How to cope with patches sanely

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Mon, 25 Feb 2008 09:35:13 +0100, martin f krafft <madduck at debian.org> said: 

> also sprach Manoj Srivastava <srivasta at debian.org> [2008.02.25.0828
> +0100]:
>> I am not opposed to it. If you can somehow magically create a tool
>> that can linearize the feature branches, more power to you. I
>> personally find the prospect highly unlikely; and I would like to see
>> some code, please, before I grant that such a thing is possible.

> The tool I envision would simply surf through the history of the
> integration branch and identify merge commits. Each merge would become
> a patch in the quilt series.

        How are you planning on doing this identification? Looking at
 the arch logs, it is not trivial to identify merge commits and the
 upgrade patches (which are just merges from the upstream branch),
 unless you start with an ancient version (like, from my 2003 repo) and
 then apply every single commit to the integration branch over the last
 five years (with really really huge numbers of patches).

        You'll have to track repo changes, figure out how to overcome
 sealed branch boundaries, etc.

        I am not sure I believe this to be feasible until I see some
 code. 

>> Sure. You can't integrate two features that fundamentally conflict
>> with each other. No amount of smoke and mirrors can obscure that
>> fundamental obstacle. This is independent of the tool set you use.

> Except that quilt provides the necessary glue to handle it, while
> feature branches don't.

        No, it does not. If branch A has
 pi = 2.34567;
   and branch B has
 pi = 3.14159;

        No matter how much quilting you do you cannot reconcile the
 fundamental conflict in the final. Either pi is 3.14159; or it is not;
 and if branch A requires pi not to be that value, and branch B requires
 pi to be that value, quilt can't make C be quantum like and have the
 value be both.

        manoj
-- 
Griffin's Thought: When you starve with a tiger, the tiger starves last.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta at debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/>  
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