Battle royale: bzr vs. quilt

[Barry Warsaw]

On Dec 07, 2010, at 11:40 AM, James Westby wrote:

>> 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.


Ah cool.  I don't think I've actually seen this explained anywhere, for either
udd or apt-get source, though the latter should be obvious by the output.

>> 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.

Maybe I misunderstand.  Do you mean you recommend against reverting the
non-debian directory changes before submitting the merge proposal?  That would
be counter to how I would work out the patch using apt-get source - I'd end up
pushing the changes back into quilt and that would revert the in-tree changes,
right?  Also, if I were reviewing an mp with the changes both in quilt and in
tree, I'd complain about it.

(Ideally I think the fact that quilt is there would be hidden from you, and
you'd just see the in-tree changes, but we've had that discussion before, so
let's ignore that for now.)

>> 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.

Agreed.  I am going to play with the looms idea and Scott's suggestion to see
if I can clean up the workflow a bit.  I will definitely update the UDD wiki
page, and the information you've provided has been very helpful!  I clearly
had no idea what I was talking about when I first wrote that page. :)

-Barry
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