Re: RFC: DEP-3: Patch Tagging Guidelines
On 17/06/09 at 12:40 +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> Hello everybody,
>
> I'll try to do some new proposals based on your feedback. But first let
> me address the topic of the usefulness of the proposal. While there are
> currently no tools making use of this format, I can imagine many
> interesting usage for this information. It starts with the simple stats
> (how many debian specific patch do we use?) and goes on to providing
> a nice web interface where people can browse all patches:
> - check all non-forwarded patches and help forwarding them
> - let upstream developers browse all patches which are not backports
> - let other distributions check all patches which are not debian-specific
> In any case, it's a required step IMO if we want to increase the visibility
> of our patches and ensure they are better reviewed.
It seems that for many people, the scope of this DEP is unclear. Will
our packages be RC-buggy if we don't follow that tagging? Or is it only
a recommended format? I think that this should be clarified. I
personally think that this should be a best practice, strongly
encouraged, but not something mandatory. We might want to move to
something mandatory later, though.
> On Mon, 15 Jun 2009, Mark Brown wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 06:12:49PM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> > > * `Signed-off-by` (optional)
> > >
> > > This field can be used to document the fact that the patch has been
> > > reviewed by one or more persons. It should list their names and
> > > emails in the standard format (similar to the example given for
> > > the `Origin` field), separated by commas if needed.
> >
> > For the avoidance of confusion I would suggest that this be changed to
> > Reviewed-by - the normal Linux/git Signed-off-by has a specific meaning
> > that needn't include actually doing a code review.
>
> I started first with "Reviewed-by" and then thought that it was stupid to
> not reuse the name that is already vastly used for a similar purpose. What
> do other people think? I'm fine with both names.
I prefer Reviewed-by.
> On Tue, 16 Jun 2009, Charles Plessy wrote:
> > The dh_make template for debian/copyright induces many developers to put their
> > packaging work under the GPL, and I have already seen packages whose license is
> > otherwise BSD-ish with such patches. If the maintainer suddenly goes MIA and
> > the patch is non-trivial, then in theory if we want to respect what is written,
> > we are stuck with a GPL'ed patch. Therefore, we have an optional License field
> > to make things crystal clear if necessary.
>
> I have no opposition against an optional License field. Can you try to word a
> description for it?
>
> On the other side, I'm also not convinced it's really useful... if a patch
> author wants some specific licence different from upstream's license, he
> should make that explicit in the patch itself when he adds his own
> copyright notice.
Right.
> > for your effort to unifiy the format. Personally, I do not mind changing our
> > local format for the DEP3 format as long as we have one release cycle to do it.
> > Some of our packages have a very slow turnover.
>
> There's no forced switch planned... it has not technical impact on the
> distribution, so I don't mind if not all packages are converted, after
> it's up to you to see if new lintian warnings annoy you enough or not to
> live with it. :)
See my comment above about this. It should be added to the introduction
of the DEP.
> Now I'll switch to the discussion about the Origin/Status/Patch fields.
> It seems that this set of fields is not as optimized as it could be.
> [...]
I'm fine with what came out of this discussion.
> > Also, from reading this i'm assuming that debian bugs would be identified
> > by "Bug(s)-Debian"? that seems a bit unwieldly, esp given that there will
> > likely be more references to debian bugs than upstream/cross-stream bugs.
> > Maybe we should also add a special shorthand for "Closes: #nnn" or similar?
> >
> > My personal preference is that Debian gets "Bug" and there's a seperate
> > "Bug(s)-Upstream" field, but maybe there are also arguments to the
> > contrary?
>
> One of the goals is also to make it easier to share patches among
> distribution vendors. So I don't really like to make the format too much
> Debian-centric.
>
> > > What about using Debian: (like Ubuntu's Patch Tagging Guidelines) to
> > > indicate which Debian bug is fixed by this patch?
> >
> > Debian: could be considered a shorthand alias for Bug-Debian maybe? I
> > guess that could also address the above issue that i mentioned.
>
> See my answer to Lucas.
Well, you didn't answer my point:
> We could have Debian: for the Debian bug, and Bug-(Gnome|KDE|..) for
> other projects.
My concern is that Ubuntu already has a policy like this
(https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment/PatchTaggingGuidelines). I
would really like ours to be compatible with theirs, so patches can
freely be copied between Ubuntu and Debian. Having a different format
sounds like a very bad idea. Have you tried contacting the people
involved in the Ubuntu policy? It might be possible to change it.
--
| Lucas Nussbaum
| lucas@lucas-nussbaum.net http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ |
| jabber: lucas@nussbaum.fr GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F |
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