[Pan-users] Re: pan2 still lives :o)

[Duncan]

walt <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:22:39
+0000:

> On Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:49:48 +0000, Duncan wrote:
> 
>> I actually got the Gentoo-dev pan maintainer interested in my svn-live
>> ebuild and mailed it to 'em yesterday.  I'm not sure if it'll end up in
>> the main package tree or not, however, being a live-ebuild.  General
>> policy is they don't go in, tho there's a few exceptions.

> I'm a gentooer also but I've not heard the word 'live' used that way.
> What does it imply?

Take a look at pretty much any ebuild of version 9999 or a variant 
thereof (the amarok-1.4.9999-r2 I happen to have merged from the tree, 
for instance).  They are "live" ebuilds, in that they pull source from 
the "live" VCS tree (VCS=version control system, CVS/SVN/GIT/whatever), 
and thus, unlike regular ebuilds or vcs-snapshot ebuilds (which pull a 
fixed snapshot that won't change), pull and compile from literally 
different sources each time they're merged (well, obviously if the 
upstream repository has had any commits since the last time, anyway).

It follows that live-ebuilds are essentially unsupported (and therefore 
always hard-masked), because a duplication of the build conditions 
including sources simply isn't practical.  However, where available (and 
most such ebuilds are now kept in the various overlays, not in the main 
tree), they /do/ provide a convenient automated and package-manager 
tracked way of managing what would otherwise be manually pulled, compiled 
and installed live-vcs sources.

So, after managing pan's live-svn sources by hand for awhile, I took a 
look at some of the other live-svn packages in the tree, most of which 
use svn.eclass, and after studying the eclass a bit as well, basically 
merged the svn bits from some other live-svn package with the existing 
pan-0.1xx ebuild at the time, of course changing the various parameters 
used by svn.eclass as appropriate for the pan case, as opposed to 
whatever they were in whatever ebuild I copied them from.  Now I get the 
benefits of both whatever's the latest in the gnome/pan svn repository 
and portage's package management automation, and all I have to remember 
to do is remerge pan occasionally, since a live-ebuild version won't 
change and let you know there's an update that way, as most package 
ebuilds do.

If I'm lucky, "eva" (Gilles D. according to the gentoo dev list; I'm not 
French but I think that's a guy) will decide to put it in the main tree 
anyway, and I'll be able to eliminate my private overlay version.  Or 
maybe he was simply interested in using it personally, the better to keep 
track of what's happening between versions, and therefore get a head-
start on any necessary ebuild changes.  That'd still be of benefit to 
Gentoo pan users, tho not as much to me personally.

If the live ebuild does make it to the tree, it's likely I'll file bugs 
on it as upstream changes and they are necessary.  I'm considering proxy-
maintaining it as well, tho I've not talked to anyone about it yet.  
We'll see how it goes; whether eva trees it or mails me any questions, or 
others ask me about/for it after seeing it mentioned here or on the bug.  
Right now I'm just playing it by ear.

Anyway, now that you know what a "live" ebuild is, if you are interested, 
just yell.  Live-svn is certainly not for everyone, but if you'd be 
following it if you had a conveniently automated way of doing so, or 
already are doing it manually, the ebuild will certainly be useful.  =8^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman