Re: Bug#801253: O: wicd -- wired and wireless network manager

[Axel Beckert <abe@debian.org>]

Hi,

short note to all those people in the Cc: On the next iteration, I'll
drop all Cc except debian-mentors@lists.debian.org and the bug-report
itself. Feel free to object, to subscribe to the bug report or to
debian-mentors. :-)

toogley wrote:
> - my github repo contains all branches the debian git repo has.

Great, looks much better now.

> - when i build from the stable branch, files cointaining the name
> "squeeze" are created

Ah, you need to use the master branch.

The stable branch was probably named a little bit short-sighted and
should have been named "squeeze" instead. It contains updates to the
wicd package in squeeze, i.e. back then they were "stable updates"
which had backported fixes for severe bugs which were only found after
a Debian Stable release.

> ==> When the most current version of the stable brench produces the
> squeeze build, where can i find the build for wheezy and jessie - or
> are those two really not existent?

In the master branch. There are no wheezy or jessie branches because
there was no need for stable-updates during the Wheezy or Jessie
release cycle yet.

> And why is the "stable" branch not named "oldoldstable" or sth similar?

"stable" is a suite name which always points to the _current_ stable
release, i.e. moves on every time Debian does a stable release. That's
why I think it would have been better to name that branch "squeeze".
The code names for releases don't move on. But back then, "stable" and
"squeeze" were the same. Nowadays, they are no more.

> - What are the "master", the "debconf-defaults" and the "nmu" branch
> used for?

The master branch is where the main development pof the package
happens. (That name is the default branch name, git uses if you don't
explicitly request a different branch name.)

I don't know about the debconf-defaults branch, but looking at it, it
seems an ancient feature branch (from 2009) which has been merged back
in the master branch, i.e. all changes from there are already
included.

The nmu branch is from me, because NMUs (non-maintainer uploads)
usually reside for a week or so in the DELAYED upload queue to allow
the maintainer to object. Since I didn't want to push these changes
into the master branch while the uploaded packages waits in the
DELAYED queue, because the package could have been rejected, I needed
a different branch to push to until the package has been accepted.
That was the NMU branch. I merged it into master after the NMU had
been accepted.

You migt

> - https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?dist=unstable;package=wicd;include=tags%3Apatch
> says, for #759884 is a patch available - but where can i find that one?

Indeed, there's just a file, not a patch. Still the tag "patch" is
valid since the data to apply is available.

> just to be sure: am i correct that i can't just add the tr.po file
> directly to git?

In this case yes. Because it goes under debian/po/tr.po and not to
po/tr.po.

The subject says "debconf template translation" which means it's a
translation for the questions debconf may ask upon installation or
upgrade of the package. It's not a translation of the software.

(If it would have been a translation update for the software itself,
it would be probably the easiest to forward it to upstream, so that
they include it in their next release -- at least if you have a
responsive upstream. Otherweise you might want to add it as a quilt
patch under debian/patches/.)

> - The former git commits are just containing a few files in the
> debian dir. but when i build the version by myself, i get a whole
> lot of changes: http://paste.debian.net/hidden/100ce554/

Yeah, those files are artifacts of the build process and are cleaned
up again afterwards if you invoke debian/rules' clean target, e.g.
with "make -f debian/rules clean" (or "debuild clean" or "debclean"
depending on your preference -- the latter two need "devscripts"
installed).

Especially the new debian/<packagename>/ directories contain what has
been put into the accordinly named .deb files. They're put together in
these directories before being compressed into the .deb format.

The debian/<packagename>*debhelper* are helper files from the dh*
commands from debian/rules. They're cleaned up again when
debian/rules' clean target calls the "dh_clean" command.

New files not under debian/ are built by wicd's build system and are
cleaned up again when wicd's build system's clean target is called by
debian/rules' clean target.

I hope this helps.

>  ==> you surely had build the package when committing new patches or
> changes - but obviously you diddn't added them (at least not that
> bunch of files in the pastie).
> Why?

I'm sorry, I don't understand that paragraph.

> Or did i sth wrong?

Except having looked at the wrong branch: No. :-)

P.S. to Toogley: I might do a short-term QA upload of 1.7.3 to Debian
Unstable with what is currently in the master branch if the TODO in
debian/changelog has solved itself via dependency fixes as Gianfranco
suggested in one of the previous mails. I hope you don't mind.

		Regards, Axel
-- 
 ,''`.  |  Axel Beckert <abe@debian.org>, http://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' :  |  Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
`. `'   |  4096R: 2517 B724 C5F6 CA99 5329  6E61 2FF9 CD59 6126 16B5
  `-    |  1024D: F067 EA27 26B9 C3FC 1486  202E C09E 1D89 9593 0EDE