Distribution quote of the week [LWN.net]

Thing is, 3.0 (quilt) is an accepted source format, 3.0 (dpatch) isn't (thankfully). It wasn't me who decided that, I didn't make 3.0 (quilt) a "new standard". It's the people who migrate towards it who are making it so. While dpatch and 3.0 (quilt) don't necessarily conflict, for the vast majority of cases, 3.0 (quilt) should be an improvement over dpatch, and that is one of the driving forces behind the deprecation.

...

My plan, which still stands, is to remove dpatch in 6 years time. I'm fairly sure we can come to an agreement within that timeframe.

Gergely Nagy

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Distribution quote of the week

Posted Dec 1, 2011 17:30 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

As a developer, I tried using quilt for some time. Then I switched to Stacked Git and never looked back.

I wonder if distributions could also drop their "everything has to be isolated in a file" current approach to patching.

Distribution quote of the week

Posted Dec 2, 2011 0:43 UTC (Fri) by nof (guest, #61716) [Link]

Well, the quote makes me smile:
"My plan, which still stands, is to remove dpatch in 6 years time. I'm fairly sure we can come to an agreement within that timeframe."

This is about long term maintanance of Debian packages.
Any patch bigger than you can grep on a quick look is too big.

If there is something Debian does right, it IS long term maintanance/upgradibility.

Distribution quote of the week

Posted Dec 2, 2011 14:54 UTC (Fri) by algernon (subscriber, #11573) [Link]

Personally, my favourite is 3.0 (git), but that pretty much only exists on paper.

There is, however, merit in using separate files for patching at build time: if the VCS repository ever disappears, they're a backup. They're also available, and can be worked with when the VCS is unavailable for one reason or the other. (Say, the VCS is SVN, and one's sitting on a plane, with only the debian sources available.)

Then again, 3.0 (git) would also solve this problem. It just happens to introduce a lot of others, sadly.

So, for now, as much as I don't like it, I have to say that separate patches, in one way or the other, are still relevant and useful. Be that quilt or dpatch. But preferably not the latter - it's evil, somewhere deep within.