Requirements of a VCS packaging tool

[James Westby]

On Mon, 2008-03-17 at 18:38 +0000, James Westby wrote:
> Support Co-operation
> --------------------

>   * With other people in the same distro
>     - The workflow should give everyone, not just one person, everything
>       needed to work on the package.

There was some discussion on this point on IRC after my
posting and I forgot to update the list on that.

My statement here is not very clear. My intention was to foster
collaboration by ensuring that everyone had access to the same
tools and workflows. For instance, if a package maintained by
you uses private, unpublished topic branches, then I may
not be able to do some things as easily as you. If I were
to only have the generated patches, then history based
merging would probably not be available to me.

I want to add another point here that is slightly different.
The workflow that is used shouldn't be obstructive to
anyone that collaborates with you. If this happens then it
takes some power away from other people.

As an example, rebasing a branch forces anyone else using that
branch to rebase as well. Then the choice of when to do this
is taken away from that person.

I don't mean to say that there isn't a place for rebasing, and
I don't want to make this discussion about implementation,
so the above is just an example.

These points may matter for me more than others being involved
in a derivative distribution that doesn't really have maintainers.
However if the aim is a cross-distro workflow then I think
it should be considered.

Thanks,

James