Bernhard R. Link wrote:
* Timo Aaltonen <tjaalton@cc.hut.fi> [090525 08:51]:Why would it do that? Having a patch system in place allows them to just add the patch and be done with it.Which means you have to deal with a patch system. Without a patch system you can just unpack the package, apply the patch, edit the changelog and build the package. I don't know how the security team thinks about those things, but I personaly found packages without any patch system to be much easier to deal with and to modify it.
The patch target is now standardized in policy, so our system shouldn't present any major surprises. With the massive increase in the use of quilt across the distro over the past year or two (it's obvious if you've been reading the changelogs) it's pretty clear that it's a standard tool at this point and shouldn't be shied away from by anyone in Debian. Furthermore, if they're willing to patch X, then they're surely brave enough to add a patch to the quilt stack. We should probably start shipping a standardized debian/README.source in all our packages to fully comply with policy though.
I'm personally also fine with leaving the patch system enabled by default, since quilt has been quite reliable for years now. If it actively helps out our downstreams then all the better.
- David Nusinow