[gentoo-musl] What to do with patches?

[gentoo-musl] What to do with patches?

[Samuel Holland]

Hello,

Over the past few months I have set up both a desktop and server system
with Gentoo Hardened Musl. In the course of doing so, I have accumulated
several patches (41 so far) and a couple of modified ebuilds. What is
the recommended thing to do with them? Should I open bugs for the FTBFS?
Should I prepare patches for adding to the musl overlay? Or should I
first try to get these changes upstream?

I can upload the patches to GitHub or somewhere (or post them here) if
that would be helpful. Some of them are quick patches (that might break
glibc, though I can test that); others are more thorough.

I would like to participate more in the Gentoo Musl and related projects
(side note: possibly as a GSoC student), but I am not sure the best way
to get involved.

Also, for packages that I cannot get to compile or run, is it
appropriate to file a bug on b.g.o (since musl is experimental)?

--
Regards,
Samuel Holland <samuel@sholland.org>

Re: [gentoo-musl] What to do with patches?

[Felix Janda]

Samuel Holland wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Over the past few months I have set up both a desktop and server system
> with Gentoo Hardened Musl. In the course of doing so, I have accumulated
> several patches (41 so far) and a couple of modified ebuilds. What is
> the recommended thing to do with them? Should I open bugs for the FTBFS?
> Should I prepare patches for adding to the musl overlay? Or should I
> first try to get these changes upstream?

In an ideal world, there is an active upstream, you send the patch
upstream, it soon gets accepted, you open a bug with the backported
upstream patch and the corresponding gentoo developer adds it to the
tree.

More realistically, it takes a while to get things upstream. It might
also take some while to get the patches into good shape for upstream.
So, I guess that in most cases a bug for each package is the most
appropropriate (although it takes a lot of work), so that the
upstream/in tree/in overlay status of the patch(es) can be kept track
of. (For active packages likely used by only very few people, I would
just go upstream, though.)

> I can upload the patches to GitHub or somewhere (or post them here) if
> that would be helpful. Some of them are quick patches (that might break
> glibc, though I can test that); others are more thorough.

This might be the easiest approach for you to make your patches
available. Notice that there are already some patch collections
(https://github.com/search?q=gentoo%20musl).

> I would like to participate more in the Gentoo Musl and related projects
> (side note: possibly as a GSoC student), but I am not sure the best way
> to get involved.

Helping with porting packages or solving bugs is surely a good way
to get involved.

> Also, for packages that I cannot get to compile or run, is it
> appropriate to file a bug on b.g.o (since musl is experimental)?

Yes, very much. There already is a not so small list of such bugs.
(Just search for musl or look at the tracker
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=430702 .)

Thanks for offering your help!

Felix

PS: This list is very quiet.