Various questions

[C. Florian Ebeling]

>>> * How to become MacPorts maintainer. I checked out the SVN tree. I would
>>> like to apply for maintenance of sox, mlt, gavl, frei0r, ladspa-sdk and
>>> kdenlive. Please contact me if you need my SSH pub key. I manage
>>> kdenlive.org website and you don't have to worry.
>>
>> The official version of the project rules are in the guide:
>> http://guide.macports.org/#project.contributing
>
> Ah, this'll be a spur to action for me.
>
> A couple of years ago, I acquired the handle ianeiloart at macports.org
> However, I was never able to get logged in to trac. That problem seems to
> have gone away. I've also noticed that there is no longer a maintainer for
> the "exim" port, which is my main interest.
>
> Does having the handle mean that I have commit rights?
>
> Is there a beginners guide to making a commit for a single portfile?

That's what the macports guide is for, mostly. It's quite a few things
you have to watch for. Most important is an understand of installing
software manually and remodel that in a mostly declarative fashion in Tcl.
And than lots of diligence to make sure things really work and keep
working. But once you have seen a couple of Portfiles you also see
lots of recurring patterns.

Fundamental style guidelines are in a special section in the guide as well.

Also, when you begin everyone knows your not an expert. It is very valuable
for the project if someone takes over reponsibility for a nomaintainer port.
Maybe you have to ask a lot of questions in the beginning, but the second
time around you know it yourself already. And you will get reviews of changes,
if you want or not :) So I'd like to encourage you.

Don't really know about your handle and it's state. Dig in your mail or
ask Bill for that. But iirc, when you have an email address you also have
commit bit.

> If that last question doesn't scare anyone, can I become maintainer of the
> mail/exim and mail/mailman ports, please? I'd also like to create ports for
> libspf2 and dkim libraries.

The guide is quite clear here. If there is no maintainer, you can take
over maintainership.
In the worst case, your changes get rejected by other committers, but if so
then probably for a good reason. You should be aware though that some people
really rely on certain ports, and if you break it, you break if for many people.

So just create patches and get feedback, and you will probably know when
you can just commit yourself after a short while.

Florian

-- 
Florian Ebeling
Twitter: febeling
florian.ebeling at gmail.com