Re: Format 3.0 (git)
* Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org> [110924 08:30]:
> If in a large number of cases where one would like to turn off the patch system
> of the 3.0 (quilt) format, the source package is stored in a Git repository,
> then one way to move forward would be to make the format 3.0 (git) available
> in Debian. What are the blocking points ?
Apart from license problems, practical problems with reviewability and
stuff like that, people like me are very much opposed as it is quite
against the ideals of Debian in some very important aspects:
- Debian is about freedom. Freedom in software is about about enabling
people to "scratch their itch", to modify the software to suite their
need and what they consider best for them. It's not about "pay us
and we will make it work for you", it is not about "tell us, we will
make it work for you (if we think it is worthwhile)", it is about
"*you* can do it, if you want". VCSes are good for professional work
and I think it is good if DDs use them. But there are many of them,
with quite serious differences in concepts and ways to interact in
them. Sadly they are either extremly complex for casual users (git),
not very well suited for packaging (cvs), both (svn) or slow and
too fragile implementations (everything else I've met; all examples
my personal opinion). A DD should be able to understand VCSs,
a user should not need much more than some reading skills in the
language a program is implemented in order to understand what the
Debian version does and a little bit of writing skills to make
a modified version.
- Debian is about giving back. It has been better than that BSD like
model where stuff is imported in some VCS (and each having their own
favorite), heavily modified and then merged till eternity with new
versions (and sometimes not) so that it is practically impossible
to find out why things are changed. It has been better at that than
rpm where you always look for another perl script in the net that
is able to make a cpio out of that version of source rpm you run into,
so you can actually look at what they do.
"3.0 (quilt)" even improved that as we now also are able to split
changes in easer to read and understand parts, still universally
understandable.
The patch-tracker improves the situation even more. We now have a
possibility to nicely show exactly what changes we do relative to
upstream in a clear way.
Anything that offers that possibility can be trivially converted to
"3.0 (quilt)", everything that cannot be converted in this is lacking
in that aspect.
Bernhard R. Link
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