Feedback on merging via bzr

[Martin Pool]

2010/1/18 Scott Kitterman <ubuntu at kitterman.com>:
> I feel like I've gone through a process that is far more complex than the old
> one for no real benefit.  I have some recommendations for improving and
> simplifying this process.  I think simplification is an essential element
> because the learning curve for new contributors is very steep already and
> raising the barrier to entry is not something that will benefit Ubuntu.

Thanks for the feedback, and yes, a major point of this is to make
contribution easier not harder.  So we need to smooth off some fairly
rough edges.

> 1.  The most important change would be to have some kind of a wrapper for
> getting the source.  It would be nice to have a script that would download
> branches for the common ancestor, current Ubuntu, and current Debian branches,
> and do the proposed merge.  Without local access to the different versions of
> the package, it is very difficult to know if you've got a correct merge.
>
> Additionally, if there were checkouts for the previous Debian and Ubuntu
> packages locally, then it should be easy enough to diff the debian directories
> to check for packaging changes when a new upstream version is involved.

That sounds good, and not too hard to do.

> 2.  As you no doubt know, the changelog merging could be better and would
> reduce repetitive, boring work potential contributors have to do.

Andrew has a framework for this up for review, so we should be able to
integrate the existing code for debian/changelog merging.

We will probably also cut out the explicit and I think unnecessary
'bzr resolve' step.

-- 
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>