Re: new source package format in dpkg-dev
Hi,
On Sun, 30 Mar 2008, Romain Francoise wrote:
> Raphael Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org> writes:
> > In particular I want feedback on the "3.0 (quilt)" format which
> > I'd like to promote as the standard format for non-native packages
> > in lenny+1.
>
> I just tried it on one of my quilt-using packages, it seems to be
> working great and is pretty easy to use, very nicely done!
Thanks!
> The thing I hadn't realized, and it's obvious in hindsight, is that
> the automatic patch generated by dpkg-source when the package has
> changes not covered by the existing patches only includes diffs
> against upstream, not against the previous version of the debian
> dir. It makes the patch somewhat less useful than I had originally
> imagined; I thought that it would be used for NMUs but we'll still
> have to debdiff the two source packages to have a complete diff.
Indeed. I was interested to explore this possibility... with an
option telling that we're building an NMU, but when you start thinking
about it, you rapidly realize that it's not reasonable:
- the debian.tar.gz can be too easily overwritten if you don't bump the
version number immediately after unpacking
- the debian directory contains the meta-information about patches
applied... and you can't know if the series file will be modified before
doing the diff and afterwards it's too late to modify it since the diff
has already been generated. And anyway, applying a patch that modify the
list of patches to apply is ... wrong. :-)
> By the way, debdiff will have to be made smarter because the current
> version generates noisy diffs which include the interdiff against
> upstream, the files being patched in their entirety, plus the
> generated patch. For example between the two source packages below
> I just ran "sed -i '10,20d' README" (and "dch -i foo"):
That's right. Adding an option "--skip-patches" to avoid applying them at
unpack time can be useful for a tool like debdiff. I'll add this option.
For the generated .pc directory, one can use the option --without-quilt
or debdiff can simply learn to ignore it.
> > Of course, if you notice any regression in the default behaviour for
> > the current source package format, please tell me as well.
>
> None sighted so far.
Thanks for your feedback!
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog
Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch :
http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/
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