Introductory mail

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Wed, Oct 01 2008, Martin Bähr wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 04:50:21PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>>  With a patch series that changes slowly from release to release,
>>  trackign changes in a patch from one release to the nhext becomes,
>>  for me, a nightmare.

> how is that? (not that i have never done this yet so i simply have no
> comparison)

        Usually, packaging software from someone is a long time effort
 for me (I have been maintaining mailagent and dist since the
 fall of '95). So, if I were to follow the effort of, say, a fedora
 packager who just gave me a quilt series it would had to nkow how
 version 1.4 differed from 1.3 or 1.2 -- you wouyld have to compare a
 quilt series from 1.4 to the quilt series from 1.3 -- a nightmare.

>> > to work with a debian package i currently have to pull out the patch
>> > from the diff either by applying the diff to the source or by manually
>> > editing the diff file.
>>         That is just the first time.
>
> right, i am only concerned about the first time here, because i have no
> experience yet with the steps that follow...

        But that is not a sustainable model for inter-distro
 information exchange.  vcs-pkg should be about on-going development of
 packaged software, not just a one time fire and forget injection of
 code. 

>> > so, making patches easely accessible would be really helpful for the
>> > exchange between distributions...
>> Frankly, I would justr refer people to my public repo in these cases. 
>
> that works, because you have a public repo, many packages don't, and
> it's also not clear how i would find that repo from looking at the
> package. (emailing you to ask is not an option here because it takes to
> long)

        Err, the Debian source packages have a set of fields just for
 that and apt-cache shows it to you:
,----
| __> apt-cache showsrc ucf | egrep -i '^Vcs'  | sort -u
| Vcs-Browser: http://git.debian.org/git/users/srivasta/debian/ucf.git
| Vcs-Git: git://git.debian.org/~srivasta/debian/ucf.git
`----

        manoj
-- 
I try to keep an open mind, but not so open that my brains fall
out. Judge Harold T. Stone
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta at acm.org> <http://www.golden-gryphon.com/>  
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