Re: Lintian ERROR saying dpatch is obsolete
Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> writes:
> On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 09:04:31AM +0000, Roger Leigh wrote:
>> > > > - Conditional application of patches. Some packages have patches that are
>> > > > only applied on a per-architecture or per-target-distribution basis.
>
>> > > All of these can be dealt with by rewriting the patch so that it is
>> > > acceptable to upstream and applied and released by them.
>
>> > Care to explain how conditional per-target-distribution patches should
>> > be bushed upstream? Think of patches requried for debian/sid,
>> > debian/squeeze-backports, ubuntu/Oneric Ocelot and ubuntu/Lucid Lynx
>> > when it comes to build dependencies.
>
>> Those belong in a version control system, not in a single source
>> package, which is only targetted at a single distribution. Such
>> things can be done very easily on per-distribution branches, e.g.:
>
> I agree entirely that this is the correct approach, but *this is beside the
> point*, which is that *it's not trivial to convert the affected packages to
> use the workflow that we agree is ideal*.
>
> Lecturing people about how they should be doing packaging doesn't change the
> facts on the ground.
Indeed. But I won't think twice if I'm about to break a workflow that
shouldn't have existed in the first place.
In my opinion, this particular case is simple: use a VCS. Done. As far
as I'm concerned, a better, more robust and fare more appropriate tool
exists for the job. Not even one, but half a dozen. I also cannot
imagine how abusing dpatch for this kind of workflow would be superior
to using a VCS, but perhaps my imagination is poor.
So, yeah, it does force a workflow change on whoever is doing this, but
I'd push for that even if it weren't conflicting with my interest to
remove dpatch sometime in the future.
Nevertheless, if and when I encounter packages like this when I start
filing migration bugs, I'll also suggest possible VCS workflows to
support the per-distrib + per-target patches, and I'll happily help
setting these up and hand-holding people until they get comfortable with
it. (Even if that means I have to touch SVN.)
--
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