[Bitpim-devel] Re: Gentoo ebuild

[Tony Murray]

Hi, I would just like to spread a little of my wisdom on this subject.
(I am a longtime Gentoo user and owner of a vx4400)

First of all, it would be much easier to make versioned ebuilds if there
were a versioned source tarball for every release, like
bitpim-0.7.14.tar.bz2. This would also make for a faster download vs CVS.

As for ease of use, once the ebuild is bug free and uses a 'release
tarball' I am fairly confident that I could push bitpim into portage so
any user can just do a "emerge bitpim" and be done with it.

For the mean time, most Gentoo users know how to put external ebuilds
into their portage overlay, so just offering an ebuild to download would
be sufficient. Once bitpim is in portage you can remove the ebuild from
the site. If you feel like doing a little extra work, whenever you
update bitpim, you can create a new bug @ http://bugs.gentoo.org and the
developers will update your ebuild in portage. (You should especially do
this if th e ebuild needs to change in some way, like a new dependency etc)

OFT, Thanks for your work on bitpim Roger, my dream is to plug in my
phone and have it automatically sync with my PIM program (Kontact,
Evolution, etc). But I am too busy to contribute substantially, but I am
also patient, so keep up the good work.

Tony Murray

[Tony Murray]

Hi, I would just like to spread a little of my wisdom on this subject.
(I am a longtime Gentoo user and owner of a vx4400)

First of all, it would be much easier to make versioned ebuilds if there
were a versioned source tarball for every release, like
bitpim-0.7.14.tar.bz2. This would also make for a faster download vs CVS.

As for ease of use, once the ebuild is bug free and uses a 'release
tarball' I am fairly confident that I could push bitpim into portage so
any user can just do a "emerge bitpim" and be done with it.

For the mean time, most Gentoo users know how to put external ebuilds
into their portage overlay, so just offering an ebuild to download would
be sufficient. Once bitpim is in portage you can remove the ebuild from
the site. If you feel like doing a little extra work, whenever you
update bitpim, you can create a new bug @ http://bugs.gentoo.org and the
developers will update your ebuild in portage. (You should especially do
this if th e ebuild needs to change in some way, like a new dependency etc)

OFT, Thanks for your work on bitpim Roger, my dream is to plug in my
phone and have it automatically sync with my PIM program (Kontact,
Evolution, etc). But I am too busy to contribute substantially, but I am
also patient, so keep up the good work.

Tony Murray

[Roger Binns]

Post by Tony Murray
First of all, it would be much easier to make versioned ebuilds if
there were a versioned source tarball for every release, like
bitpim-0.7.14.tar.bz2. This would also make for a faster download vs CVS.

I have no issue with making the versioned source. However I refuse
to upload any more files to SourceForge. I hate the stupid long
winded tedious interface for uploading files. It is bad enough
with the 4 files per release at the moment.

And quite frankly I don't think it makes a blind bit of difference
if the file is downloaded by CVS or carrier pigeon. That all happens
behind the scenes.

Post by Tony Murray
As for ease of use, once the ebuild is bug free and uses a 'release
tarball' I am fairly confident that I could push bitpim into portage
so any user can just do a "emerge bitpim" and be done with it.

The thing you are missing is that there is a BitPim release every
two weeks. Gentoo isn't setup for a release frequency like that.

Post by Tony Murray
For the mean time, most Gentoo users know how to put external ebuilds
into their portage overlay, so just offering an ebuild to download
would be sufficient. Once bitpim is in portage you can remove the
ebuild from the site. If you feel like doing a little extra work,
whenever you
the developers will update your ebuild in portage. (You should
especially do this if th e ebuild needs to change in some way, like a
new dependency etc)

That is all fine but doesn't work with the release frequency of BitPim.
And I don't find anything that takes more than two steps acceptable.

Roger

[Sourav K. Mandal]

On Sun, 2004-07-25 at 14:53, Roger Binns wrote:

[...]

Post by Roger Binns
And I don't find anything that takes more than two steps acceptable.

One option is to provide a tarball of the entire bitpim portage subtree,
not just the ebuild; then, the user steps are: unpack tarball in
overlay, then emerge.

[Roger Binns]

Post by Sourav K. Mandal
[...]

Post by Roger Binns
And I don't find anything that takes more than two steps acceptable.

One option is to provide a tarball of the entire bitpim portage
subtree, not just the ebuild; then, the user steps are: unpack
tarball in overlay, then emerge.

And what about updates? The problem with Gentoo is not getting
BitPim built once. The problem is dealing with biweekly updates.

Roger

[Tony Murray]

I just remembered something, and I wanted to point it out. Freevo uses
a shell script that automatically downloads the ebuilds, make sure the
overlay is enabled, and unmasks stuff that needs to be unmask. You
could even add an emerge bitpim at the end to bring it from two commands
to one...

At any rate, it is worth a look at
http://freevo.sourceforge.net/gentoo/rsync-freevo , www.freevo.org.

Tony

[Roger Binns]

Post by Tony Murray
I just remembered something, and I wanted to point it out. Freevo
uses a shell script that automatically downloads the ebuilds, make
sure the overlay is enabled, and unmasks stuff that needs to be
unmask. You could even add an emerge bitpim at the end to bring it
from two commands to one...

I did suggest something like that at one point. The major problem
is that although it does the initial portage overlay population for
you, it doesn't do the updates later on.

If someone supplies and maintains a script that does all that in
the right way, I'll happily add it. The only caveat is that
I am happy to type a command or two at release time, but I
refuse to upload any more files as part of SourceForge's
file release system. Stuff in CVS isn't an issue.

Also be aware that sometimes there are multiple releases
such as 0.7.13-0 followed by 0.7.13-1

Roger

[Sourav K. Mandal]

Post by Roger Binns
If someone supplies and maintains a script that does all that in
the right way, I'll happily add it. The only caveat is that
I am happy to type a command or two at release time, but I
refuse to upload any more files as part of SourceForge's
file release system. Stuff in CVS isn't an issue.

(sorry for the late reply)

I guess I could work up a script that generates an ebuild from the
template already in CVS, then does all the necessary Portage-related
steps, including emerge.

No promises on when ...

[Roger Binns]

Post by Sourav K. Mandal
I guess I could work up a script that generates an ebuild from the
template already in CVS, then does all the necessary Portage-related
steps, including emerge.
No promises on when ...

No problem. In the mean time the web site will continue to
recommend that Gentoo folks just emerge rpm and then use
the rpm package :-)

Roger