User patches (Was: Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: [gentoo-commits] gentoo-x86 commit in sys-apps/iproute2: ChangeLog iproute2-2.6.24.20080108.ebuild)

[Vlastimil Babka <caster@gentoo.org>]

Mark Loeser wrote:
> Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org> said:
>> On Sunday 30 March 2008, Mark Loeser wrote:
>>> Actually, I'd say this should just be removed.  If a user wants to apply
>>> a patch, they can put their own ebuild into an overlay and do it
>>> themselves (presumably if they want to patch something, they'll know how
>>> to make the simple modifications to an ebuild).  By allowing the user to
>>> arbitrarily patch something means we have no idea what the user has
>>> built and is filing a bug about.  If they installed an ebuild from an
>>> overlay it is a lot easier to identify what they built.  Sure, they
>>> could patch the ebuild in their tree, but by supporting user supplied
>>> patches easily in this way, we are encouraging them to patch things
>>> without our knowledge.  If we start supporting this across the board, I
>>> can see bugs being filed when their patches break and they don't
>>> understand what is happening.
>> that's actually exactly what i'm encouraging.  i'm not worried about such 
>> issues as they're easily resolved by people posting the full build log.
> 
> Which is great, but I think this is something we should discuss and
> figure out if this is something we want to introduce into the tree (too
> late now, but better late than never).  If it is something we want to
> move forward with, it should be introduced at the package manager level
> instead of being an in-tree package manager specific feature.

I think that maybe we should first introduce new patching phase and then 
make this user patch really usable feature. For example if you want to 
patch something that's input to running autotools, doing it in 
post_src_unpack is too late...

Caster
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