#+TITLE: Join Fedora and Maintain Package
#+DATE: <2023-04-01 六>

* The story
[[https://github.com/dom-kital][Someone]] in the [[https://cossig.org][COSSIG]] said Slackware is good, so I took a look.
I noticed in the [[http://www.slackbook.org/html/book.html#VI][book]] that the vi(1) in Slackware is elvis, it is amazing.
Then this monthly holiday, I installed a Slackware VM. In the installation process,
I found that the nvi in Slackware supports UTF-8! WTF!
The nvi in OpenBSD and NixOS don't support UTF-8, why the Slack build have?
So I looked at the [[https://mirrors.slackware.com/slackware/slackware/source/a/nvi/][source]], +it have 30 patches applied on nvi-1.81.6+ it is configured with =--enable-widechar=
So I wanted to add a UTF-8 nvi in my nur, so I copied the NixOS build script,
and found it has patches from a fedora repo!
Then I checked that [[https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/nvi][repo]], it have the exact same patch series as Slackware,
BUTT orphaned since f33...

* Why retired, nvi is a good software, isn't it?
The reason why it is orphaned and retired is "Failed to build from source".
Actually it is because unable to fetch source from http://www.kotnet.org/~skimo/nvi
since kotnet.org is a student orgnization and seems disappeared in 2014.
But we can get alternative source from [[https://repo.or.cz/nvi.git][git]] or Debian(NixOS gets it from there) or Slackware(mentioned above) etc.

* Join
So I want to help. If I can make this package available, thousands of user will benifit from this.
*I love this distro.*
I created BugZilla and Fedora account, the fedora account is useable in nearly all fedora services, great!
这里面水很深 [[https://apps.fedoraproject.org][Fedora Infrastructure Map]]

Fixing the code is easy, +but following the polices and communicating with people is the hard part I guess+.
After reading /The Cathedral and the Bazaar/, I think Fedora is Cathedral, and NixOS's noisy github issue is Bazar.

To start, I need to follow the guides:
- https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/package-maintainers/Joining_the_Package_Maintainers
- https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fesco/Policy_for_orphan_and_retired_packages/#unorphaning_and_unretiring_packages
- https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/package-maintainers/Packaging_Tutorial_GNU_Hello

I submitted review request to BZ[fn:1]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2183721
And fill in the releng issue with BZ url: https://pagure.io/releng/issue/11370
And send an email to devel: [[https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/3FVVQXJMJDH6TTOWJZV2QLSZG4QO42WU][Unretire nvi (make Berkeley vi great again)]]

btw you can check repo through api using curl (learned in mailing list)
#+BEGIN_SRC shell
curl https://src.fedoraproject.org/api/0/rpms/nvi
#+END_SRC

* Mailing list
some interesting thread in the list
** [[https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/YUMAS5GP7QTKVRX4PHKAMFYVZQRDVXZP][Anyone interested in packaging nim-lang?]]
first, I'm also interested in Nim and found it not available
second, it is also orphaned and then retired
** [[https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/VBFDPQHAHF3WG6WBZR2L5GSWMW6CVTJS][%patchN deprecated?]]
yes, deprecated, so I need to change it in my packages

* Footnotes
[fn:1] [[https://acyanbird.github.io/2022/10/15/向EPEL请求新的包][向EPEL请求新的包(群主写的)]]