On Tue, Oct 09, 2007 at 06:58:19PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote: > [...] Goals I would suggest: > * Abolish dpatch (and similar excresences) and specifically to get > back to the point where a Debian source package can be unpacked to > the point of seeing the source code without having to execute any of > it. Really, that's probably the most valuable part of this, even if not the most interesting -- having a sane way to unpack source packages to the *actual* working tree makes it much more sane to do analysis of the source, hack on it, whatever. And something that works for a pure tarball of a .git directory all the way to unpacked .c files seems like it should certainly be general enough to achieve that. That seems (to me) like it means: - keep the perl module structure Joey's created and expect to use it with other ways of dealing with patches internally to a source package (quilt, bzr, darcs, whatever) - finalise the remaining tweaks: drop the bracketed "(git)" from the Format: field and handle it some other way? add a Source-Depends: field? > * Make it possible (once more) for NMUers to make a change to a > to acquire the source, inspect it, edit it, build it, test it, and > upload it, using only tools which either do not depend on the RCS or > which entirely hide it, without disrupting or being disrupted by the > revision control system. It seems... remarkable that making the source package format more dependent on the revision control system would make NMUers and others more able to ignore it. The remaining big question seems to be whether to have Debian source packages include the working tree directly so people don't need git to get at it; but that seems to me something that can be decided by policy mechanisms outside dpkg. So, afaics, the dpkg maintainers should: - add Source-Depends: (I'm biassed :) - upload dpkg with modular support to unstable - upload git/bzr support as part of either dpkg or the git/bzr packages, with appropriate autogenerated Source-Depends: and ftpmaster should start accepting git/bzr source packages to experimental so we can get some practical experience with the format, and decide whether to have .git.tgz or .git+.orig+.xdelta .tgz's or whatever to unstable. I'd expect we'd either wait for lenny to release, or an updated dpkg with Format:3.0 support to be in an etch point release before accepting such packages in unstable either way, but better to get started sooner, afaics. Cheers, aj
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