Re: Centralized darcs
Josselin Mouette writes ("Re: Centralized darcs"):
> Maybe you shouldn't assume all people who like to code and debug aren't
> clueful enough to run diff. Putting my changes in a patch is the most
> useful way to integrate them in a Debian package *and* to forward them
> upstream. It is far less complex than using a VCS specifically for this
> task, and it is the way that takes less time overall.
You seem to have misunderstood me as saying that I prefer packages
where the source code is in VCSs.
For NMUs or local changes or derived distros, you _don't care_ whether
the source is in a VCS or not because in general you have no access to
that VCS repository and because you don't have time to learn ten or so
different VCS's so you probably don't know how to use the one the
maintainers chose.
What I need as someone working on a package for which I'm not the
maintainer is this:
dpkg-source -x must give me something I can immediately edit and diff
on the resulting tree after I've edited and built it must produce a
sane patch. So debian/rules build must not edit any source files.
This is the supposedly universal interface for Debian packages, which
the rest of us (ie, people not the package maintainer) are relying on.
It is my opinion that packages where dpkg-source -x doesn't produce
the source that actually gets compiled are in violation of policy.
Did you read the contortions in my previous posting ? Obviously I
know how to use diff. The problem is that with patch systems I
_can't_ just apply my universal knowledge about dpkg-source and diff
and so forth. I have to learn about and usually fight with the patch
system too.
Ian.
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