You probably are used to me sending last rites for packages on behalf of QA, and thus removing packages (or in the past just removing packages, without the QA part). It often seems like my final contribution to Gentoo will be negative, in the sense that I remove more than I add.
Right now, though, I’ve been adding quite a few packages to the tree, so I’d like to say that no, I’m not one of those people who just like to remove stuff and who would like you to have a minimal system!
So with some self-advertisement (and a shameless plug while I’m at it…) I’d like to point out some of the things I’ve been working on.
The first package I’d like to separate is the newly-added app-emacs/nxml-libvirt-schemas: as I ranted on I wanted to be able to have syntax completion for the libvirt (a)XML configuration files (I still maintain they should have had either a namespace, a doctype or a libvirt-explicit document element name), so now that me and Daniel got the schemas to a point where they can be used to validate the current configuration files, I’ve added the package. It uses the source tarball of libvirt, with the intent of not depending on it, I’m wondering if it’d be better to use the system-installed Relax-NG files to create the specific Relax-NG Compact files, but that’ll have to wait for 0.7.5 anyway (which means, hopefully next week).
The second set of packages is obviously tied in with the Ruby-NG work and consists of a few new Ruby packages; some are brought in from the testing overlay I’ve built to try out the new packages, others have been brought in as dependency of packages being ported to the new eclasses, one instead (addressable) is a dependency of Typo that I didn’t install through Portage lately. I should probably add that I’m testing the new ebuilds “live” on this blog, so if you find problems with it, I’d be happy to receive a line about that.
The third set of packages instead relates to a work I’m currently doing for a long-time customer of mine, a company developing embedded systems; I won’t disclose much about the project, but I’m currently helping them build a new firmware, and I’m doing most of my job through the use of Portage and Gentoo’s own ebuilds. For this reason I have already added an ebuild for gdbserver (the small program that allows for remote debugging) that makes it trivial to cross-compile it for a different architecture, and I’m currently working on a gcc-runtime ebuild (which would also be pretty useful, if I get it right, for remote servers, like my own, to void having to install the full-blown GCC, but still have the libraries needed).
And tied to that same work you’ll probably find a few changes for cross-compilation both in and out of Gentoo, and some other similar changes; I have some GCC patches that I have to send upstream, and some changes for the toolchain eclass (right now you cannot really merge a GCJ cross-compiler, or even build one for non-EABI ARM).
So this is what I’m currently adding to the tree myself, I’m also trying to help the newly-cleaned up virtualization team to handle libvirt (and its backports) as well as the GUI programs, and I should be helping Pavel getting gearmand into shape if I had more time (I know, I know). And this is to the obvious side of the tinderbox work which is still going on and on (and identi.ca proves it since the script is denting away the status continuously), or the maintainer work for things like PAM (which I bumped recently and I need to double-check for uclibc).
So now, can you see why I might forget about things from time to time?
