Re: Improvements to ‘debian/watch’ for fetching from VCS (was: This topic died off; any resolution?)

[Raphael Geissert <atomo64+debian@gmail.com>]

[No CC please]

Daniel Leidert wrote:
[...]
> 
> I would like to propose a complete rethinking of the watch files.
> We have several packages, which must be prepared from a VCS or
> must be repckaged. ATM several people changed to use something like
> 
> $url $pattern debian /bin/sh get-orig-source-script
> 
> One can't use
> 
> $url $pattern debian /usr/bin/make debian/rules get-orig-source
> 
> because make will error out because of the unknown switch
> --upstream-version.
> 

Sure, that's something that could be modified in version 4 watch files. I'm
thinking about a format string a-la printf.

> The next propblem is, that such a script doesn't have the same purpose
> as uupdate has, as the first is used to create a new tarball and the
> second to apply an existing diff to the new tarball.
> 
> So I was thinking about, how this could be solved. One idea, that came
> to my mind is: Why not source debian/watch by uscan? One could then
> write a watch file like this:
> 

I'm against sourcing anything, this is far beyond the pourpose of the watch
files and can be done by a specified helper script.

Cheers,
Raphael Geissert