Modifying source code before installing it

[9a3eedi]

Hi,

I am currently primarily a Windows user looking to move back to using Linux full-time at home, and I am considering different distros. I have used Gentoo in the past, but eventually I moved away from it and settled on Ubuntu-based distros because of their ease of use and stability. I use Linux at work for development purposes and consider myself an advanced Linux user.

Gentoo's unique feature is that compiles all its packages from source. To me, the real power of this feature is that, as a user, I should be able to inspect and modify the source code of any package however I see fit before installing, but do it in a way that it doesn't break the package manager. I.e. I would like to be able to install a package, then if I find a bug or something I don't like in it, I would like to go through the same source code that was used to install it, modify the source code, and then reinstall it. This keeps the true spirit of free software in my opinion: that people have the freedom to change whatever they don't like in their software. Does Gentoo allow for a workflow like that?

For context, I have used Gentoo a very long time ago (perhaps 10 years ago), but I was not an experienced programmer at the time. Nowadays, I am an experienced C programmer and familiar with other languages as well, and I find myself very comfortable with changing other people's source code. Many times I felt that I would like to do some quick modifications to particular applications (e.g. to fix a bug or to add a feature), but compiling these packages was often daunting because distros like Ubuntu/Debian/etc. used older packages and getting their source code was not trivial, or perhaps I haven't done enough research on how to do that. So I was wondering how Gentoo fares in that regard.

[Banana]

It sounds like you want this: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Patches
Or you can also create your own overlay: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Creating_an_ebuild_repository
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[9a3eedi]

This looks like what I'm looking for, though it's a little more complicated than simply modifying a c file and recompiling. I think I understand why though, it's to allow for contributing back to the community and to keep track of patches.

Thanks, I'll check it out.

[C5ace]

9a3eedi:

Have look at "Linux from Scratch".
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Observation after 30 years working with computers:
All software has known and unknown bugs and vulnerabilities. Especially software written in complex, unstable and object oriented languages such as perl, python, C++, C#, Rust and the likes.

[Zucca]

Patches feature (mentioned by Banana) provided by Portage is your best bet, if you want to integrate your patches to the package manager system.

Easiest is maybe to just unpack the sources to whatever location and then edit sources and then compiling. Finally you can optionally install the package, preferably, under /usr/local. You can install the dependencies using emerge with --onlydeps switch.

If you want to keep your manually installed program in /usr/local then you can tell Portage that you have provided the package by yourself (if it is a such package that others depend on) via package.provided. Just be aware of the possible incompatibilities and read the warning. You may need to add /usr/local/lib etc to your library paths etc...
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[logrusx]

This might be useful, but ultimately you should only use it for testing if the source compiles and then produce patches and supply them to portage as suggested above. In the same time if patches become not-applicable, emerge will fail with the appropriate message.

Regards,
Georgi

[Hu]