Re: Converting to dgit

[Nikolaus Rath <Nikolaus@rath.org>]

On Jan 04 2017, Scott Kitterman <debian@kitterman.com> wrote:
>>Curating a patch series is only 5% slower than commiting directly to
>>the Git repository to me.  I just have to remember to gbp pq import
>>before making new changes, gbp pq export when I'm done, and once in a
>>great while I have to do a small bit of rebasing to merge changes back
>>into other patches.  It's quite easy for someone who is very familiar
>>with Git, using good tools.  That 5% would be even less if I did it
>>more often.
>>
>>I'm unconvinced that any of that work would really be avoided via other
>>mechanisms.  The most time-consuming part is rebasing and squashing
>>related changes together into one coherent diff, but that's going to be
>>just as hard with any of these tools since the hard work is semantic
>>and
>>requires thought, not just repository manipulation.
>
> And the thing that gets source delivered to users is the source
> package, not a git repository.  A proper set of patches is far more
> understandable than an undifferentiated pile of diff.

The thing that's delivered to users in 99% of the cases is the binary
package. In the (comparatively) rare cases where the user is retrieving
the source, I am not convinced that most of these users truly prefer a
Debian-specific source package with patches in debian/patches over a
standard Git repository with patches as commits.

> Sometimes I feel like people lose track of the fact that the VCS is a
> means to an end and not the end target of the work we're doing.

I think it's rather that people have different views of what the desired
end is. 


Best,
-Nikolaus

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