Posted on 8th November 2009 Sunrise Overlay
After working on GLAU, I figured out that contributing is a very nice thing.
For the one that are less familiar with Gentoo, I'll spend some words describing what does "overlay" means.
Gentoo uses Portage as repository for applications/libraries. Portage is the official tree where all the ebuilds are kept.
These ebuilds contains how and where the packages have to be downloaded, configured, compiled and installed into the system.
If you are experienced with Gentoo, then you'll surely know that some of packages are missing from this official tree.
So here comes the needness of a "something" where unofficial ebuilds are stored. These "something" are called overlays.
Sunrise Overlay is one of the biggest overlay around Gentoo's world and it's a pretty nice place where your ebuilds can find space and visibility (and some QA too, obviously ;).
The most important thing to learn is to write good ebuilds in order to avoid breaking dependancies, circolar ones and provide a reliable and clean way to properly compile and install the target app.
I've written some ebuilds that are available on Sunrise Overlay:
- gnome-extra/nautilus-dropbox
- gnome-extra/alarm-clock-applet
- gnome-extra/gsmartcontrol
- net-misc/tucan
Please notice that some of these ebuilds maybe aren't completely written by me but just fixed, improved and bumped on Sunrise.