how to update or patch a userland package?

[laibsch]

Hello everyone,

 

I am an old-timer in Debian and Ubuntu and have uploaded and maintained packages there.  I've come across an issue in a package that I use that affects 32-bit platforms such as armv7 but not 64-bit platforms.  I've already analysed the problem and applied a fix, compiled the package locally and I'm happy.  But I'd like to get the fix into armbian as well so others will not run into this fairly serious problem (for the package in question, it is essentially useless at the moment in noble). I looked through the various github repositories but was unable to see how to apply a patch to a userland package and have it published.  Given that armbian systems seem to pull their packages from ports.ubuntu.com, is it that armbian does no patching of their own to packages but instead relies on Ubuntu and Debian to land their fixes?  If that's the case, I've already started the process but I'd like to know if there is an armbian-specific way of fixing userland as well.

 

Regards

Edited yesterday at 04:55 PM by laibsch

[Igor]

19 minutes ago, laibsch said:

is it that armbian does no patching of their own to packages but instead relies on Ubuntu and Debian to land their fixes?

 

That is correct, we don't deal with generic userland packages. Main focus is:

• build framework
• kernel
• system configuration

However we developed an extension for simple patching mechanisms to apply patches to user space, but it is not in use. This whole idea of dealing with this would need a dedicated captain to drive it, develop further. 
https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/main/extensions/armbian-live-patch.sh 

 

For packages that we do - we fix the problem, bump version and push to the repository ...

[laibsch]

OK, thank you for that information.

I believe an Armbian PPA rather than the live patching would be a better approach.  The project could have one just like this one.  That's the Debian and Ubuntu way, packages, repos, versioning.

Edited 16 hours ago by laibsch