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

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

Eelco Dolstra <e.dolstra at tudelft.nl> writes:

> 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.

Yes, sure.  I still think that the Right Thing is to discuss with
upstream in such cases, unless there’s no “upstream” (i.e., the package
is essentially unmaintained.)

Thanks,
Ludo’.