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

[Jean Delvare]

Hi Raphael,

Le dimanche 29 novembre 2009 14:07, Raphael Hertzog a écrit :
> On Sun, 29 Nov 2009, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> > A contributor submitted us the attached patch, please share your comments
> > and consider including it if it's fine.
> 
> Really attached this time.

OK, I finally had some time to look at the patch and read the 2
related debian bug entries. My conclusions are negative. I don't like
the implementation, and most importantly, I don't think the feature
itself is needed.

I don't like the implementation because basically it is
reimplementing symbolic links. .pc/.quilt_patches being a text file
containing a path to the patches directory is no different from
.pc/.quilt_patches being a symbolic link to the directory in
question. For .pc/.quilt_series it's even worse, because quilt
already supports the case where the series files resides in .pc/, so
this is essentially duplicating an existing functionality.

I don't like the feature because, once you realize that
.pc/.quilt_patches can be a symbolic link, it becomes clear that you
can make patches/ itself a symbolic link to wherever you like and
you're done. No need to modify quilt.

As a matter of fact, when the bug was originally reported in the
Debian bug tracking system, Martin Quinson replied [1]:

"To get that working, I simply add a link patches -> debian/patches."

That was in July 2004, over 5 years ago... The only objection I've
see is: "What if you have a directory in your source tree named
'patches', for example?", but as far as I can see this is a
theoretical issue, not one somebody has ever hit in practice. And if
it were to happen, I would argue that, if you really want to use
quilt on a source tree, you first reshape the source tree in question
as needed to make it possible. It's not that hard. I would also argue
that it is equally possible that the source tree includes a file or
directory named "series" as well, or worse: ".pc". Even the proposed
patch can't deal with this case.

In that very rare case, I'm sure it would be acceptable to have a
wrapper around quilt to set the required environment variables
properly.

So, I am sorry but no, I am not interested in applying this patch.
Remains to see if Andreas agrees with your views, or mine.

[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=260664#10

-- 
Jean Delvare
Suse L3