Bug#250202: Standardizing make target for 'patch' and 'upstream-source'
On Sat, Mar 26, 2005 at 08:54:32AM +0900, Junichi Uekawa wrote:
>I'd like to be able to obtain Debian source (patched / unpatched)
>and I would like to know if it's possible to create a standardized
>alias at least for dbs/cdbs/dpatch.
>
>My understanding is that currently the targets are:
>
> unpack upstream, apply Debian patch
>dbs: source.build, source.make
>cdbs: pre-build, apply-patches
>dpatch: already done, 'patch' target
>
>
>I'm considering of adding
> debian-unpack-upstream/debian-apply-patch
>aliases to the above targets.
The current proliferation of build systems stems from deficiencies in
dpkg-source.
Requiring the build-dependencies to be installed simply to unpack the
patched source is just as irritating as having to intuit exactly which
rule to use to unpack the upstream source. There being times when you
want to simply look at the source to determine where a problem may lie
without necessarily building it.
If any change to debian-policy were to be made I'd prefer that the
comment in C.3[0] that the .orig was a "`tar' file containing the source
code from the upstream authors" clarified the meaning of "containing".
My interpretation would be that the .orig.tar.gz *was* the upstream
tarball, renamed or at most unpacked into a .orig directory and repacked
as .tar.gz if upstream uses a different format (.zip, .bz2) or doesn't
unpack into an appropriately named top-level directory.
That is, as opposed to a .orig.tar.gz which contains the upstream
somewhere, which I tend to think is stretching the definition a bit.
YMMV.
I suggest this bug be reassigned as a wishlist to dpkg-dev, for
dpk-source be enhanced to deal with multiple separate patches, upstream
tarballs and so on.
Such enhancements have been suggested[0], although to-date nothing has
materialised, partly because such suggestions have been discouraged[1]
since there is apparently a work-in-progress on dpkg-source v2.
Unfortunately, this work-in-progress has yet to surface (or if it has,
the details have escaped my notice).
Adam Heath reportedly has something at least partially working, and put
a link to some details to the #debian-devel /topic a little while
ago--it seems he's using it to build the xen packages.
Adam: would you be so kind as to provide a little more detail as to
what's in the works? Some indication as to whether or not this will see
the light of day within a Debian release cycle would also be nice.
In the absence of details, or an even partial implementation I can only
see the current (ab)usage of build systems continue.
Shoot, I might just write a "dpkg-source -b" replacement myself to
replace my current manual process of patch management.
--bod
[0] Yes, I appreciate that this is an appendix and not strictly policy.
[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2002/07/msg01146.html is the
last I recall, there are almost certainly more.
[2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2002/07/msg01321.html
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