Bug#100586: [PROPOSAL] Upstream patches should be separated from Debian ones.
Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.5.5.0
Severity: wishlist
Hello. If you haven't followed the discussion in debian-devel:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0106/threads.html
Quoting Theodore Tso:
> One of the reasons why I wasn't particularly happy with Debian a
> number of years ago (and recommended a large number of people not to
> use it) was when I discovered that a large number of changes were
> being made to e2fsprogs, and they were all in one single .diff file,
> so it was a real pain in the *ss to figure out what the heck was going
> on.
>
> When the .diff file gets that's big, it becomes to hard to track what
> bugs are the upstream's maintainer, and which ones were introduced by
> the Debian specific maintainer. [...]
Well, I'd propose to make an addition to Policy and/or NM Guide:
"Please note that in order to separate changes to the upstream sources for
Debian-only issues and bug-fixing issues, we (strongly?) recommend to
maintain an isolated set of patches only related to fix things not present in
upstream sources.
In such way, adopting an orphaned package become easier (the new maintainer
will know very fast the changes made to the upstream sources), and the
upstream author could know what are the changes that Debian maintainer is
doing to the software."
What do you think? Note the "should", not a "must".
Sincerely,
Ender.
-- System Information
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Kernel Version: Linux snuggle 2.4.5 #47 mar jun 5 09:20:54 CEST 2001 i686
unknown
Versions of the packages debian-policy depends on:
ii fileutils 4.1-2 GNU file management utilities.
--
Why is a cow? Mu. (Ommmmmmmmmm)
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