[Pkg-bazaar-maint] bzr-gtk is a release behind

[Reinhard Tartler]

Jelmer Vernooij <jelmer at samba.org> writes:

> Hi Reinhard,
>
> On Thu, 2007-05-24 at 14:22 +0200, Reinhard Tartler wrote:
>> Wouter van Heyst <larstiq at larstiq.dyndns.org> writes:
>> 
>> > http://pkg-bazaar.alioth.debian.org/0.16/ has bzr-gtk 0.16.0
>> 
>> I've imported the bzr-gtk package as described at
>> http://wiki.tauware.de/misc:vcs-packaging to 
>> sftp://bzr.debian.org/bzr/pkg-bazaar/bzr-gtk/unstable
>> 
>> I also uploaded bzr-gtk to unstable.
>
> Any reason for not using the upstream branch here? The upstream branch
> is neither big, nor does bzr-gtk require any autogenerated files that
> are not versioned. 

Thanks for bringing up the discussion. I've outlined 3 possible modes of
maintaining a package here: http://wiki.tauware.de/misc:vcs-packaging

Currently, the packages bzr and bzrtools are maintained using mode 1
(debian/ directory only), bzr-svn and bzr-builddeb in mode 2 (complete
upstream history), and bzr-gtk in mode 3 (upstream releases
only). Jelmer now proposes to use mode 2 for bzr-gtk as well.

> Using the upstream branch (which sets tags for releases) makes a couple
> of things easier:
>
>  * seeing what changes are missing from upstream (or debian) can be done
> using bzr diff

This is also possible quite easily with mode 3. you just need to know
the revision, in which the latest upstream version was imported. Tags
can help here.

>  * updating to the next upstream is just a 'bzr merge
> -rtag:bzr-gtk-0.16.0' command, 

This is also possible with mode 3. 

> no need to download/verify tarballs

I don't see why this is a problem.

>  * it makes it easier for upstream to cherry pick changes that are
> available in the debian branch

Why is it easier? I need to manually verify each patch anyway. What am I
missing here?

> By extending bzr-builddeb, we could even not have to worry about
> upstream at all, since bzr-builddeb can simply generate the .orig.tar.gz
> by doing something along the lines of 'bzr export
> -rtag:PROJECTNAME-VERSION PROJECTNAME_VERSION.orig.tar.gz'.

Indeed, this work. However, I think that .orig.tar.gz should only be
created by upstream himself, since he should keep the authority to bless
releases. If we create the .orig.tar.gz, we would probably end up with a
tarball with another md5sum. This way you cannot verify the tarball
anymore.

Having said this, does anybody object to maintain bzr and bzrtools with
mode 3?


-- 
Gruesse/greetings,
Reinhard Tartler, KeyID 945348A4