Re: How to handle Debian patches
"Miriam Ruiz" <email@example.com> writes:
> 2008/5/19 Goswin von Brederlow <firstname.lastname@example.org>:
>> Because the git format is imho conceptualy broken and the
>> implementation is far from completely thought out. The strongest
>> point against it is that the user has to learn git to use it.
> I'm curious about this. Why is it conceptualy broken and badly
> implemented? Is there any public URL about that?
As for implementation see the bugreport in the other reply for some
Conceptually I think the following:
A Debian source package is a snapshot in time of the source. The
source at the specific time of the upload.
A git repository is the full history of the source with all edits,
pushes, pulls, merged, cherry-picking all documented in the log.
So people said that the git repository should be pruned to only
contain recent stuff. But you can not do that with feature branches
without loosing the history between the branches. You can't merge
changes in a feature branch into the integration branch with that
anymore. Which would make it rather pointless.
So lets not prune it. Then you put every single source version there
ever was into the debian source package. And it will grow and grow and
And what is the point? Anyone familiar with git can just use the git
repository directly without bothering with the debian source
package. You just duplicate the repository on every debian mirror out
And that is not even mentioning that the workflow in a git repository
can greatly differ between maintainer. You can have many many branches
and how is poor user supposed to know which branch to edit?
And if the user just edits the source as is, figures out how to commit
that to git and create a patch then all you end up is a patch against
the integration branch and not any feature branch. With quilt format
you get exactly the same patch automatically generated without all the
extra hoops the user has to jump through for the git format.