[Nix-dev] contributing to nixpkgs/nixos

[Peter Simons]

Hi Mathijs,

I committed your patches -- the only exception being the update to
btrfs-progs. I didn't feel comfortable making that change, because it's
based on a development version from the upstream Git repository (rather
than a proper release tarball). Maybe someone else who knows btrfs
better than I do can make that change ...


 > Now what's the procedure for contributing?

The Nix community is fairly small, so we don't have any formal
procedures worked out, really. If feel that a patch is ready, you can
simply "git format-patch" it and e-mail the result to this list.
Eventually, you should probably ask Eelco for access to the SVN
repository, though.


 > And what's the job for maintainers?

Maintainers (as listed in the meta section) receive an e-mail from the
Hydra build server every time one of "their" packages fails to compile. 


 > Arch linux allows you to flag packages out-of-date on their website,
 > but as the nix maintainers team seems a lot smaller, I don't think
 > nagging them about everything that's slightly outdated is a nice
 > thing to do.

Personally, I think it's quite alright to notify maintainers in such a
case. If you attach a patch to the e-mail, it's probably going to be
processed much faster, though. :-)


 > So should I just send patches to them directly for stuff I upgrade?
 > Or is there a more general place to submit patches to?

Sending patches to individual maintainers is usually a good idea.
Patches that are sent to this list have a tendency to be overlooked
because everyone assumes that someone else is going to take care of it.
That doesn't happen easily if you send patches in private e-mail.

I hope this helps.

Take care,
Peter