RE: [gentoo-dev] Ebuilds and the changes people make to them

["Corey Crawford" <ccrawford@seventh.net>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeremy Maitin-Shepard [mailto:jbms@gentoo.org]
> Sent: Saturday, November 08, 2003 3:51 PM
> To: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
> Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Ebuilds and the changes people make to them

-snip-

> This seems like a matter of having (more general) package-specific
> configuration files, which currently is not supported.  I would imagine
> though that if such files were supported, it would make more sense for
> these files to go in a sub-directory of /etc rather than in the portage
> tree, since either they would be overwritten or they would have to be
> excluded from rsync, which would cause problems if the package were
> moved or removed.
>
> --
> Jeremy Maitin-Shepard

You are right, it is a matter of having package-specific configuration
files.

However, if it's done right then packages can be moved to this system one at
a time without requiring any kind of rewrite for the portage system. Just
somewhere along the line when you did an 'emerge sync' the new ebuild file
and configuration file would be included.

The .defaults file is designed to be overwritten each time an 'emerge sync'
is done. Just like the ChangeLog file is overwritten when it's changed.

However, the .custom configuration file could easily go into an /etc
directory (with make.conf would make sense). If there is no .custom file for
the package being built (which would be checked by the package's ebuild)
then the .defaults file would provide all the configuration values the
ebuild needs.

A default .custom file does not need to be provided. The user can create
their own .custom file with the variables they want to change from the
.defaults file.

I could probably convert Apache2's ebuild file to use this system in less
than an hour.

---
Corey Crawford
ccrawford@seventh.net




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