Bug#338315: [php-maint] Bug#338315: php5: Please improve handling of patches (use dpatch?)

[Sven Mueller]

Adam Conrad wrote on 09/11/2005 15:28:
> Sven Mueller wrote:
>
>>I have been trying to backport your php5 package to sarge...
>
> To the best of my knowlege, it should "backport" with nothing more than
> a recompile.  It certainly has for me in the past.  If that's not the
> case for you, I'd like to hear about it.

I had trouble with one patch among all of your patches to not apply
cleanly, causing the source tree to be in a state not recoverable
automatically. Remember that policy mandates that even after an aborted
build, "debian/rules clean" should put the source tree into a state
suitable for "debian/rules binary" to succeed with funtionally
equivalent result as if run on a freshly extracted source. Your patch
system prevents that.

>>Then replace your previous patch handling (patch, patch-stamp and
>>unpatch targets) by including the dpatch makefile snippet...
>
>
> I have no intention to switch to dpatch, as I much prefer the simple
> patch system we're using right now.  Give that its biggest problem
> (patching configure.in and running autoconf) means that the clean target
> doesn't always work right anyway, dpatch won't really fix anything for
> us, and adds complexity.  A tarball-in-tarball scheme would fix it, but
> is far too much hassle, so I have no real motivation to change the
> status quo.

Though dpatch certainly isn't perfect (though I don't understand your
remark about patching configure.in/running autoconf), it has one big
advantage over your current system: It keeps track about which patches
were applied, allowing an automated rollback of those patches.
The second advantage might not be of that much interest to you, but
dpatch-edit-patch really is a convenient way to edit the patches if needed.

Also, in my opinion, dpatch would remove complexity from your
debian/rules and not add complexity.

regards,
Sven
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