Joerg Jaspert writes ("Re: Idea: rsync-based source format"):
> On 14044 March 1977, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > Are you saying you want to review just the Debian delta ? Or are you
> > trying to avoid extracting the source package ? Or to put it another
> > way, I don't understand why you wouldn't dpkg-source -x and look at
> > the resulting tree in mc.
>
> We are trying to get the work done as fast as possible as there is
> always more waiting.
Right, I understand that. I also think I understand what your
ultimate goals are (from reading things like the ftpmaster reject
faq).
What I don't understand is what aspect or qualities or view of the
proposed source package you are trying to examine at this stage. Or
maybe, I don't understand your workflow.
> Up to now you can mostly just go with using mc and its "everything is a
> filesystem" for archives (and diffs and whatnot) of near any format.
Is this your primary ftpmaster review process, then ? Ie, you would
look into the .orig tarballs individually with mc, and then into the
debian tarball, and (presumably), read the diffs in debian/patches ?
> Sure can do a dpkg-source -x and look, but thats much more time
> consuming.
Do you mean it takes computer time to process the file into
dpkg-source output, or that it takes human time to request that the
computer produce a dpkg-source -x view ?
> Also, if that starts deleting files around, you still have to
> manually look into the tarballs, one by one, as then not the end result,
> but what we distribute in the tarballs is interesting in NEW.
Yes.
Is there any scope for dak to produce additional reports or
information about packages in NEW, alongside the actual .dsc et al,
for ftpmaster review ?
Perhaps I could provide patches to have dak summarise the effect of
the rsync stream, in reviewable form.
Reviewing a binary file diff in mc is never going to be easy, but I
expect that binary file diffs are going to be quite rare. Less rare
will be file deletions, but it ought to be easy to provide a list of
them.
Ian.
