Battle royale: bzr vs. quilt

[James Westby]

On Tue, 7 Dec 2010 11:18:03 -0500, Barry Warsaw <barry at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> At this point notice that the .pc directory is under version control.  We've
> talked about this before, but it is currently deliberate that the package
> importer includes the .pc directory for quilt in bzr.
> 
>     quilt push -a
> 
> I would have expected at this point that a `bzr stat` would show lots of
> modifications to the source tree, but in fact, it shows nothing.  quilt
> definitely reports that all the patches in the series have been applied, but
> if so, where are they?
> 
>     quilt pop -a
> 
> This is supposed to un-apply all the patches so that "the source returns to
> the downloaded condition" [http://wiki.debian.org/UsingQuilt].  I would expect
> at this point that a `bzr stat` would show no changes, but in fact it shows
> tons of removes from the .pc directory and modifications to all the source
> tree files.  If I look at `bzr diff`, it does indeed seem like the patches
> have been un-applied.
> 
> So it seems like the source branch already has the effects of `quilt push -a`
> applied.

Correct.

We used the maxim "the branch should contain the same as you get with
apt-get source", which in the case of quilt v3 packages is patches applied.

> So now what do I do?  I've got the change sitting in a quilt patch and in my
> tree.  I clearly can't submit a merge proposal in this state.

That is the expected thing to submit as it maintains the above invariant.

> Does the above make sense?  Any clarifications on what's going on under the
> hood?  Any suggestions to make things with udd and quilt go more smoothly?

We need looms or something to maintain the spirit of the maxim (one of
the motivators of quilt v3 was to give people a tree with patches
applied so that they can just hack, we want to mirror that), while still
being able to produce sensible diffs for Debian.

I think fixing this is urgent, as the current mandated workflow is
opposite to people's aesthetic sense, so they will never be happy with
it, and so won't embrace udd. As the proportion of quilt v3 packages
increase, so will the proportion of people using UDD who will encounter
this and likely dislike what they find.

Thanks,

James