Multimedia Teams in Debian

[Reinhard Tartler]

Felipe Sateler <fsateler at gmail.com> writes:

> I think it avoids confusion to have a single list. If later on it shows to be 
> a problem, the list can be split. Maintaining both lists from the start 
> sounds like preemptive optimization to me. 

Ok, with that having in mind, I'm OK with using a common list. In case
"problems arise", we reconsider. OK.

>> I've made these drawings before vcs-pkg.org was founded. After that,
>> Marting and the other guys over there did come to similar conclusions
>> but even further reaching conclusions. I at least try to follow their
>> discussion mailing lists.
>
> I haven't been following lately, but it appears the current "panacea" is 
> TopGit... haven't tried it yet though. I'll give it a spin.

AFAIUI TopGit is a tool on top of git that can convert quilt patches to
git branches and vice versa. See below.

>> > Agreed. Uniformity is key for collaboration across packages.
>>
>> Ok. What mode do you propose?
>
> I don't think it's important what particular mode is used, as long as
> it's consistent.  What I do for csound is an upstream branch tracking
> releases, and a master branch where we use quilt for patch
> management. I think it makes it easier since most patches are
> short-lived in our case.

Key facts here:

 - upstream branch *tracking* upstream
 - patch management using quilt.

For point 1: How often do you "snapshot" upstream? Every upstream commit
of their VCS or only upstream releases? What to do with upstreams that
don't do commits in years? (think ffmpeg, toolame).

FWIW, I think that is a very reasonable approach. For ffmpeg, I have
written a get-orig.source.sh shell script that can generate arbitrary
"releases" with any mangling debian packaging requires. I think that
approach can be adopted by other packages, even if they don't need
special mangling. In the simplest case, the get-orig-source.sh script
will be a frontend to uscan(1). In any case, the result of that script
is then used as base for commits in the "upstream branch", see above.

>  Other people prefer topic branches and an integration branch. This
> may be better for longer-lived patches.  The guys from vcs-pkg seem to
> swear by this last workflow. TopGit seems to be able to generate a
> linear quilt patchset, which is nice for people wanting to review the
> source package.

Exactly. I think we don't do a mistake if we continue maintaining quilt
patches for now. I'd say let's see how this works out and reconsider
later.

-- 
Gruesse/greetings,
Reinhard Tartler, KeyID 945348A4