Re: How to cope with patches sanely (Was: State of the project - input needed)
On Fri, 25 Jan 2008, Joey Hess wrote:
The competing vcs situation has its problems, but no matter what vcs is
used for a package, you can check out the source to the package using
apt-get source. This allows examination and modification of the source
to any package, without needing to know the vcs.
I agree here, but if I understood Ben Finney in
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/01/msg00912.html
right, others do not. (I admit I might have missunderstood you or Ben.)
Unless what you get when you run apt-get source is *not* the source that
is in the end used to build the package, which is instead squirrled away
in some arbitrary patch format somewhere under debian/. In this case,
unlike in the vcs case, you have to figure out an arbitrary other tool
to get the source.
The key difference, as I mentioned in my blog post is that using a vcs
does not add vcs-specific cruft (aside from .ignore files and the like)
to the debian source package. Using a patch system does add patch-system
specific cruft.
So your main issue is that patches belong into the code not into a
separate directory (in whatever form). I would think that this is
a question of developers perferences and style of working and
this will split DDs into two separate sets (no idea about the
percentage covering). But I agree with you that it might be more
effectively if we settle down on a situation where all developers
at least should be perfectly able to use a common working technique.
To accomplish this IMHO the first step would be a good documentation
of it (after settling down the discussion here). I for myself would
refuse to learn different vcs but if there is a chance for a
common wrapper - I might consider changing my working preferences.
Kind regards
Andreas.
--
http://fam-tille.de
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