[Nix-dev] Re: [Nix-commits] SVN commit: nix - 21144 - astsmtl - in nixpkgs/trunk/pkgs: development/libraries/libmad top-level

[Eelco Dolstra]

Hi,

Ludovic Courtès wrote:

>> +--- libmad-0.15.1b.orig/mad.pc.in	1970-01-01 00:00:00.000000000 +0000
>> ++++ libmad-0.15.1b/mad.pc.in	2005-08-25 12:08:04.000000000 +0000
[...]
> IMO it’s not the distribution’s job to add entirely new files to
> software packages.  This patch should be submitted to the libmad
> maintainers.  If/when they approve it, Nixpkgs and all other distros
> will get it.
> 
> One of the undesirable side effects of such patches is that Nixpkgs
> users can be fooled into thinking that ‘mad.pc’ is an upstream thing,
> and write software that assumes its availability.

FWIW I did something similar in the "nss" package (applying a patch from Gentoo
to install a "nss-config" script that other packages use to get the necessary
build flags).  This is suboptimal but sometimes upstream is not packaged in an
optimal way.  (Actually, "nss" isn't really "packaged" at all.)

-- 
Eelco Dolstra | http://www.st.ewi.tudelft.nl/~dolstra/