BertB wrote:

> http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel...?part=2&chap=1
> states: LICENSE MUST This variable specifies what license the program
> is covered under, i.e. GPL-2, BSD, etc... This field must be set to a valid
> license (which is any license found in /usr/portage/license/). If the
> license does not already exist there, it must be added before the ebuild
> can be added to the portage tree. If the license does not allow
> redistribution, make sure you place RESTRICT="nomirror" in the ebuild.

You are right, this "MUST" is a bit misleading, but I think that Ebuild
Howto is mostly for ebuilds that are supposed to be redistributed by
Gentoo in its portage tree.

The Ebuild Howto is part of the Gentoo Developer Handbook
<http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/handbook/handbook.xml>, i.e. it is
a guide for the Gentoo developers in the first place.

> This would mean that I need a prescript or some manual actions to first put
> my license in here, and after this I can run my emerge.

No, I don't think so: after the next "emerge sync" your license will be
removed from /usr/portage/licenses, because it is not in the official
Gentoo tree.

Your ebuild and all parts of it should go somewhere under
/usr/local/portage or wherever the user's PORTDIR_OVERLAY points to.

> Ow yeah, I forgot, I also have to set /etc/portage/package.mask to be
> able to emerge.

No, definitely not. Set KEYWORDS="x86" and/or whatever arch for which
you are confident your binary will run on. This is your private,
"personal" ebuild, so you don't have to be holier than the pope. But
please don't write to /etc/portage/package.* or any other user
controlled files.

For official Gentoo ebuilds of course it is mandatory to have
KEYWORDS="~x86" first, so adventurous people test the ebuild before it
goes stable.

> So I have to probably run a script which does these things, after
> which I can let the customer run emerge.....

I don't know... Gentoo users normally are used to using an editor and a
shell, so if you make a nice text file listing the necessary steps, they
will be happy. And if your ebuild pulls in all the necessary libraries,
they will be even more happy.

> If I may have an opinion, I don't think gentoo is very nice to 3rd party
> software developers who want to provide ebuilds to their customers.

Of course you may have an opinion, but in my eyes Gentoo's portage is
very good, even for proprietary ebuilds. Some of these are already in
the official portage tree (with RESTRICT="fetch"). And yes, it's nice to
have Flash, Java, Adobe Reader etc. controlled by the package
management.

> I know that for sys admins these tasks are not massive, but like most
> people out there in the world, I just want to use the PC and not be
> constantly configuring it. "One window shopping" should do all the
> work in my opinion, one click/script or wathever should do the trick.

Probably Gentoo won't be your favourite distro then, but many people
like Gentoo and especially portage.

> And offcourse I know that other systems are sometimes even more a bitch,
> like RPM based installs which are just one big mess which has noting to do
> with installing you package but trying to push the shit somewhere on the
> system :P without bothering you with some kind of error.

Yes, right.

Regards...
Michael