Re: [Quilt-dev] [PATCH 1/4] Ensure quilt(1) documents the correct patches directory

[Raphael Hertzog]

On Fri, 24 Feb 2012, Jean Delvare wrote:
> On Friday 24 February 2012 08:41:07 am Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> > We could, it's a small behavioural change but one that makes sense.
> 
> I don't see any behavioral change, can you elaborate?

Actually, I thought (wrongly) that .pc/.quilt_patches was overriding
QUILT_PATCHES... and thus I believed that we would lose that.

> AFAICS this is indeed strictly equivalent to the original code. However 
> I am not sure if the code makes sense in the first place. It makes 
> setting QUILT_PATCHES take priority over the value in 
> $QUILT_PC/.quilt_patches. I think it would make more sense to let the 
> value in $QUILT_PC/.quilt_patches have the higher priority. If I set 
> QUILT_PATCHES in my ~/.quiltrc to my preferred patches directory name, 
> and then work on a different project which was initiated with different 
> settings, the project settings should take over my preferences, 
> shouldn't they?

I guess it can be argued both ways. Environment variables are sometimes
used to override settings and sometime used to provide default values.

Is QUILT_PATCHES mainly used to provide a default value or to override
the default value?

For me it was mainly the latter. That's why I said it could make sense.
You seem to see it the other way.

The only answer that can satisfy everybody is to have 2 variables for the
2 use cases. I'm not sure if it's really needed though.

Cheers,
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer

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