Re: Trying to understand patch management - in combination with version control
Andreas Schildbach <andreas@schildbach.de> writes:
> I am maintaining a rather large package and have decided to use a
> version control system (SVN).
An unfortunate choice of VCS, since it is far behind more modern VCS
software for flexibility of management. Any of Git, Bazaar, Darcs, or
(perhaps) Mercurial would be a better choice for a new project IMHO.
Of course, if you must conform to the protocols of an existing
project, go ahead and use the tools that you need to interact with
those protocols.
> Now, when I (or a co-maintainer) check out the project from SVN, I
> get (as expected) a nearly empty project directory, containing just
> the debian directory. But, how am I supposed to actually create the
> patches that go into debian/patches? My current understanding is: I
> modify/delete/create a set of files and use something like
> interdiff/debdiff to extract the changeset. But in the case of
> mergeWithUpstream-mode there is no file to modify... Don't tell me I
> have to write patches "by hand" (-:
I'm experimenting with Bazaar's "loom" feature, which allows a single
branch to contain multiple "threads" of development. A loom allows any
of the threads to be advanced, turned into separate patches as needed,
while still having a coherent end result representing the aggregate of
all of them
<URL:http://bazaar-vcs.org/Documentation/LoomAsSmarterQuilt>.
Others might discuss the "rebase" feature of Git, but that method
loses too much intermediate state and prevents sharing the branch with
others. I prefer the "loom" approach in Bazaar.
--
\ “Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few |
`\ in pursuit of the goal.” —Friedrich Nietzsche |
_o__) |
Ben Finney
Reply to: