looks like, if I have to create some
> new entries in it? Should it only contain the new entries or perhaps some
> standard entries plus the new ones?
I think you should include complete file and install it in the proper place. 
As long as it is installed in CONFIG_PROTECTed dir it does not overwrite 
installed version but rather gets a specially mangled name.

George

Re: [gentoo-dev] About writing ebuild files

[Markus Wagner]

Hi!

On Monday 24 June 2002 06:33, George Shapovalov wrote:
> This way you as an author will get proper credit for ebuild submission,
> core developer will get his credit for processing/cleaning up your
> submission and a person updating the ebuild will get his due.
Sure. I forgot the Changelog. ;)

> You can execute adduser command from pkg_preinst. You might want to add
> corresponding deluser entry to pkg_postremove.
Ok. I asked, because I didn't find any documention about these two functions.

> However I am not sure if this is a desirable way to do so or rather should
> user addition be left to sysadmin (still probably not a very elegant
> solution as a few files likely need to be chowned). On the other hand you
> might prefer other username for this package - in case this is covered by
> any standart.
These were my thoughts. I think, normally user addition should be the job of 
the sysadmin, but the installation of cyrus-imapd have to create some 
directories (spool and so on) and they have to belong to "cyrus".

> I think you should include complete file and install it in the proper
> place. As long as it is installed in CONFIG_PROTECTed dir it does not
> overwrite installed version but rather gets a specially mangled name.
I know the configuration protection. That's not the problem. 
But I think, if I include a services file, that only contains the new entries, 
the user can easily recognize the required ones.

One non-technical question left: 
May I define new USE variables or is this the job of the core development?

Markus

Re: [gentoo-dev] About writing ebuild files

[Vitaly Kushneriuk]

> > How should the delivered /etc/services looks like, if I have to create some
> > new entries in it? Should it only contain the new entries or perhaps some
> > standard entries plus the new ones?
> I think you should include complete file and install it in the proper place. 
> As long as it is installed in CONFIG_PROTECTed dir it does not overwrite 
> installed version but rather gets a specially mangled name.
I don't think packages other then baselayout should mess with
/etc/services. In general, two packages can "own" same file, if they
provide similar functionality, i.e. they are virtual [I know it's not
always true right now, but this should be].
In this case, IMO, the proper way to do it is to add the new entry to
the /etc/services from baselayout [this new entry should be there
anyway, no matter if cyrus is installed], and add DEPEND to the new
baselayout version in the cyrus-imapd.ebuild.

        Vitaly/