Separate branch for experimental)

[Sam Vilain]

Kumar Appaiah wrote:
> I have a package, which is meant for unstable. Now, because of the
> gfortran transition, I want to upload the package, with modfications
> to experimental. This involves renaming some .install and .docs files
> in debian/, and editing the control file. OK till now, except that if
> upstream makes a new release, I'll have to somehow revert the changes
> to the older versions (pre-exeperimental upload), and keep the
> changelog with the experimental entry intact, switch back, and create
> a new experimental upload. This reverting, re-reverting etc. is the
> part I want to see how to solve.
> 
> Right now, I have only two branches, upstream and master, as I adopted
> a rather simplistic approach to packaging. Could you suggest a way by
> which this problem can be "decently" handled with branches (or
> otherwise) in git?

As Martin suggests you may just be able to get away with a merge.

You make a new branch, call it bob or something like that.  It doesn't
matter, git branches flap in the wind with no real permanence, only
occasionally appearing in automatically generated merge comments.

eg

   git-checkout -b bob upstream

Then put the new upstream package in.  There are lots of ways to do
this.  This is one simple way.

   git-rm \*
   tar xzvf ../upstream-package.tar.gz
   mv upstream-package/* .
   rmdir upstream-package
   git-add .
   git-commit -m "New upstream version"

Then, the easiest thing to do is to merge the old branch on top of that.

   git-merge master

That will possibly leave you with a merge conflict.  In that case,
git-mergetool, git-gui and gitk --merge are your friends.  Get it the
way you want, and git-commit.  Update the debian/changelog as you see
fit and commit again.

Sam.