Re: Pristine source from upstream VCS repository

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Reinhard Tartler <siretart@debian.org> writes:

> Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:
> 
> > I think the way that you're using it is more useful (and possible)
> > than doing what an exact reading of the current text would
> > indicate, and I do the same thing that you're doing.
> 
> FYI, from the ffmpeg-debian (and soon mplayer) package, we (or at
> least I) use the following approach:
> 
>   SVNDATE=`date +%Y%m%d`
>   debian/rules get-orig-source SVN_VERSION=${SVNDATE}

So, in order to get the latest upstream has made available, you need
to override the default behaviour of the ‘get-orig-source’ target.

> Debian rules detects the SVN_VERSION like this:
> 
> DEB_SOURCE := $(shell dpkg-parsechangelog | sed -n 's/^Source: //p')
> DEB_VERSION := $(shell dpkg-parsechangelog | sed -n 's/^Version: //p')
> UPSTREAM_VERSION := $(shell echo $(DEB_VERSION) | sed -r 's/[^:]+://; s/-[^-]+$$//')
> SVN_VERSION := $(shell echo $(UPSTREAM_VERSION) | sed -nr 's/^[0-9.:-]+\.svn([0-9]+)$$/\1/p')
> 
> [...]
> 
> get-orig-source:
>         dh_testdir
>         chmod +x debian/strip.sh
>         sh debian/get-orig-source.sh -d$(SVN_VERSION)

So, by default, the ‘get-orig-source’ target will result in the
original source archive that corresponds to the Debian package
version.

> I believe this approach matches both the letter and the spirit of
> debian policy notes about that target.

Well, it doesn't match the current wording in policy, in that your
‘get-orig-source’ by default will not get the latest from upstream,
but instead will get the upstream source version corresponding to the
Debian package version.

That supports the existing approaches discussed so far. It seems that
those of us who implement a ‘get-orig-source’ target find it more
useful to get the same corresponding upstream source each time, rather
than following policy on this issue.

I've proposed a patch to policy (in bug#466550) to bring policy in
line with this practice.

-- 
 \         “Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?” “I think so, |
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Ben Finney