Keeping upstream commits separate from Debian packaging commits (was: Fighting commit storm madness)

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Scott Kitterman <debian@kitterman.com> writes:

> Changing the number of commits is solving the wrong problem. The
> problem that needs to be solved is including upstream commits. That's
> thoroughly uninteresting for a packaging team.

Agreed. This is a direct result of rebasing Debian packaging history
onto upstream VCS history, and keeping them all in the same repo as one
undifferentiated history, no?

It's a good illustration of why I much prefer the workflow of a separate
VCS for the ‘debian/’ directory, merged with upstream source only at
build time. The results of the merge are in a separate location and are
never checked into VCS, they're used only for the build.

See ‘git-buildpackage(1)’ for the ‘--git-overlay’ option, which AFAIK
does this.

That way, the history of the Debian packaging VCS is entirely about what
happened to Debian packaging; upstream VCS history is elsewhere. That
seems to address the trouble entirely.

-- 
 \       “Liberty, n. One of imagination's most precious possessions.” |
  `\                   —Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_, 1906 |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney