All, I am working on creating ports for a few applications. I have created and submitted my first one just yesterday (libelf-0.8.9). I am now working on my second (dynamips-0.2.7), but have a few questions I'm hoping someone can answer (not all relating to just dynamips-0.2.7). 1) I have successfully created a variant of dynamips using pcap. The process was rather simple. However, I am debating the creation of a third variant. A third party developer has created a source code patch that extends a certain function of dynamips in a useful way. Is it appropriate to include such a third party modification as a variant to a port? 2) In the case above, the third party patch file is written to be applied from the directory above the source code (I think this would be called the work directory) and not from inside the dynamips-0.2.7 directory created when the tarball is extracted. The best I can figure is that the patching phase does apply the patch while in this source directory (dynamips-0.2.7) and not from the work directory. It is possible to make it apply the patch from the work directory so that I do not have to modify the third party patch file for this variant? 3) The third party patch is licensed under the GPLv2 license. Are there any general concerns that I should worry about in either case where I use the patch file as is or in the case where I modify it? 4) If I cannot patch from the work directory, is it considered OK to modify the third party patch file to support patching from inside the dynamips-0.2.7 directory? 5) What is the best practice to make sure that during all the steps I am only referencing libraries and dependencies from the macports system and not accidentally compiling against pre-installed system libraries? I have run "port -d install foo" and read through the output, but I want to double check that I am not missing anything. I realize the above questions may be somewhat basic, but I'm hoping that armed with the answers I can make some valuable contributions to the vast library of ports available. Thanks! -- Jonathan Strine PGP Key ID: 0x0A02201C