Re: [Quilt-dev] Quilt translation update

[Andreas Grünbacher]

Hi Jean,

Am Fr., 26. Jan. 2024 um 11:09 Uhr schrieb Jean Delvare <jdelvare@suse.de>:
> Hallo Andreas,
>
> On Thu, 25 Jan 2024 22:16:33 +0100, Andreas Grünbacher wrote:
> > I've updated parts of the german translation, but there is also this,
> >
> > "The setup command is only guaranteed to work properly on spec files 
> > where\n"
> > "applying all the patches is the last thing done in the %%prep section. 
> > This\n"
> > "is a design limitation due to the fact that quilt can only operate on\n"
> > "patches. If other commands in the %%prep section modify the patched 
> > files,\n"
> > "this must happen first, otherwise you won't be able to push the patch\n"
> > "series.\n"
> >
> > which is a pretty unclear and therefore not very helpful statement in
> > the first place, and translating it won't fix the original. So I'm not
> > touching that.
>
> OK, I do find it clean, but I wrote it in the first place, so that
> doesn't count. Therefore, I discussed this with my colleagues to get a
> neutral opinion. The generally understood the meaning, but agreed it
> could be improved.
>
> The first suggestion was to replace "this must happen first" with "they
> must come first", to make it clean that what matters is the order of
> the commands in the %prep section.
>
> The second suggestion was to add an example. It could look like this:
>
> "For example, a %prep section where you first unpack a tarball, then
> apply patches, and lastly perform a tree-wide string substitution, is
> not OK. For "quilt setup" to work, it would have to be changed to
> unpacking the tarball, then performing a tree-wide string substitution,
> and lastly applying the patches."
>
> Would either or both work for you?

the problem I have with all this is that it makes recommendations that
are incorrect, and lead to bad package maintenance practices. It
simply isn't true that the last thing the %prep section should do is
apply the patches; actually, it should unpack the tarball and apply
the patches *first*, and then it can do other things.

Quilt setup works by executing the %prep section and watching what it
does, and by then unpacking the tarball and storing which patches were
applied in the series file. Any tree-wide renaming in the %prep
section before applying the patches is asking for trouble.

By the way, when you do something like "quilt setup foo.src.rpm",
weird things will happen. Maybe that can be avoided somehow.

Thanks,
Andreas