On January 3, 2017 7:33:39 PM EST, Russ Allbery <r...@debian.org> wrote: >Sean Whitton <spwhit...@spwhitton.name> writes: >> On Tue, Jan 03, 2017 at 10:36:22AM -0800, Nikolaus Rath wrote: > >>> I still haven't really made up my mind if I want to use >git-maint-merge >>> or git-dpm. Russ recently raised a valid point with the Debian >>> modifications over-time becoming all tangled up and impossible to >>> separate. > >> I also read Russ's e-mail, but I'm not yet convinced that powerful >tools >> like `git diff` and `git log` won't be able to give you the >information >> you need pretty quickly. It might take a little time to craft the >right >> command, but that is easily outweighed by the time saved curating a >> patch series. > >Curating a patch series is only 5% slower than commiting directly to >the >Git repository to me. I just have to remember to gbp pq import before >making new changes, gbp pq export when I'm done, and once in a great >while >I have to do a small bit of rebasing to merge changes back into other >patches. It's quite easy for someone who is very familiar with Git, >using >good tools. That 5% would be even less if I did it more often. > >I'm unconvinced that any of that work would really be avoided via other >mechanisms. The most time-consuming part is rebasing and squashing >related changes together into one coherent diff, but that's going to be >just as hard with any of these tools since the hard work is semantic >and >requires thought, not just repository manipulation.
And the thing that gets source delivered to users is the source package, not a git repository. A proper set of patches is far more understandable than an undifferentiated pile of diff. Sometimes I feel like people lose track of the fact that the VCS is a means to an end and not the end target of the work we're doing. Scott K