Re: applying a patch to nullmailer

[john gennard <joney@clara.co.uk>]

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, Joost Kooij wrote:

[snip]
>
> You need to apply the patch before building the deb, obviously.
> Don't use the '-b' option to apt-get.
> 
>   cd /foodir
>   apt-get source xxxx
>   cd xxxx-*
> 
>   >> apply patch <<
>   
>   fakeroot debian/rules binary
>   su -
>   dpkg -i /foodir/xxxx*.deb
> 
> Cheers,   Joost

I still can't apply the patch, and am unable to understand why. The
man page gives no examples and all the notes I kept on applying
kernel patches do not help here.

What I have is:-

a. /foodir, containing, foo_xxxx.tar.gz, foo_xxxxx.diff and
   foo_xxxxx.dsc  (all obtained by 'apt-get source foo')
b. foo-xxx.patch which I placed in the same directory (although I
   believe it's not necessary to place it here)

With a wide variety of commands, all I get is a complete failure
along the following lines. There is a .orig file which is an exact
copy ot the original .tar.gz and the reject file which contains
virtually all the patch file:-

--------
john@Arley:~/nullmailer$ patch -p0 nullmailer_1.00RC5.tar.gz nullmailer-helohost
.patch
patching file `nullmailer_1.00RC5.tar.gz'
Hunk #1 FAILED at 20.
Hunk #2 FAILED at 31.
Hunk #3 FAILED at 142.
3 out of 3 hunks FAILED -- saving rejects to nullmailer_1.00RC5.tar.gz.rej   
--------

I presume the .dsc file is Debian specific and will not be needed
until I create a .deb from the patched source file. Also I've tried
to look at the source file (using 'zcat') and the patch file (using
'cat'), but just do not have the knowledge to work out what starts
the process. I'm told the patch has been tested and works.

What am I doing wrong or overlooking.

Grateful for any further advice. 

John.