Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFD] Adopt-a-package, proxy-maintenance, and other musings

[Daniel Campbell <zlg@gentoo.org>]

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On 01/21/2016 02:41 PM, waltdnes@waltdnes.org wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 06:45:20PM +0100, Micha?? Górny wrote
>> On Thu, 21 Jan 2016 17:25:02 +0000 Roy Bamford
>> <neddyseagoon@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> There is no point in removing unmaintained but perfectly
>>> functional software from the tree.  It needs to be both
>>> unmaintained and broken. Broken being evidenced by at least one
>>> open bug.
>> 
>> That's nonsense. In fact, that's exactly the opposite of what
>> should be removed.
>> 
>> If I see a package that clearly doesn't build or otherwise
>> simply doesn't work, could not have worked for past 3 years, are
>> you forcing me to waste a time reporting a bug to no maintainer
>> who could fix it?
> 
> I think you misunderstood Roy.  He was speaking about
> "unmaintained but perfectly functional software".  You're talking
> about "a package that clearly doesn't build or otherwise simply
> doesn't work, could not have worked for past 3 years".  Between
> those 2 extremes will be many cases of
> doesn't-work-for-me/works-for-me.  Who'll be the final arbiter?
> 
> Maybe we should start a "gentoo-ebuilds" mailing list to help
> regular users learn the ins and outs of making ebuilds.  Once
> regular users run a lot of their own ebuilds from their local
> overlays, then it would be possible to do draconian pruning of the
> "official portage tree", without so adversely affecting regular
> users.  This would fit in with the mantra of Gentoo being about
> freedom of choice.
> 
> E.g. I use Pale Moon, a fork of Firefox.  Currently, I have to
> build as regular user, su, and copy the binary to /usr/local.  You
> can see "Walter's excellent adventure" <G> as I learn the build
> process at... 
> https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=10002
> 
> I'd like to have Portage manage the process.  The ebuild from
> Firefox should serve as a template, because they both use the same
> weird Mozilla build setup.  The main change should be where the
> source is pulled from.
> 

The idea sounds nice, but there's already the devmanual to cover
ebuild development, and now that the gentoo repo is in git, any
ebuilds that get treecleaned can be fetched again through history, and
users can then add those to their personal overlay(s) and keep the
piece if they break.

I like the idea of encouraging people to learn good ebuild writing,
but who really has the time and skill to teach it?

- -- 
Daniel Campbell - Gentoo Developer
OpenPGP Key: 0x1EA055D6 @ hkp://keys.gnupg.net
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