A HOWTO badly needed on package version upgrade

[Mayuresh <mayuresh%acm.org@localhost>]

I have seen a lot of situations since becoming a pkgsrc user a few months
back where a version increment is necessary to solve a critical problem
with the existing version or to get new functionality.

Most of these times I have filed a PR. Sometimes I was lucky enough to get
it resolved, while some other of them are pending for long.

Some other times someone or the other on the list took an initiative to
create and submit a patch.

I really wish to be able to contribute patches myself and speed up the
problem resolution process.

I do like the pkgsrc guide, though find it is written largely with new
package creation in mind and is a little thin on dealing with small
incremental changes like the above.

A section like this exists, though perhaps it needs to be a little more
elaborate:
http://www.netbsd.org/docs/pkgsrc/submit.html#updating-package

For example, I always struggle with a simple matter where the release
version has just incrementally changed, master site has remained the same.
Now my expectation is changing the distname should at least help me
download the new package. But my failures start right there. Sometimes I
find 0 size distfile getting created as a result of fetch, making it all
very mysterious.

I know, it's not just a matter of changing the distname most often. But
that's why a para or two focused on such scenario would help new comers
like me contribute.

As mentioned, no offense meant to beautifully written pkgsrc guide. Just
that novices might need a little more hand holding for incremental changes
which are much more common.

Mayuresh.