Ever heard of ‘proxy-maintainer’ before?

January 14, 2010 · Posted in Gentoo · 14 Comments

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

Tags: <Gentoo, overlay, proxy-maintainer, sunrise>

Willing to contribute? Join Sunrise

May 16, 2009 · Posted in Gentoo · 4 Comments

Ok, I know that there are some people out there who maintain several ebuilds on their private overlays. Also, there are some others that keep attaching new ebuilds on our bugzilla. But few of them know that Gentoo offers an official overlay for users to contribute ebuilds. That is Sunrise. Either you are familiar with ebuild writting or not , all you have to do is reading HowToCommit guide, answer a simple question, get your password, and start commiting any ebuild you like :) . For those who dont know much about ebuild writting, there are developers on #gentoo-sunrise channel ( freenode network ) who are willing to help you and teach you how to write proper ebuilds :) .

ps (tip): Note that many developers are looking for new ebuilds on sunrise, so if you want your shiny ebuild to reach the portage tree ( as quick as possible ) , sunrise is the answer :)

Tags: <Gentoo, overlay, sunrise>