Ebuild development (end of mentoring) quiz
Revision 1.3.1 - 03 May 2008
Answer in whatever length necessary for completeness.
Review documentation. Consult your mentor if you're unable to locate answers.
This quiz is based largely on ciaranm's bash quiz -- much thanks to 
him for the original and for extensive helpful feedback.

1. You are writing an ebuild for the foomatic package. Upstream calls 
	the current version "1.3-7b" (but this is _not_ a beta release).
	How would the ebuild be named? What's wrong with the ebuild
	snippet below and how should this be written to aid
	maintainability?

  SRC_URI="http://foomatic.example.com/download/foomatic-1.3-7b.tar.bz2"
  S=${WORKDIR}/foomatic-1.3-7b

2. You have a patch for foomatic which enables SSL support. Give an
	example src_unpack() which will apply this patch to foomatic. Foomatic
	uses an autotools based build system. What other things must be added to
	the ebuild?

3. What's the difference between local and global scope in an ebuild?

4. Why should an external application (for example sed/grep) not be
	called in global scope? What alternative methods can be used?

5. What is wrong with using $(somecommand) or `somecommand` or $ARCH
	inside SRC_URI, DEPEND, etc?

6. Explain what's incorrect about the following code snippets and suggest
	an alternative.

6.a
  # This ebuild doesn't like the -mcpu=ultrasparc CFLAG, so drop to v9
  CFLAGS=${CFLAGS/-mcpu=ultrasparc/-mcpu=v9}

6.b
  # Upstream don't support user-specified CFLAGS
  unset CFLAGS

6.c
  # Extra settings for when SSL is enabled
  if [ "`use ssl `" ] ; then
	# blah
  fi

6.d
  # Extra options for configure
  use jpeg && myconf="--enable-jpeg" \
	|| myconf="--disable-jpeg"
  use png && myconf="${myconf} --enable-png" \
	|| myconf="${myconf} --disable-png"
  use gif && myconf="${myconf} --enable-gif89a" \
	|| myconf="${myconf} --disable-gif89a"
  econf ${myconf}

6.e
  # Use an alternative implementation instead of the default depending
  # the foo use flag.
  DEPEND="foo? ( cat-foo/alternative ) : ( cat-foo/default )"

6.f
  # If we USE foo, we need to DEPEND upon libfoo. Unfortunately
  # foo is completely broken on some archs
  DEPEND="!x86? ( !amd64? ( !ppc? ( foo? ( >=dev-libs/libfoo-1.2 ) ) ) )"

6.g
  # If USE=fnord is enabled, make extra targets:
  use fnord && ( emake fnordification || die "it broke" )

7. Explain briefly the purpose of the following tools:
	grep, cut, sed, cat, wc, awk

8. Why are 'head -5' and 'tail -5' bad? What should be used instead?

9. You're writing an ebuild and init script for a server application 
	that needs networking to be available when started and can also
	use a system logger if one is available. How should this be
	written in the init script?

10. What is the 'Gentoo Way' of allowing the user to pass other options
	to the previously mentioned server application?

11. What is the 'Gentoo Way' of globally setting environment variables
	for all users?

12. What directory should be used for application-generated 
	non-temporary data?

13. Which directory should manual (man) pages be in and how should they 
	be installed from an ebuild?

14. On Gentoo Linux systems, what is the purpose of /usr/local/bin?

15. You are committing a new package to the tree. What will you have in 
	the KEYWORDS variable?

16. You are bumping foomatic's ebuild from version 1.2 to version 
	1.3. The new release contains bugfixes and new
	functionality. The current KEYWORDS for 1.2 are
	"x86 sparc ~mips amd64" -- what will KEYWORDS be for
	the new 1.3 ebuild?

17. You are bumping foomatic's ebuild from version 1.3 to 1.4. The
	new release extends functionality and introduces a new
	dependency on libfnord version 1.2 or later. The
	KEYWORDS for foomatic-1.3 are "x86 sparc ~mips amd64"
	and the KEYWORDS for libfnord-1.2 are "x86 ~sparc" --
	what will you do?

18. You are bumping foomatic's ebuild from version 1.4 to 1.5. This
	release introduces new optional support for the libgerbil
	library, which you are controlling via the gerbil global
	USE flag. Unfortunately libgerbil is full of code which
	doesn't work properly on big endian systems, and so has
	"-sparc -mips" in the KEYWORDS. How will you handle this?

19. You are bumping foomatic's ebuild from version 1.5 to version
	2.0. This new version is a massive rewrite which introduces
	huge changes to the build system, the required libraries
	and how the code works. What will you do for KEYWORDS here?