[Mageia-dev] 26/01/2011 meeting

Ahmad Samir ahmadsamir3891 at gmail.com
Wed Feb 9 17:35:45 CET 2011


On 9 February 2011 11:27, Michael scherer <misc at zarb.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 09, 2011 at 12:22:59AM +0200, Ahmad Samir wrote:
>> On 8 February 2011 08:21, Cazzaniga Sandro <cazzaniga.sandro at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Le 07/02/2011 22:11, Ahmad Samir a écrit :
>> >>
>> >> Personally, as I said before about upstreaming patches, I don't think
>> >> I have enough experience to judge if a patch should go upstream or
>> >> not, so that part I can't do.
>> >>
>> >> What do you mean by "commented"?
>> >
>> > A thing like:
>> >
>> > #patch from .... to fix truc
>> > Patch0: glibc-2.12-truc.fix.patch
>> >
>>
>> That's usually available in the svn log, whoever wrote the patch
>> should have commented it if that is the policy, however I am not aware
>> that such a policy exists (IMBW though).
>
> There is no specific policy despites the matter being discussed some time
> ago, but to me, this is the only way to know what was send upstream
> and what wasn't.
>
> It is ok if someone is not sure to send upstream or not,
> but we cannot know if this is not written. And searching the svn log is tedious,
> people usually say "add patch to fix stuff", without giving the name. And you
> have to search for every patch, and nobody ever say what is the upstream
> status of the patch.
>
> So writing in the spec, just before the patch what it does, if it was sent
> upstream, and where ( or why it shouldn't ) allow to quickly see the status.
>
> For example, I found while cleaning newt that some patches where never send
> to developpers ( and so I did ), that 2 patchs were wrong.
>
> So we cannot assumed that it was send back, even when we take the file from another
> distribution.
>
> I started working on a prototype of a web interface to manage this ( called ghostwheel ),
> but it requires some functions on sophie to work ( and didn't had time to code them ).
> ( a django web application, so far it does nothing except declaring a db and having a
> cool name ).
>
> If we do not comment and send upstream, we will end up with rpm like gdb :
>
> When you look at it ( http://svnweb.mageia.org/packages/cauldron/gdb/current/SPECS/gdb.spec?revision=21081&view=markup ),
> the patch 320 ( and others ) that seems to come from gdb 6.5, you see there is something fishy
> since we are now running gdb 7.1. Some seems to be linked to bugzilla ( no mention of the url
> of the bz ), but does it mean they were sent uptream or not ?
> The various format-security patches, etc, should also be commented
> and send upstream. The patches about IA64 should maybe have been cleaned, etc.
>
> Ask teuf why it took so long to upgrade gdb :)
> --
> Michael Scherer
>
>

I agree it's good practice to comment on patches in the spec. But if
you expect me to trudge through the svn log of each package I
import/imported to see why a patch was added and add a comment in the
spec then I won't import any packages.

I am not going to correct a behaviour that was in effect for years as
"it's not my fault to begin with"... :)

-- 
Ahmad Samir


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