Phillip Susi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > If you run into a package that does not already have some kind of > patch system there are 2 possibilities: > > 1) The package has never needed to be patched before > 2) The package has been patched by directly modifying the original > upstream files, which is a big no-no > > In the second case, the package should be fixed and the upstream debian > maintainer notified and asked to repair their broken package as well.
In that case, I kindly ask you to not touch any of the package I maintain in debian. I very much prefer managing patches to sources using a VCS, and adding patch system adds unnecessary noise in the debdiff. I really wonder who brought up the (wrong) claim that *not* using a patch system was deprecated in the first place. > In the first case, if you are going to start patching you need to use > one of the patch systems to do it. I disagree with the necessity with doing that. And I strongly disagree telling Debian Developers to use one. However, after reading this thread a bit more, I can agree that adding a patch system can make sense if the following applies: - the package does not have any source patches outside debian/ yet - the package can trivially extended with a patch system - the patch is not trivial Rationale: It does not really make sense to introduce quilt or dpatch for a 2 line manpage patch. that can very easily obtained using filterdiff on the diff.gz. For more complicated patches that really need commenting, I can see that patches really should be documented. E.g. I have been doing that in the ffmpeg package, cf. the patches in [1]. http://svn.debian.org/viewsvn/pkg-multimedia/unstable/ffmpeg/debian/patches/ -- Gruesse/greetings, Reinhard Tartler, KeyID 945348A4 -- Ubuntu-motu mailing list Ubuntu-motu@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-motu