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Re: foo.diff.gz "difficult to read" (was: RFS: bugs-everywhere)



On 25/04/2008, Ben Finney wrote:
> How is it difficult to read? I've opened it in Emacs and 'zless' and
> in either of them it reads like any other diff. Like any other unified
> diff, the changes are clearly marked by file, hunk location, and
> context lines. What readability problems are you seeing? What
> improvements would you want to see in the diff?

Which means that all modifications to upstream sources are mixed in that
diff, along with the addition of the debian/ directory.

> As for a "patch management system", I find packages that use them
> *more* difficult to understand as an outsider than those that use the
> standard foo.diff.gz.

If one is used, there should be one patch per topic, stored as
debian/patches/$topic, thus grouping all modifications to upstream
sources in a single file, thus helping people understand which diffs
belong to which topic, and have an idea what's going on.

> I've read much discussion for and against, and I'm currently convinced
> that such systems are detrimental, on balance, for those wanting to
> work with the package. So, no thanks, I'll decline on that suggestion
> and continue to ship a standard foo.diff.gz.

Note that a standard foo.diff.gz will still be shipped, it will only
contain the addition of a debian/ (along with debian/patches/)
directory.

Just trying to clarify what was meant…

Mraw,
KiBi.

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