On Wed, 3 Jul 2013 11:45:55 +0100
"Steven J. Long" <slong@rathaus.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:

>  Tom Wijsman wrote:
> > > > Earlier I mentioned "3) The patch should not affect the build by
> > > > default."; if it does, we have to adjust it to not do that,
> > > > this is something that can be easily scripted.
> 
> If it does then it should never be applied, unless the user
> specifically asks for it, imo, and the resultant kernel is labelled
> -exp as you suggest.

Yes, we are going to introduce an experimental USE flag for this.

> > It's just a matter of
> > > > embedding each + block in the diff with a config check and
> > > > updating the counts.
> > > 
> > > Wonderful, now you are maintaining a patch that looks nothing
> > > like the one created by the original developers, nor tested by
> > > anyone else other than gentoo developers.
> > 
> > I can convert the original developer's patch whenever he updates
> > it; or on top of that, write a script to generate the original
> > patch back.
> 
> Please, just keep a copy of the original patch as well as the modified
> output from the script, somewhere reasonable to you, if you are doing
> any editing. Traceability is essential here.

The need to keep duplicates around is a broken design; if you would
need to do this, there is something worse going on. But yes, some git
branches can easily cover the editing part.

> Personally I think it ill-advised, and would prefer simply that the
> patch were not applied if the above process in your testing prior to
> usage, showed that it would affect other parts of the build
> inappropriately, even when configured off. Or it's known to do so,
> like aufs.

Maybe, we can hear whether the patch authors want to do something about
this, so we don't have to convert patches like this; maybe most of them
are willing to do this without a problem. Though, there are going to be
parts that they want to unconditionally apply, which is why we will
need to wrap those parts with a check.

> Unless of course the user specifically requests it. This can be a
> simple variable with a list of required patches, or whatever.

With USE=-experimental (which will be the default) they are excluded by
default, after enabling that the user can exclude patches by setting
UNIPATCH_EXCLUDE through the package.env mechanism.

-- 
With kind regards,

Tom Wijsman (TomWij)
Gentoo Developer

E-mail address  : TomWij@gentoo.org
GPG Public Key  : 6D34E57D
GPG Fingerprint : C165 AF18 AB4C 400B C3D2  ABF0 95B2 1FCD 6D34 E57D