Re: [Quilt-dev] [PATCH] Remember location of patches and series file

[Jean Delvare]

Hi Raphael,

Le vendredi 11 décembre 2009 17:18, Raphael Hertzog a écrit :
> On Fri, 11 Dec 2009, David Paleino wrote:
> > You have QUILT_PATCHES=./foo/ in .pc/quiltrc, and you share foo/.
> > 
> > Once you put foo/ under ./ in your source project, how does quilt know that 
> > *that* is the real QUILT_PATCHES to look for? You can't, since that 
> > information was in something you didn't share.
> 
> My goal has never been to share the settings in a VCS, my goal is just
> to remember the values of QUILT_PATCHES and QUILT_SERIES across multiple
> invocations of quilt.
> 
> So that once you do "QUILT_PATCHES=debian/patches quilt push -a" you don't
> need to set QUILT_PATCHES when you later use "quilt pop" and so on.
> 
> Incidentally, those values could be preset if we know where it's stored.
> (And that's what I want to do with dpkg-source and the quilt-based format.
> So that people don't have to set QUILT_PATCHES explicitly and can just use
> quilt normally while still using the debian/patches/ directory.)

I have the same question as I just asked Martin. If you want
debian/patches/ to be the permanent directory containing the patches,
why don't you simply create a symbolic link from patches/ to
debian/patches/ ?

My impression is that the QUILT_PATCHES variable was never meant to
be set from the command line in the first place. The use cases I see
for it are:
* A user setting it in his/her ~/.quiltrc directory, for all of
  his/her projects, because he/she doesn't like the name "patches".
  Not very useful, but possible.
* A program that makes use of quilt, setting it automatically before
  invoking quilt. This is what I've done in "quian" [1], setting
  QUILT_PATCHES to ".patches" so that it wouldn't be visible for the
  user (all hidden files are, well, hidden.)

[1] http://jdelvare.pck.nerim.net/quian/2.6/

If you have a single patches directory for your source tree, then you
can always have patches/ be it or point to it. If you have several
patches directories, then you obviously can't have quilt pick the
right one for you, no matter the implementation. You may have quilt
store the latest one that was used, and use it again for the
following commands, but it is hardly different from setting up a
patches/ symbolic link pointing thereto, is it?

-- 
Jean Delvare
Suse L3