Re: RFC: DEP-3: Patch Tagging Guidelines

[Carsten Hey <carsten@debian.org>]

On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 06:12:49PM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> please find below a first draft of DEP-3 that I called Patch Tagging
> Guidelines. The idea is to standardize a set of meta-information to embed
> in patches that we apply. Please review, share your comments and ideas of
> enhancements.

I currently don't see a relevant benefit in this above just using the
changelog entry, which you need to write anyway.  Additional information
like the author of the patch or a note like "this is Debian specific,
don't merge" can also be included in a changelog file if this is
relevant, as I did in the following example:

debian/changelog:

  pal (0.4.3-2) unstable; urgency=low

    * debian/watch: use QA redirector.
    * Added a new Debian specific patch which changes the path to example.css in
      pal.1.  Debian installs this file into a different location than
      upstream's makefile target install-doc.  (Closes: #497874)

   -- Carsten Hey <c.hey@web.de>  Sat, 06 Sep 2008 07:13:08 +0200

debian/patches/50_debian_fix_example_path_in_manpage.patch:

  pal (0.4.3-2)  * Added a new Debian specific patch which changes the path to
                   example.css in pal.1.  Debian installs this file into a
                   different location than upstream's makefile target
                   install-doc.  (Closes: #497874)

  --- pal.orig/pal.1.template
  ...


If you get the relevant information from git or any other source this is
in my opinion also ok, as long as the header format is easy to parse for
humans.  Standardizing the format would be a must if this information
should be parsed by computers, do you have any plans in this direction?

I think there should be a consent _which_ information should be included
in patch headers, but unless they must be parsed by machines a standard
which defines _how_ these information should be presented just adds
unnecessary work for the maintainers.

For a definition which information should be in a header your proposal
could act as a very good basis, but there should IMHO some defaults
which fit in most cases, e.g. when no author is mentioned the current
Debian maintainer is the author and the patch is assumed to be Debian
originated unless noted otherwise.


> - in format "3.0 (quilt)" dpkg-source would create initial headers
>   respecting this format automatically based on the changelog when it
>   creates a new patch

Not everyone lets dpkg create new patches.  Different maintainers,
different workflows ...


Regards
Carsten