Re: dgit 1.0, available for all users

On Sun, Jul 19, 2015 at 11:28 PM, Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

I am pleased to announce dgit 1.0, which can be used, as applicable,
by all contributors and downstreams.

dgit allows you to treat the Debian archive as if it were a git
repository, and get a git view of any package. If you have the
appropriate access rights you can do builds and uploads from git, and
other dgit users will see your git history.

(dgit's git histories are often disjoint from the maintainer's
history; this is because the dgit git tree has exactly the same
content as the archive, which maintainers' histories often don't.)

Apologies if this has been answered elsewhere before, but I’d like to better understand how dgit fits into the workflow of working on packages which use git-buildpackage.

Let’s assume I want to make an improvement to a package. I’d start by cloning it using dgit, then I’d make my modifications, but then what? Typically I’d use git format-patch and send the resulting file to the maintainer to get my changes reviewed, so I cannot use dgit push, because that would directly upload to the Debian archive, right?

Even in the case where I am the maintainer and don’t deem it necessary to have my changes reviewed, I’d want to push my changes to the git-buildpackage repository, not directly to the archive, so that a more fine-grained history is preserved for future package archeology. Again, I cannot use dgit push, right?

In case I’m correct about both of these points, what’s the advantage of using dgit over e.g. “apt-get source && git init && git add . && git commit -a -m "Initial import"”? Having the package history as seen by the Debian archive in git?

Is dgit intended to be used only if the package does not already use e.g. git-buildpackage?

Is dgit intended to be used as a replacement for tools like git-buildpackage?

Best regards,
Michael