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Date:      Mon, 1 Dec 2008 21:31:35 +0000 (UTC)
From:      "G. Paul Ziemba" <pz-freebsd-ports@ziemba.us>
To:        freebsd-ports@freebsd.org
Subject:   Proposal: mechanism for local patches
Message-ID:  <gh1l3n$22rv$1@hairball.ziemba.us>

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Hi Folks,

I sometimes have local patches that I need to apply to ports. For
various reasons, these patches are not available in the ports tree
(e.g., bug fixes could be still propagating, or I'm trying out a
bug fix locally before submitting it, or the local patches might be
inappropriate or unwanted for the general FreeBSD populace, etc.)

My current practice is to maintain my own tree of patch files and
then reference them via EXTRA_PATCHES in /etc/make.conf. Mostly
the patches get applied automatically when I upgrade my ports, and
when the patches fail I learn about it immediately - no additional
recordkeeping is required.

However, I am looking for a better way. It's probably an unnatural
use of EXTRA_PATCHES. Some ports define EXTRA_PATCHES themselves and
override what I have defined in /etc/make.conf, so I have to resort
to modifying the ports tree in place and keep yet another list of
items to pay attention to when upgrading my ports.

In hopes of stimulating some discussion, I propose a new variable,
LOCAL_PATCHES (or maybe SITE_PATCHES), that would behave just like
EXTRA_PATCHES, except that it would be designated specifically for
site-local patches. It would be implemented in the do-patch target
in bsd.port.mk at the end, after patches from PATCHDIR are applied,
and patch Makefiles would, by convention, leave it unmolested.

Have I overlooked some better approach to integrating site-local
fixes?
-- 
G. Paul Ziemba
FreeBSD unix:
 1:31PM  up 23:01, 5 users, load averages: 0.20, 0.37, 0.72



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