Re: Preferred git branch structure when upstream moves from tarballs to git

[Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org>]

On Wed, 08 May 2019 at 12:18:41 +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Indeed, you yourself say you avoid gbp but for many packages, the
> Vcs-Git header gives you a patches-unapplied format which requires[1]
> gbp pq to switch to a patches-applied view before you build it.

This step is not required: for 3.0 (quilt) packages, dpkg-source is happy
with either patches-applied or patches-unapplied source directories,
as long as you're at one extreme or the other (applying half the patch
series doesn't work). Here's a smallish package that I happen to maintain
using gbp-pq, built without using gbp:

~/tmp$ debcheckout bubblewrap
...
~/tmp$ cd bubblewrap
~/tmp/bubblewrap$ dpkg-buildpackage -b
...
 dpkg-source --before-build .
dpkg-source: info: using patch list from debian/patches/series
dpkg-source: info: applying debian/Use-Python-3-for-test-demo-code.patch
... a build happens ...
 dpkg-genchanges --build=binary >../bubblewrap_0.3.3-1_amd64.changes
dpkg-genchanges: info: binary-only upload (no source code included)
 dpkg-source --after-build .
dpkg-source: info: unapplying debian/Use-Python-3-for-test-demo-code.patch
dpkg-buildpackage: info: binary-only upload (no source included)

(This probably only works for 3.0 (quilt) source packages, but gbp pq
makes little sense for any other format.)

> ([1] there are other ways to apply the patches but this is the
> easiest.)

Easier than the tool you have to use anyway (directly or indirectly)
to build any package?

    smcv