Re: How to cope with patches sanely
On Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:09:03 +0100, sean finney <seanius@debian.org> said:
> i think this discussion is in part to propose a system that can serve
> as a layer of abstraction between $developer's $scm implementation and
> some common format/methodology, so that when $otherdeveloper comes
> along and needs to muck with the package (say, for a security NMU),
> they don't need to have such knowledge, apart from "fakeroot
> debian/rules patch", or possibly even just "dpkg-source --patch -x
> $dscfile" if a common source format could be established for
> build-time patching tools.
A security team already gets that for feature branches in a
DSCM bit -- they just need to dpkg-source -x; apply their patch,
build, and go. They don't really need to understand which of the lines
in the file belongs to feature A, and which belongs to feature B.
So creating a quilt series from feature branches is not
something that is being done to address the NMUer or security team
uploader needs, as far as I can see.
>> It is not like quilt provides easy means to compare different feature
>> branches -- let alone how the current feature branch C compares to
>> the second from last revisions of feature branch F.
> i think that would be:
> $vcs get 2nd from last rev of quilt_patch_F > tmpfile interdiff
> quilt_patch_C tmpfile
Not really, since quilt patch F depends on quilt patch D and E
being applied, so you are comparing feature C with featrures D, E, And
F. Not what was asked for.
See, the feature branches are really different from quilt
series, since they are "pure" features, each independently tracked
against upstream, and are independent of each other. The integration
branch is the only one where you need to be worried about featuer
overlap. I can still compare each feature branch against each other,
without being worried about _other_ features, because my system tracks
each feature independently.
A quilt series is, on the other hand, a dependent series of
linearized patches; and a change in an earlier feature impacts all
subsequent patches (and quilt is good at automating the handling of
that impact).
manoj
--
He who is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/>
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