[Nix-dev] [***SPAM***] A bunch of patches to nixpkgs and questions

[Jan Malakhovski]

On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 10:39:25 -0400
Shea Levy <shea at shealevy.com> wrote:

> Wow, this is a lot of changes. Would it be possible for you to make them available as git trees with decent commit history that can be pulled from, or better open up some pull requests on github? If not I'll take a look through the patches later, but it will be a lot easier for me to see them that way.

On Tue, 26 Jun 2012 16:33:54 +0200
Marc Weber <marco-oweber at gmx.de> wrote:

> I've just created two gist repositories (let's see how well it works. I
> don't know whether github gives any guarantees - but people have local
> copies anyway):
> 
> nixpkgs: https://gist.github.com/2995910 (upload still taking place)
> nixos:   https://gist.github.com/2995911
> 
> Can you log into github, join the nixpkgs gist and push your changes?
> Let's see how well this works. Then we can review it easily (or give
> this gist idea a try)
> 
> Then write again with your branch name or hash.

I've been using NixOS for years, but didn't contribute anything before.
This series of patches is a redeem of my sins.
As you may guess, I have more, but they are either dirty or not working as expected.

I'm kind of confused with gist vs. pull request controversy. I did carefully read the thread about moving to github, but still don't get this nonlinear history/merge problem.
No offense, but I feel that gists somehow diminish contributions (or maybe I don't understand the idea behind them).
By the way, https://gist.github.com/2995911 says "Sorry, this Gist contains too many files. Delete some to view it. (Consider creating a GitHub repository instead!)".

Pull requests are fine, but, personally, I like the mail interface.

Anyway, I don't have any meaningful change history. I can make one up if you insist, but this could get another year or two.
I'm not hurrying anyone, but if you merge the current set of patches in sometime I promise to carefully fake meaningful history for the next one. :)

Thanks for the answers to my questions.

Best regards,
  Jan

P.S. The question that doesn't leave my mind alone: "How should I sort the items in top-level/all-packages.nix?" At first I thought they are placed lexicographically, but they are not.