Re: New source package formats now available
Hi,
On Sat, 21 Nov 2009, Gerfried Fuchs wrote:
> * Raphael Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org> [2009-11-21 16:54:36 CET]:
> > * even if you don't have any upstream patch right now, next time that
> > someone must NMU your package, they can cleanly add a patch (with a
> > proper DEP-3 header) without having to modify the build system
>
> This is nothing new for the 3.0 (quilt) format, this is a reason for
> any patch system format, so this feels a bit like false-advertising,
> sorry.
Currently a package without a patch system needs heavy modifications in
debian/rules to setup the patch system. So when you want to add a patch in
debian/patches and not in the .diff.gz, you have to choose a patch system
in place of the maintainer.
With 3.0 (quilt), you don't need to do any such modification... the patch
system is already available even if not used. That's what this point
means.
> > * in the long run it's best to standardize on a single patch system (new
> > contributors need to learn a single system, more people can help you,
> > etc.) and quilt appears to be that patch system.
>
> That part feels also a bit strange - I don't think it should be the
> decision of the dpkg team to force people to use a specific patch
> system.
We're not forcing anyone, we make it easier for people to use that patch
system and we explain why we think it's a wise choice to consider quilt
as the default patch system to use when you don't have any specific reason
to pick one over the other.
> > * You can remove everything related to quilt in debian/rules
> > (patch/unpatch logic, cleanup of quilt stamp file and its .pc
> > directory).
>
> Unfortunately, I can't follow that "can remove". It sounds like it
> would work if you keep it in.
In general it should work, but you're right that we have a problem
here with the buildds running an old version of sbuild (there are still
many buildd in that situation) because they do "dpkg-source -x" outside
of the buildd chroot where quilt is not installed even if you added
quilt in your build-depends.
AFAIK newer sbuild should do "dpkg-source -x" in the chroot where quilt is
installed due to build-depends and the .pc directory is then created
at unpack time.
> -) quilt doesn't find any applied patches (because dpkg doesn't create
> the .pc/ directory structure)
dpkg-source -x uses quilt if it's installed, so if it's here the .pc
structure is created.
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog
Reply to: