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

[Sam Geeraerts]

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.

> 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.

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.

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

> Thanks in advance for your answers and patience :-)
>
> [1] http://www.gnewsense.org/Builder/ModifyingANewPackage