[Dovecot] Gentoo overlay?

Ed W lists at wildgooses.com
Mon Jul 27 18:43:37 EEST 2009


Charles Marcus wrote:
>
> A quick google shows: http://tiny.pl/hhc4k
>   

Hi Charles

Writing a decent ebuild from scratch which is good enough to be accepted 
IS fairly tricky, but the good news is a "good enough" one is fairly 
straightforward.

Actually the whole thing sounds more grandiose than it really is.  
Fundamentally the ebuild is just a bunch of scripts to help build the 
normal source code and automate the whole "./configure && make  && make 
install" routine

I might be a bit behind, but in general I have found the dovecot ebuild 
in gentoo reasonably up to date?  I would suggest if it lags a bit then 
just create a bug on b.g.o and request a bump.  Likely after you do that 
twice you will figure out the address of the maintainer and can annoy 
them directly...

Additionally if you compare a couple of ebuilds and open them up then 
they are reasonably readable, and if you need to bump something then you 
will *usually* find that it's enough simply to rename the existing 
ebuild to the new version name and shove it in /usr/local/portage (and I 
guess you already know the next incantations?).  With a project as 
stable as dovecot I doubt there will be too much reason for ebuild to 
change from version to version?

Personally I'm not a master at writing ebuilds, but I have to say it's 
fairly simple to take an existing one and add a custom patch or bump it 
to a new version (and sometimes I need to look at a few others to crib 
the syntax for something, but it's usually fairly easy to cut'n'paste).

Hopefully this will actually prove faster and more solid than an overlay 
though?

Good luck

Ed W


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