[pacman-dev] patch submission help

[Jeff]

In the last month I have created and tested [1] a patch for pacman-3.2.2
that allows for 3 different PKGBUILD functions: build() check() inst().
This allows for a new option in makepkg.conf called check which is
expected to default to !check (and overridden for toolchain packages).

build() and check() are never run in fakeroot, only inst() (with
exception for !fakeroot or --asroot, of course) which conforms to the
fakeroot recommendation. My attempt was to make the patch backwards
compatible so that if any of the functions weren't present, it was not
an error. However, I realized while writing this email that this means
that a PKGBUILD with just build() would run completely in a non-fakeroot
environment which needs re-thinking.

Anyway, it's a rather small patch as seen below:

$ grep ^- makepkg.patch | grep -v ^--- |wc -l
16
$ grep ^+ makepkg.patch | grep -v ^+++ |wc -l
33

The reason for this email, though, is that I subbed to this list to
watch how things are done, learn protocol, etc. So I grabbed the git
repo and started looking at how I was going to apply this patch since
enough has changed to cause all but 1 hunk to fail. I am not familiar
with git, preferring svn, but can read docs. Where I'm tripped up is
realizing that head doesn't reflect what private branches might hold.
One person (sorry, I forget who) mentioned having a branch with many
makepkg changes in it which would cause me to have to hand apply these
changes again. I have no interest in doing that, so I'm asking: does
this feature seem like it would be worthwhile (read; would the patch be
accepted)? If so, how do I access private branches so my branch doesn't
conflict with them?


[1] I am building a base system with the new PKGBUILD format and am
about 3/4 of the way done with no known makepkg errors (running makepkg
with sh -x for extra detail)

-- 
Jeff

My other computer is an abacus.