Hi!

I'm new to gentoo, so please forgive me if this is some kind of an ignorant question ;-)
Today I installed clementine to notice that I can't even use it, because it seriously outdated. It's version 0.7.1 which suffers from THIS bug, while currently clementine is at 1.0.1. So I'd like to know if there's a place where one could request for an update of particular package in stable branch? I know I can use a package from testing, but what would be the reason of keeping an unusable version?

Thanks in advance for your reply.

alekow

Is clementine the muspic player of choice. I mean as far as I know Gentoo has vlc and perhaps even xmbc. As far as patching the software is concered I do not think there is a great chance that you would find the pathes. You can either upgrade (install from source) or try and find the latest gentoo package for it.

I don't think that any of players is a player of choice in gentoo, because you just choose what you want. It's not a huge problem for me - rather an inconvenience. I install it (compile it from source - as everything in gentoo) and it does not work. I installed newer version from testing branch. I think it should be updated though.

The right place to ask for that is at bugs.gentoo.org. You can fill a stable request if the ebuild is already in ~arch, or you can try to bump it yourself, and submit the results to bugzilla or the maintainer or herd that's taking care of that ebuild (that info is/should be in the metadata.xml file you can find in the same directory where the ebuild lives).

In case that modifications or patches are required for the new ebuild to work, you can also attach them to the relevant bug report. They are always welcome.

1 members found this post helpful.

Oh! the policy is not to stabilize anything until it has been a month without any significant bug open.

Thanks i92guboj.
The new version is already in testing and it compiles fine on stable, so everything is ready for inclusion. I'll take a look at bugs.gentoo.org.

Fyi afterwards, consider using newer software even it isn't marked as stable yet. Look for the /etc/portage/package.keywords file, there are plenty of manuals what to exactly write into it, including the Gentoo documentation (look for 'mixing stable and unstable').
Or maybe you find a newer version in one of the overlays?
As a last resort you could edit the existing ebuild and create a local overlay containing your edited ebuild (with support for newer versions) - then you can build and install it as you like.

A lot of people use the so-called unstable branch without any major problems. I don't advice it though, unless you know how to deal with occasional problems in portage or untested packages, circular deps, portage issues and some -usually minor- problems that might arise every now and then.

You can always keyword those packages that you need from the unstable branch. And don't forget to open a STABLEREQ bug for those that you consider ready for stabilization if a reasonable time passes and no one else did it before. Developers are busy beings, and they are just as lazy as everyone else. Sometimes they just need someone to remind them that something needs to be done.