Advice needed on some package quirks...

Question

Hi all, I'm fairly new to Arch (a week or two) and I'm working on creating my first real package.  I came from Slackware and I'm used to using a utility called superformat to format DOS floppies and stuff, I know I can use fdformat/mformat but I really like superformat.  So, I figured I'd make a package for it and of course I'd be more than willing to share it with anyone that was interested.  Generally the package building system seems pretty easy but fdutils (which contains superformat) has presented a few issues that I'd like advice on handling.
First, here is my PKGBUILD which for my system only I'm pretty happy with but others might not be as pleased with some of my choices.
pkgname=fdutils
pkgver=5.4
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="A collection of floppy disk/drive utils."
url="http://www.tux.org/pub/knaff/fdutils/"
license=""
depends=()
makedepends=('tetex' 'texinfo')
conflicts=()
replaces=()
backup=()
install=
source=(http://www.tux.org/pub/knaff/fdutils/$pkgname-$pkgver.tar.gz)
md5sums=('17c1df04b1e524078ee52825a5ef5e56')
build() {
cd $startdir/src/$pkgname-$pkgver
# patch to change group ownership (gid) from floppy which doesn't
# exist by default in Arch to root which does
patch -Np1 -i ../../floppy-gid.patch || return 1
./configure --prefix=/usr
make || return 1
mkdir -p $startdir/pkg/usr/bin
mkdir -p $startdir/pkg/usr/man/man1
mkdir -p $startdir/pkg/usr/man/man4
make prefix=$startdir/pkg/usr install
# /usr/bin/setfdprm is already there courtesy of util-linux
# /usr/bin/man4/fd.4(.gz) is already there courtesy of man-pages
rm -f $startdir/pkg/usr/bin/setfdprm
rm -f $startdir/pkg/usr/man/man4/fd.4
Now, first you'll notice that I had to make a patch because by default the fdutils package installs everything as root:floppy and Arch doesn't have a floppy group by default so I figured I'd just change it to root:root rather than telling people to create a floppy group before installing or whatever, I think the use of groups like that should be up to the user/admin anyway.  Here is the patch:
diff -Naur fdutils-5.4-orig/src/Makefile.in fdutils-5.4/src/Makefile.in
--- fdutils-5.4-orig/src/Makefile.in 2000-05-27 11:41:54.000000000 -0500
+++ fdutils-5.4/src/Makefile.in 2004-10-24 03:10:28.000000000 -0500
@@ -51,7 +51,7 @@
#we only people in group floppy to run priviledged programs
MANPERM = 644
UID = root
-GID = floppy
+GID = root
Next, I had to pre-create some directory structure - no biggie there and the package seemed to build fine but when I tried to pacman the thing I got the message that it wanted to overwrite /usr/bin/setfdprm and /usr/man/man4/fd.4.gz and the installation bombed.  Now, of course I could have forced it with pacman -f but again, if others wanted to use the package that's no good so I just rm'd the offending files and rebuilt the package.  This time it built and installed fine.  The manpage for fd is actually a few years newer in fdutils vs man-pages but I doubt that it matters much - I don't know about the setfdprm but if the one from base/util-linux does the job I'm inclined to leave it alone -  I don't use it.
Questions:
Is the patch an OK way to handle the root:floppy / root:root issue?
Is removing the files before packaging OK, I figured this was best because the conflicting files are actually part of 'base' so that should be off limits for extra packages such as this - que no?!
Thanks for more experienced insights or even inexperienced opinions.  Oh, I can post namcap output and/or a log of the build if it would help / be interesting.
Regards, G.S.

Answer 1

Question for phrakture: what do you mean by putting the patch in the source array?  Something like 'mv floppy-gid.patch $startdir/src'?
As for the group thing, I think it's probably best to leave it up to the individual whether they want a 'floppy' group or not, so since it's not explicitly defined that's what I'll go with for now.
For Dusty: thanks for the encouragement, I'm very impressed with almost everything about Arch so far, the package build system is no exception.
As far as using sed - I think I'll just leave it as a patch for now, I see your point but I kind of like the patch system.
I've been looking at a lot of PKGBUILDs lately and tried to use them as a model, I've also looked at all the docs I could find in the wiki, this forum and elsewhere.
Any opinions on overwriting the files?  I'm almost certain that my philosophy of not overwriting something contained in a 'base' package is right and like it says in the pacman manpage -f should seldom be used, preferably not at all or something like that.