Re: [tlug] (gentoo) how to ask for an ebuild or do it myself?

[Al Hoang <hoanga@example.com>]

On Thu, Aug 03, 2006 at 07:21:59PM +0900, Evan Monroig wrote:
> Dear Tlug,
> 
> I am giving gentoo a serious try, and I basically have a working
> gentoo, only for a few applications that I daily use.

	Gentoo is very nice if you're trying to follow some packages on
the leading edge.  The only disadvantage I've found so far is recompiling
Firefox, KDE, and some other heavy weight programs each time you want
to upgrade.  While you could argue, 'if it aint broke, don't fix it' part
of my reason for using Gentoo is so I can test and play with these packages
faster than binary distros.  But in general it's very nice.

> 
> One of them is planner-el (for emacs), which works together with
> remember-el. The planner-el has an ebuild (app-emacs/planner), but not
> remember-el.
> 
> A google search led me to this bug [1] which is one year old, so I
> doubt the ebuild will ever be made.

	One thing you can do is try a portage overlay.  There are some
other members on this list who are far better at overlays than I am
but from my experience you would do something like this (assuming
you've not noodled with the default location for overlays):

1. Create the dir /usr/local/portage
 - This serves as the base of your own private portage tree where you can
   dump ebuilds
2. For your own private ebuild, figure out what it would be classified as
 - For your case it would be under the directory app-emacs (Full directory
   is /usr/local/portage/app-emacs/remember-gentoo
3. Download attachment from bugs database in gentoo into newly created
   directory
 - cd /usr/local/portage/app-emacs/remember-gentoo && \
	wget http://somewhere/path/to/ebuild
4. Create the ebuild (This is the part where my memory gets fuzzy...)
 - At this point, I drop using emerge and just use the ebuild tools
   directly since you need to make sure a manifest is properly created iirc
 - ebuild remember.ebuild manifest (or was it the other way around)
 - ebuild remember.ebuild fetch 
 - ebuild remember.ebuild compile 
 - ebuild remember.ebuild install*  (Check ebuild manpage) 
 - ebuild remember.ebuild merge*    (Check ebuild manpage)


	That's for the truly impatient who want it running RIGHT now.
For the more patient... 

> 
> So my question is: Is there any way for me to (politely) say that I am
> interested in this to happen, or to make it happen myself?

	iirc, Josh is *ahem* a committer for the Gentoo project.  I'm
sure with some prodding (or beer) he'd try to push to get that ebuild
actually into the portage tree faster.
	I'm really not sure how the Gentoo folk take a bug that
represents a desired ebuild and push it into the portage tree.  It seems
it'd be useful if they had a voting mechanism or something that would
allow them to count the number of people interested in having X ebuild
pushed into the portage tree.  I guess your other option is to email
the person who is assigned the bug and aggravate them until they commit it.

> 
> I know nothing of gentoo's packaging except "emerge what-I-want", but
> I am willing to learn. Pointers welcome (^_^)!

	If you have list archives, search for Stephen's first impressions
of Gentoo.  I think that thread was quite helpful in introducing Gentoo
for the non-Linux newbie

Hope that helps,
Alain