On 28.06.2018 11:12, David Macek wrote:
> On 28. 6. 2018 8:58, Mario Emmenlauer wrote:
>> Dear All,
>>
>> there are quite many packages that require significant patches. Is
>> there a clear policy whether these patches are pushed upstream? I was
>> hoping that most patches would be pushed upstream and eventually
>> your great work would be incorporated into the upstream source.
>
> Yes, we want to push patches upstream where it makes sense. Of course, the
> quality of our local patches may not be high enough to be upstream "as is", so
> there could be a lot of work involved. Some upstreams don't even want patches
> for mingw-w64. It's a mixed bag. :/
I totally understand! But in my experience it makes more sense to go
the extra mile upfront and at least try to submit a patch upstream,
rather than maintaining a patch for years to come. Of course this is
an individual decision. But I think it would help the MinGW community
a lot if more packages would "just build".
Currently for example cmake requires ~7 patches. Are they aware of that?
It was my understanding that they have native MSYS2 support?
>> I can put some effort into this. But only if there is consent that
>> patches may be passed on upstream. What is the copyright status of
>> the patches and sources in MINGW-packages now?
>
> If you want to be super correct about this, you'll have to get a license for
> each patch (or even a patch change) from each contributor, but IMO the common
> understanding is that the patches are contributed with an implicit agreement
> that we can use them in any reasonable way, including upstreaming.
This makes things quite problematic. For example ICU signalled they
would accept contributions and patches. But they require to accept
their copyright policy. I'm in no position to do that. Its a deadlock.
If patches don't go upstream, then the MinGW/MSYS2/...-community will
have to maintain them forever. It puts a big burden onto the community.
And I think it also reduces trust that future versions will receive
patches again. Big frameworks like Qt receive broad attention. But who
will forever maintain the hundreds smaller packages that MSYS2 hosts?
It really shrinks the bus factor :-(
All the best,
Mario Emmenlauer
--
BioDataAnalysis GmbH, Mario Emmenlauer Tel. Buero: +49-89-74677203
Balanstr. 43 mailto: memmenlauer * biodataanalysis.de
D-81669 München http://www.biodataanalysis.de/
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