Bug#345900: dpatch: make 00list optional

[Charles Fry]

Package: dpatch
Version: 2.0.16
Severity: wishlist

It would be most helpful if 00list was optional in dpatch. It is already
standard to prefix patches with a number corresponding to the order in
which they should be applied. All of dpatch's functionality could be
supplied by automatically generating the patch list by sorting the
patch filenames numerically and then alphabetically.

cheers,
Charles

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (900, 'stable'), (80, 'testing'), (70, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.8-2-386
Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US (charmap=ISO-8859-1)

dpatch depends on no packages.

Versions of packages dpatch recommends:
ii  dpkg-dev                      1.13.11    package building tools for Debian
ii  fakeroot                      1.5.5      Gives a fake root environment
ii  patchutils                    0.2.31-1   Utilities to work with patches

-- no debconf information


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[Gergely Nagy-6]

> It would be most helpful if 00list was optional in dpatch.

It is, you can use the PATCHLIST variable to specify files if you use
dpatch.make, or just supply the list to dpatch apply if you're using it
directly. This is even documented in dpatch.make(7).

> It is already standard to prefix patches with a number corresponding to the order in
> which they should be applied. All of dpatch's functionality could be
> supplied by automatically generating the patch list by sorting the
> patch filenames numerically and then alphabetically.

PATCHLIST=`find debian/patches -type f | sort -n`

Or something like that.

Cheers,
--
Gergely Nagy



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[Charles Fry]

> > It would be most helpful if 00list was optional in dpatch.
>
> It is, you can use the PATCHLIST variable to specify files if you use
> dpatch.make, or just supply the list to dpatch apply if you're using it
> directly. This is even documented in dpatch.make(7).

That works for dpatch.make, but is not supported by dpatch-edit-patch.

> > It is already standard to prefix patches with a number corresponding to the order in
> > which they should be applied. All of dpatch's functionality could be
> > supplied by automatically generating the patch list by sorting the
> > patch filenames numerically and then alphabetically.
>
> PATCHLIST=`find debian/patches -type f | sort -n`
>
> Or something like that.

I still think there is a reasonable argument for allowing a simple
default like this without custom configuration. That is currently one of
the strong points of cdbs' simple-patchsys; it is very simple. Sure more
flexibility is nice for some people, but having good simple standard
default behavior can go a long ways in maximizing the utility of dpatch.

Charles

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[Gergely Nagy-6]

On Wed, 2006-01-04 at 10:06 -0500, Charles Fry wrote:
> > > It would be most helpful if 00list was optional in dpatch.
> >
> > It is, you can use the PATCHLIST variable to specify files if you use
> > dpatch.make, or just supply the list to dpatch apply if you're using it
> > directly. This is even documented in dpatch.make(7).
>
> That works for dpatch.make, but is not supported by dpatch-edit-patch.

That's a bug in dpatch-edit-patch then, not dpatch itself ;)

A valid concern, though.

> > > It is already standard to prefix patches with a number corresponding to the order in
> > > which they should be applied. All of dpatch's functionality could be
> > > supplied by automatically generating the patch list by sorting the
> > > patch filenames numerically and then alphabetically.
> >
> > PATCHLIST=`find debian/patches -type f | sort -n`
> >
> > Or something like that.
>
> I still think there is a reasonable argument for allowing a simple
> default like this without custom configuration. That is currently one of
> the strong points of cdbs' simple-patchsys; it is very simple. Sure more
> flexibility is nice for some people, but having good simple standard
> default behavior can go a long ways in maximizing the utility of dpatch.

Default always has been to use 00list or PATCHLIST, that cannot be
changed without possibly breaking every package out there relying on any
of these. Unless, this 00list-less thing happens when there really is no
00list. That might work, but I fear it would complicate
dpatch-edit-patch a wee-bit too much.

What I would do, is to add PATCHLIST support for dpep
(dpatch-edit-patch). If it finds no 00list, it would run something like
this: (cat debian/rules; printf "DPEP_PATCHLIST:\n\t@echo
${PATCHLIST}\n") | make -f -, and use the result. Only problem with this
is, to update $PATCHLIST, if it is not automatically generated.. So dpep
would have to warn about that.

This latter one is pretty straightforward, in my opinion, and would do
roughly what you want. With the added requirement of the maintainer
having to add the auto-patchlist line to debian/rules. Not much of an
issue, I'd say.



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[Charles Fry]

> > I still think there is a reasonable argument for allowing a simple

> > default like this without custom configuration. That is currently one of
> > the strong points of cdbs' simple-patchsys; it is very simple. Sure more
> > flexibility is nice for some people, but having good simple standard
> > default behavior can go a long ways in maximizing the utility of dpatch.
>
> Default always has been to use 00list or PATCHLIST, that cannot be
> changed without possibly breaking every package out there relying on any
> of these. Unless, this 00list-less thing happens when there really is no
> 00list. That might work, but I fear it would complicate
> dpatch-edit-patch a wee-bit too much.
> would have to warn about that.

Yeah, the 00list-less thing would ONLY happen when there really was no
00list. In other words it is a clean, simple, effortless,
straightforward, intuitive, default. And I honestly can't see how it is
going to complicate anything outside of the source code.

cheers,
Charles

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