Subject: [alpine-devel] How to offer different configurations of a package

From: C H <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2019 07:21:27 -0500

All-

I'm looking for some guidance on how best to define an APKBUILD file for an
already-supported package that I need modified.

Recent versions of ISC DHCP (package 'dhcp') support an LDAP-based
back-end, though it's disabled by default. Enablement requires adding a
pair of dependencies and two additional arguments to the configure script;
everything else remains unchanged. Easy enough.

If I were to offer my changes back to the community, how should this flavor
of the package be named? It seems less than ideal to have two very similar
packages in the tree; is there a convenient restructuring within the
APKBUILD file that would allow the two forms (with and without LDAP
support)? If not, so much within the build system seems to depend on
pkgname -- of which a 'dhcp' is defined. I'm not sure how best to proceed
in this case. I'm also not fully convinced that changing the existing
package is the right thing to do; I suspect there are folks who don't want
LDAP support.

If there are examples among existing packages I could use as templates I'm
happy to replicate.

As an aside, this issue may repeat when I reach Bind; quick checks suggest
I'll want to make configuration changes there too..

Thanks!

---

From: "A. Wilcox" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2019 15:20:51 -0600

On Mar 7, 2019, at 6:21 AM, C H <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> All-
> 
> I'm looking for some guidance on how best to define an APKBUILD file for an already-supported package that I need modified.
> 
> Recent versions of ISC DHCP (package 'dhcp') support an LDAP-based back-end, though it's disabled by default. Enablement requires adding a pair of dependencies and two additional arguments to the configure script; everything else remains unchanged. Easy enough. 
> 
> If I were to offer my changes back to the community, how should this flavor of the package be named? It seems less than ideal to have two very similar packages in the tree; is there a convenient restructuring within the APKBUILD file that would allow the two forms (with and without LDAP support)? If not, so much within the build system seems to depend on pkgname -- of which a 'dhcp' is defined. I'm not sure how best to proceed in this case. I'm also not fully convinced that changing the existing package is the right thing to do; I suspect there are folks who don't want LDAP support.
> 
> If there are examples among existing packages I could use as templates I'm happy to replicate.
> 
> As an aside, this issue may repeat when I reach Bind; quick checks suggest I'll want to make configuration changes there too..
> 
> Thanks!
> 

I think OpenSSH has what you want, a PAM and non PAM variant.

--
A. Wilcox (Sent from my iPhone - not signed)
Project Lead, Adélie Linux
https://adelielinux.org