Bug#1007717: Updated draft resolution

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Helmut Grohne writes ("Re: Bug#1007717: Updated draft resolution"):
> Simon looked at how other distributions approach patches and figured
> that basically everyone else uses the patches-unapplied model.

patches-unapplied is a good fit for distro experts in distros which
are still using tarballs-and-patches.

However, for anyone else - particularly, anyone not from a distro
background, it is a serious problem.  I wrote about this on my blog:

  Get source to Debian packages only via dgit; "official" git links
  are beartraps

  https://diziet.dreamwidth.org/9556.html

As I say in the blog post, the danger of a user using "official" git
from Salsa, and building a package without the Debian patches applied,
is not theoretical.  One of my friends - an expert programmer (and
expert user of git) - did precisely that, prompting my post.

(IME most Debian insiders severly underestimate the scale of the
problems faced by a random user who is already a programmer and just
wants to make some change to a package.)

Happily, it is possible to reconcile the disagreement about applied vs
unapplied by automatically converting.  dgit, and Sean and my
tag2upload system, do precisely this, in the "forward" direction,
which is the most important one.

I think it would also be possible to automatically do the reverse
conversion.  This could allow a gitlab MR style workflow for a
contributor who started with a patches-applied "naive external
contributor" branch.

The reverse conversion of a user's contribution is of course already
easy to do manually: if your contributor sends you a branch based on
the dgit view[1], you can simply rebase their work onto your gbp pq
branch.

[1] This is difficult for the user right now since the dgit server is
not "forge" and doesn't invite the user to do this.  Instead, the user
will probably email patches.

Ian.