git based autoforwardporter.

[Robie Basak]

Hi Peter,

On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 02:16:27AM +0000, peter green wrote:
> Some time ago I put together what I call the "autoforwardporter". The
> aim of this is to take downstream changes and apply them on top of new
> debian uploads.

Can you expand on this? We do exactly this in Ubuntu as another Debian
derivative, and we are developing a bunch of tooling and workflow around
this with a view to eventually being able to automate most of it.

We're maintaining a bunch of Ubuntu deltas in git repositories now. We
keep the Ubuntu delta as a patch series as a set of git commits (a bit
like how git-dpm does it with quilt, but for everything we change,
including debian/). We have an "importer" that integrates new Debian and
Ubuntu uploads that are being made out of this system automatically.

Re-applying changes on top of new Debian uploads is then just a case of
"git rebase --onto". This works today. Though we are doing it manually
right now, the long term goal is for this to be automatic for the
non-conflicting cases, though with human review before upload.

> Are there people who would be interested in using and collaborating on
> such a tool?

Yes, if we can find enough commonality in our needs. Our plans are
pretty mature in the details now. Can you tell us more about yours?

Robie