Hi,

Lucas Nussbaum <lu...@debian.org> writes:

[bit late to this thread; came here when I got some MBF bugs and saw
"make them Severity: serious..." in the linked mail. I think in this
case use of source format 1.0 isn't against policy, _shouldn't_ be
against policy (or at least, not in all cases), and that de facto trying
to change policy by filing serious bugs isn't quite the done thing.]

> 1/ the arguments about using patches to track changes to upstream code.
> Among the ~600 packages in that potential MBF, there are still many that
> make changes to upstream code, which are not properly documented. I
> believe that it is widely accepted that seperate patches in 
> debian/patches/ are the recommended way to manage changes to upstream code 

It's probably unfashionable, but I think debian/patches is not a great
way to manage changes, particularly if you're using a VCS for
maintaining your packages. As others have pointed out in this thread,
doing this means you end up essentially trying to version-control your
patches twice - once in the source package, and once in the VCS.

For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not trying to tell anyone else how they
should manage their packages, but (particularly when I've helped
non-Debian folk needing to handle Debian packages) debian/patches is a
source of confusion in packaging.

Regards,

Matthew

-- 
"At least you know where you are with Microsoft."
"True. I just wish I'd brought a paddle."
http://www.debian.org

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