Re: Behaviour of dpkg-source with "3.0 (quilt)" and VCS and automatic patches

["Bernhard R. Link" <brlink@debian.org>]

* Scott Kitterman <debian@kitterman.com> [110531 14:36]:
> For some of us (me anyway), applying patches when unpacking a
> source package is just the wrong kind of automagic. I'd like to
> have patches applied when I say they should be applied.

Please think of the children^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Husers. ;->

As user of some package I have some trouble with I want to fix
I always found it very confusing to have to hop through all the
steps to get to the actual source. Having the patches in debian/patches
and on patch-tracker.d.o is nice to be able to see what is changed
relative to upstream and to cooperate with people using other
distributions, but having to apply them means to always remember to
first apply those patches after unpacking the source (which already
applies some patch, only that on many packages that patch only adds
new files to debian/).

The more Debian packages you have seen, the more different ways you
have encountered and the less likely you are to be confused or to
forget to apply the patches before looking at the source, but as
much as this kept repelling me from looking deeper into some packages
even after some years of being DD, I can only imagine how someone not
so deep into debian development is obstructed by this to help themselves
and us.

As a Debian package is a .orig and some changes anyway, having all of
those changes always applied is not so much magic but only consistent.
Having sometimes all the changes applied (because they are in the
.diff.gz), sometimes not (because the diff only creates debian/), and
sometimes even only having random artefacts changed directly in the .diff
while the important changes are in debian/patches and needing extra
commands to be applied is extremly confusing.

	Bernhard R. Link