Adrian Bunk <b...@debian.org> writes: > On Thu, Oct 04, 2018 at 08:21:07PM +0200, Philip Hands wrote: >>... >> IMO policy should recomend the use of separate source packages as the >> prefered solution to the problem that vendor-specific patch series were >> supposed to address. > > In this case please make an explicit decision on whether build-time > patching is the recommended replacement for vendor-specific patch > series, or what kinds of build-time patching will no longer be > permitted. > > The current situation in the archive is: > - 18 packages with vendor-specific patch series > - an unknown number of packages (e.g. src:gcc-8) that are doing > vendor-specific build-time patching and/or patching based on > other factors like architecture > - > 100 packages that are doing patching and/or configuration > based on dpkg-vendor > - an unknown number of packages (e.g. src:gcc-8) that are doing patching > and/or configuration based on other tools like lsb_release > > It is not clear at all which of the above exactly you want to have > removed from the archive and moved as permanent deltas downstream.
I think it's entirely up to the maintainers of the package (as long as they avoid vendor-specific patch series in future). However if someone reads the prohibition against vendor-specific patch series, and is left wondering what is the best way to deal with this situation, then it would probably be helpful to give them a hint. The methods you highlight all seem to suffer from the problem that if a downstream needs to make a vendor specific change, they need to do an odd dance where they may have to introduce a delta in order to get the vendor version out in a timely manner, then they need to get that into the debian source, and perhaps prompt a no-change release of the Debian package in order to be able to pick up the change and drop the delta. It makes much more sense to me to have branches for the debian and downstream patches side-by-side in one's favourite source control system, and just build and release whatever one needs, whenever one needs it. BTW Do we have any way of determining how many packages already deal with vendor-specific changes in this way? I'll admit that I've not had to deal with such packages, so feel free to explain to me why my perception of the situation is utterly deranged. Cheers, Phil. -- |)| Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560] HANDS.COM Ltd. |-| http://www.hands.com/ http://ftp.uk.debian.org/ |(| Hugo-Klemm-Strasse 34, 21075 Hamburg, GERMANY
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