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

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Simon McVittie writes ("Re: Preferred git branch structure when upstream moves from tarballs to git"):
> On Tue, 07 May 2019 at 19:25:39 +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > What I am primarily advocating for in this thread is that maintainers
> > should choose `dgit push-source' over `dput' (where this is possible).
> > This is the only way for a maintainer to provide users with the git
> > history in a sensible form (ie, a form which does not require the user
> > to know what special git practices the maintainer has adopted).
> 
> I think you're implicitly asserting here that the tree that exists in
> a dgit commit (upstream source as conveyed by the orig tarball, with
> debian/ added, with patches applied if any) is the only sensible form
> for the git history of a Debian source package, and I don't think that's
> something that has consensus.

Sorry, I was not clear.  My view is much more nuanced than that.
I think that
   - we should publish one consistent form to our users
   - this is the only sensible form for that.

I do not think that this is the only sensible form for working within
Debian.  I am not trying to abolish patches-unapplied.

Happily it is possible to convert most other forms to that.
(That's kind of implied by being able to build the thing.)

> I realise that you think (some or all of) those other "shapes" are not
> sensible,

No, many of these (most of them) are completely fine.  My word
`sensible' there was only in the context of a form to provide to those
users who want to change how their computer behaves, without learning
a lot of obscure Debian-specific source code management stuff.

> I don't think it's coincidence that many of the larger teams in Debian,
> in particular Perl and Python, have ended up with patches-unapplied.

Indeed not.  I am not trying to change that.

Ian.

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