Yet another open source blog ;)

This poped up recently @ -dev ML [1]. It turns out that is little ( or not at all ) documentation about this, which is quite unfortunate since it is one of the most easy and important ways a user can use to assist us on development. A couple of months ago I blogged about Sunrise Overlay[2] as a good way for users to extend their knowledge on ebuild writting and contribute their own ebuilds on an official gentoo overlay. This of course requires a significant amount of time and effort which is hard to find nowadays.
There is another way for you to help us put your shiny ebuilds on portage. You can become proxy-maintainer of any package you like as long as it doesn’t have a Gentoo developer as maintainer.

How does this work?

Since there are no official documentation available, these are the rules you should follow to become proxy-maintainer:

1) Open a bug for your package

2) Attach your ebuild and state that you want to be proxy maintainer for this

3) Assing or CC the bug to the more appropriate herd[3]

4) Wait for a developer to pop up and accept your offer

As proxy-maintainer you should do all the required work to ensure your package is fully working and up2date. This may requires to follow upstream changes and mailing lists and visit occasionally the bugzilla to find out if there are open bugs for your package. This is an excellent opportunity to become an active member of Gentoo developer community and a big step for improving this great distro. Furthermore, you can always jump the gap and become developer[4] if you think you are willing to contribute in regular basis

I really hope this post will clarify this “unknown” term and motivate you to become proxy-maintainer

[1] http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/msg_8c710130ea7281f9815ef84fdd2216a9.xml

[2]http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org/?p=385

[3]http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/metastructure/herds/herds.xml

[4]http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/handbook/handbook.xml?part=1&chap=2

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First of all, Happy new year . I hope 2010 to bring more joy and happiness to you and your family.

This post is a small notice for those who haven’t been informed yet about the Qt3 removal schedule on Gentoo Linux.

That’s been said, you should consider upgrade to Qt4 ( which is unlikely you haven’t already ) and upgrade your Qt3 applications to the Qt4 respective versions as well ( if possible ).

There is also a tracker on gentoo bugzilla in case you need to track the Qt3 removal progress or help us by filling related bugs

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Recently I joined Gentoo AMD64 team. I always wanted to become an archer and bring the stable branch in a more sane condition. Fortunately, amd64 members are already doing an amazing work, and amd64 stable branch is in a pretty well state. So how do I plan to do the keywording and stabilization?

I am going to use two different ways. First, I will use my old Athlon AMD64 single core / 1,5GB@333Mhz of RAM as a stable platform to do the stabilizations of small packages. This is a quite old CPU so I can’t do much there. On the other hand, I owe a new Phenom X3 machine with 2GB@800Mhz of RAM. However, this machine is running testing Gentoo with plenty of masked packages as well ^_^

So the only choice I had to take advantage of this is to build a stable chroot

Those are the steps I followed ( Might be wrong, but hey, they worked for me :p )

————————————————————————————

1 ) mkdir /mnt/gentoo-stable

2 ) Download the latest autobuild from your preferred mirror.

    wget http://files.gentoo.gr/releases/amd64/autobuilds/current-stage3/

3 ) mv stage3-amd64-20091217.tar.bz2 /mnt/gentoo-stable

4 ) cd /mnt/gentoo-stable && tar xvjpf stage3-amd64-20091217.tar.bz2

5 ) cp -L /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo-stable/etc && cp -L /etc/passwd /mnt/gentoo-stable/etc && cp -L /etc/shadow /mnt/gentoo-stable/etc
6 ) Adjusted my make.conf
7 ) Created a custom init script for the host machine
8 ) rc-update add gentoo-stable on my host machine
9 ) Done

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Now all you need to do is to run

chroot /mnt/gentoo-stable /bin/bash && source /etc/profile && env-update

See? It wont take more than 5′ to have a brand new stable Gentoo

ps: As you may have notitced, I am binding my cvs checkout of portage to /mnt/gentoo-stable/usr/portage. This means that the chroot is using my cvs portage to build the packages. Of course, you can always bind your rsync clone of portage by using/

mount -o bind /usr/portage /mn/gentoo/usr/portage  :)

Trivial procedure but I had to mention it

Disclaimer: I used 32bit chroot guide from Gentoo docs as a tutorial reference

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I know I haven’t written anything for a while but I couldn’t help it since I am as busy as hell, submitting my MSc’s applications. I really hope everything will go fine and study in UK next year, preferably in London:).

Disclaimer: Today I am not gonna discuss anything Open Source related, so you may stop reading if you were looking for a cool Qt4 or Gentoo related topic. This post might make you feel miserable or something. You‘ve been warned

I will have a conversation about the gift of life, with you and my self. During the last few months, unfortunate events are taking place in my life. Sudden illnesses or long-term illnesses that simply getting worse day by day are occupying my everyday thoughts.

“Seize the day”. In other words, do not let any single day get wasted. None of us can be sure about the future. We all wish to be happy and healthy but unfortunately life is not fair. Sometimes, I consider life as a game. A game with unfair and hearse rules, strict judgment, and of course as in every game, there are winners and losers. The worst thing is that in most cases, you can’t do anything to prevent bad things from happening. You are simply a watcher, waiting for some kind of miracle or a fairy to fix things automatically. Yeah, I know that sometimes that works. But those times are fairly rare.

“Making dreams”. This topic is by far the most popular among my discussions with my friends. Should we make dreams or let the life make her own choices? Wait, I know that many of you believe that people are supposed to make future plans and dreams otherwise we are turning into machines. Like when you plan the vacations months ago. You can’t stop thinking of them no matter what. And this is definitely a motivation, a reason to work harder, feel stronger, get over bad times, because something good is about to happen.

But what if an unfortunate life event changes your plans? Not necessarily a bad thing, but something that forces you to rethink about the future twice. Fulfilled dreams make you feel awesome, but what about those dreams that you were forced to let them go? Many people feel quite disappointed when they are not able to make their dreams true. The worst part is, when this decision wasn’t their choice, but somebody else’s. Reports show that people recovering from such disappointment, are afraid to make future plans for quite a long time. They are defending their feelings and protecting themselves from another disappointment. And this sounds reasonable to me. But again, not all dreams are doable. You should keep making dreams even though you are sure that they are not even close to reality. I’ve said before that life is a game with unfair rules. Unfair is not always similar to ‘bad’;-)

Let’s get back to the “gift of life” part. You should be thankful for every breath you take. You won’t understand this feeling until you have a near death experience (car accident or stuff) or, even worse, fighting with a dangerous illness such as HIV, cancer and so many more of those. It is true, that most people think that bad things can’t happen to them, that they invulnerable. Of course this statement is by far unreasonable.

As you may have noticed, this post is quite confusing. It is more a random series of thoughts about life and people attitude on it. My whole point is to ask you (and remind myself) to respect your life, don’t take anything for sure, make dreams and don’t give up when you fail to make them true. Keep making dreams in good and bad times, because this is what matters. This is what makes you stronger and gives you enough energy to stand up and deal with life face to face. If you stop making dreams, you’ve lost the game. You are “dead” even though you are as healthy as a small child.

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