Another quick comment - Enrique Perez-Terron wrote: > ... > I guess the maintainers will bump the version number of the package when > they reach a new stability point, e.g., a full make completes > successfully. Since I made my change relative to version 2.2.2, it is > quite possible that my patch doesn't work with the current cvs. In fact, > I just tried it, and found that the man/man5 directory has mysteriously > disappeared, resulting in rpm build errors. I'll debug that next. > The maintainers may have decided, for whatever reason, that they don't want to package these man pages anymore (I've seen this in several packages). That's their privilege. But if you want to keep them, you still have them, from the prior release(s), and it's a simple matter of including them as extra sources in your own source RPM. So it's not a matter of debugging, necessarily; it may simply be a matter of preference. And if your preferences differ from that of the maintainers, then RPM provides a means for making it more convenient for you to follow your own path, whether it deviates only a little, or a lot. I can tell you that I have my own source RPMs not only for fontconfig, but for many other open source packages. In many cases I don't use the spec files provided by maintainers at all (since, usually, they aren't even up to date); I prefer to write my own. In some cases, maintainers are receptive to accepting my patches if I offer them; in others, they are not; and in many cases, I consider them reflections of personal preference and don't offer them in the first place. So I certainly understand the possibility that my patches might be of eventual use to myself alone. And the use of RPM as a maintenance framework is worth it to me even if just for my own use. -John
