Hi Thomas,

welcome to Devuan mailing list!

On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 04:06:59AM +0200, Thomas Pantzer wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I would like to continue using this resource-friendly(*) window-manager
> on my machine where I recently installed Devuan Beowulf.
>
> Since it is not available anymore I backported the needed packages from
> Debian Jessie by specifing
>

>    deb-src http://archive/debian.org/debian jessie main contrib non-free

>
> in my /etc/apt/sources.list and running the neccessary build steps. I had
> to make some minor patches to Makefiles and some sources to make it compileable.
> Finally I was able to install the resulting packages and I’m using the created
> binaries. I’ve no bug/problem discovered so far.

So you actually passed the first barriers to become a maintainer :-)

> Questions:
>
> 1)
> Is anybody interested in incorporating these packages (xview/olvwm) into Devuan?

Well, if you like, you could be the one doing this.

> 2)
> How can I find a “official” Devuan Package Maintainer to address this issue ?

There are some people here at devuan doing this work for some particular
packages.

> 3)
> To whom may I sent my diff patches ?

If you would like to contribute, then you would have to do these
steps (rough flow):

1) Register an account here: https://gitea.devuan.dev/
2) Create a git repository for xview under your account
3) Checkout this git repository to your computer
3) Create a branch in the git repository with name "upstream", check it
out and fill it with the contents of the "orig.tar.gz" file
4) Commit these changes ("git add" then "git commit")
5) now branch away from this new branch called "master" using
"git checkout -b master upstream" . The directory should
still contain the untared files
6) Now unzip the ".debian.tar.gz", add and commit the debian files
"git add debian && git commit.

This is now a base repository for package building. The branch
"upstream" will always hold the upstream (=original source) while the
branch "master" holds the devuanized source.

Now we have to decide how to go about the patches. I'm not sure if there
is any "upstream" source for xview anymore. You could decide to take over
the development of xview as a whole and just check in your changes into
"upstream", afterwards merging them into the "master" branch.

The Debian/Devuan way for adding patches, when there is still a real
"upstream" and Debian/Devuan is only doing the packaging is to maintain
a series of patches using dquilt. This leaves the original source in
"upstream" unchanged.

What do you think? Ready to contribute ;-)?

Some sources of reading:

git packaging (with the help of some additional tools which do some of the
steps above automatically):
https://wiki.debian.org/de/PackagingWithGit

dquilt:
https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/modify.de.html

I could guide you, if interessted ( unfortunately, I'm not available
during easter)

cheers,
Andreas
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