Re: [Gnewsense-dev] Trying to master the Builder

[Dmitry Samoyloff]

At Tue, 25 May 2010 23:47:40 +0200,
Sam Geeraerts wrote:
> 
> Dmitry Samoyloff schreef:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > Recently, I've backported gnash-0.8.7 to the gNewSense-2.3 and Sam Geeraerts
> > suggested me to make a patch for the Builder. The documentation I've found 
> > is
> > somewhat sparse, so let me ask some questions here (please pardon me if they
> > are stupid, I'm a newbie in gNewSense development ;-)).
> > 
> > 1. The page [1] seems to be relevant to my task, but it describes modifying
> > the version of package that is already in the original distro. I need to 
> > add a
> > newer version of the package (supposedly to the backports repo), not just a
> > patched revision of the existing one. Can somebody point me to the example 
> > of
> > such a change being done to the gNewSense already?
> 
> If you branched Builder in bzr you'll find the packages specific to 
> gNewSense in the packages/deltah/ directory. Your case is unusual 
> because it's not a completely new package. I don't think that's a problem.

I see.

> > 2. Is it necessary to download all the GBs and rebuild everything else in a
> > distro to make my job done (adding a new version of a package to the 
> > backports
> > repo)?
> 
> You don't need all of it, but you would need enough of the Ubuntu mirror 
> to debootstrap a chroot environment + the build dependencies of the 
> package(s) you want to build. I don't know of an automated way to do that.

So, the workflow, as I see it, should be like that:

1. Build my own deltah mirror (at least partial) as described in
   HowToCreateYourOwnGNULinuxDistribution [1].
2. Make my changes to the Builder, so it would support a new version of
   Gnash.
3. Test my mirror locally.
4. Send a Builder patch to the mailing list.

> Alternatively, you could limit yourself to hardy main (so not include 
> -security/-updates/-backports and universe) in your debmirror. We don't 
> do 64 bit, so you can skip amd64 in any case.

But where gnash-0.8.7 should go actually, main or backports?

> Yet another option is to just study the code and provide a patch (or 
> steps to take) that you think will work. :)

[1] http://www.gnewsense.org/Builder/HowToCreateYourOwnGNULinuxDistribution