Re: Proposal new source archive format
> > * there is a dpkg-patch tool that can apply or reverse patches. It will
> > check if patches are applied in order, and can unpack the original source
> > and produce a diff from that to the current source so we can easily
> > generate a new patch. The status for each patch (applied/not applied)
> > will be stores in a debian/status file.
>
> Huh? Why would a patch be distributed if it's not going to be applied?
> Why would patches not be applied in order? How can this be checked,
> anyway?
Arch/OS specific patches (it is very valid for paths to be different on
Hurd and Linux for the same package).
> > * when building a source package all patches are reversed. Any patches
> > that remain are will be the debian-ization patch.
>
> This isn't necessarily possible, is it? Given a.tar, ab.diff, bc.diff
> and d/, you can go from a to b to c, and then diff c and d, but you
> can't necessarily go from d to b+(d-c) to a+(d-b-c) and diff that against
> a and declare that it's the same as cd.diff?
>
> What's wrong with just unpacking the original source, applying the diffs
> you've got and then working out the debianization patch in essentially
> the same way we do now?
I agree, reversing patches is complete silly. What if I patch
configure.in, and then run autoconf (makes for a hugely smaller diff)?
With the mentioned method, I would now have a debian patch for
configure.in, but be forced to have a HUGE configure patch in the
debianization diff. Gross. Better to leave .orig.tar.gz pristine, and let
the maintainers worry about patches. We should get away from
automatically diff'ing the original source to create a debian .diff.gz
file. I can't count the numerous problems with this, including not being
able to include binary files, permissions on the debian/* files not being
carried over (look at the glibc package for a terrible workaround that had
to be done to get around this), and then there is the diff-of-a-diff
thing.
Since 90% of the time all of the debian/* files are NEW and NOT in the
.orig.tar.gz, why use diff to extract/create them? Why not use .tar.gz and
make it simpler?
--
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/ Ben Collins -- ...on that fantastic voyage... -- Debian GNU/Linux \
` bcollins@debian.org -- bcollins@openldap.org -- bcollins@linux.com '
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