On Thursday 23 March 2006 16:31, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> No.  It isn't.  Look in many developer overlays and you'll see packages
> that they have made that work how *they* want them to, even if it is
> *very* different from what is in the tree.  This is the case for
> packages that are not maintained by them, too.  Any ebuild that is done
> by someone that isn't the maintainer is a fork.  There's nothing
> "hostile" about it.
>
Probably this is the reason that my personal overlay is not "public". For 
example it contains a gtk+ version with the save dialog "fixed".

> I see no problem with overlays in concept, such as the php overlay that
> is very successful.  The main reason that it is successful is because
> the same people that maintain php maintain the overlay.  Yes, there are
> other contributors, but the maintainers of the overlay are still the
> developers.  I see no problem with providing these sorts of overlays to
> bridge the gap between contributing users and developers.  I *do* see a
> problem with simply allowing random overlays from any developer for
> anything.

On the other hand, my personal overlay contains various fixes to packages I 
use, but who are from other developers. As I'm not the maintainer I don't 
always bother to post bugs, and find it wrong to fix it without telling the 
maintainer. Other ebuilds concern packages that are unmaintained or not 
stable enough. It also contains my own kde meta packages that select only 
that part of kde that I want.

I can only assume that other developers have similar overlays too. These 
overlays form actually a wealth of resources that are hidden away. If there 
were a semi-public overlay system in which developers could keep their 
overlays, this might help in getting this out to the public.

Paul

-- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net