[Pkg-electronics-devel] qucs experimental package

[Carsten Schoenert]

Hello Felix,

Am 13.06.18 um 21:19 schrieb Felix Salfelder:
> Dear team.
> 
> I have prepared an experimental qucs package [1] in response to users
> feedback & grief. Qucs ("quite universal circuit simulator") has
> disappeared from debian around 2009 at version 0.0.15.

besides the other answer some more (technical) thoughts.

You should preserve the history of this package and even if no old VCS
is available git-buildpackage makes it easy to get all changes based on
Debian releases into a new folder as a git tree ready to use afterwards.

And you want to also use a pristine-tar branch.

Just run the following commandline somewhere in your $HOME to get a git
tree with all the old history. Please have a look at gbp-import-dscs(1)
and gbp-import-dsc(1).

> $ gbp import-dscs --upstream-branch=upstream/latest --debian-branch=debian/sid --sign-tags --pristine-tar --author-is-committer --verbose --debsnap qucs

This will download all qucs source packages from snapshots and import
them into a branch 'upstream/latest', merge the source into 'debian/sid'
and commit all debian related files and changes per release on top of
the merge.
The branch layout is chosen based on the suggestions in DEP-14.

https://dep-team.pages.debian.net/deps/dep14/

If it's finished you will have a version 0.0.16-2 on top of it all.

Next I would add a dedicated debian/gbp.conf for qucs and commit those
addition.

> $ cat debian/gbp.conf 
> # Configuration file for git-buildpackage and friends
> 
> [DEFAULT]
> # use pristine-tar:
> pristine-tar = True
> # generate gz compressed orig file
> compression = gz
> debian-branch = debian/sid
> upstream-branch = upstream/latest
> 
> [pq]
> patch-numbers = False
> 
> [dch]
> id-length = 7
> debian-branch = debian/sid
> 
> [import-orig]
> # filter out unwanted files/dirs from upstream
> filter = [ '.github', '*.orig', '*.rej' ]
> # filter the files out of the tarball passed to pristine-tar
> filter-pristine-tar = True

Now you can work on new imports as usual. The old patch queue isn't
needed anymore I guess.

The version you used, 0.0.19~0ef64c30, isn't the "right" form, or better
it's probably not safe for a abstract increasing versioning.
You don't want to use the tilde here as the selected version is logical
greater than 0.0.19. So need to make it greater in term of Debian
versions, mostly done by adding a point ('.') or plus (+) sign. So for
example 0.0.19+0ef64c30.
But this can also be tricky as the next hash you want to use as a
snapshot may be less than the previous so this is mostly also not enough.

e.g.
0.0.19+0ef64c30
        ^
vs
0.0.19+00f64c30
        ^
> $ dpkg --compare-versions 0.0.19+0ef64c30 lt 0.0.19+00f64c30 && echo yes
> yes

So mostly people use a date as a increasing number. The following
version would be safer than only using the short commit hash

0.0.19+20180601~0ef64c30

Thinking on gnucap the used version there is also not really safe.

Some more things comes to my mind regarding to the debian folder which
could be done a bit smarter but this is depending on the progress
upstream is making to get the package Qt5 ready.

-- 
Regards
Carsten Schoenert