[Debian-med-packaging] Trouble updating velvet Git repository

[Charles Plessy]

Le Thu, Aug 01, 2013 at 02:44:47PM +0200, Andreas Tille a écrit :
> 
> I intended to work on velvet Git repository.  I was able to commit some
> enhancements regarding new uscan[1] so git-orig-source is using it if
> available otherwise it proceeds as usual.  Once I tried to inject the
> newly downloaded tarball I get:

Hi Andreas,

when I prepared the Git repository for velvet, my aim was to track directly the
upstream repository without the use of git-import-orig.  This is not the
standard in our team, but this is something that I would like to do for the
packages I maintain.  Unfortunately, starting from this year, I have much less
time for packaging, so I can not keep the leadership on packages such as
velvet.

One possible solution is to switch back using the Subversion repository, which
is still in place.  Another is to create a Git repository from scratch.
Lastly, you can also try to follow the upstream repository directly.  In that
case, just pull the upstream branch from the master on GitHub, and resolve the
conflicts if any by committing to our master branch.  No need for
debian/patches.  Be careful to not use the source format 3.0 (quilt), which
will interfere.

By the way, note that appending "+dfsg" to the version number is misleading.
Velvet is 100 % Free.  However, it contains a convenience copy of the Zlib, and
in order to keep it in the source package, one would need to copy all its
copyright notices to debian/copyright, while the licenses do not require us to
do so.  My despair with this idiotic policy is probably what made me drop the
work on velvet in 2012.  Sorry for this.

Altogether, I think that packages requiring such changes in their source are
better to be maintained in the Subversion way.

Cheers,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan