Re: [Quilt-dev] Quilt translation update

[Andreas Grünbacher]

Am Fr., 9. Feb. 2024 um 15:51 Uhr schrieb Andreas Grünbacher <agruen@gnu.org>:
> 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.

Well, that actually depends on which setup mode is used (--slow or
--fast). But we really shouldn't rely on any side effects of how
--fast is implemented.

Andreas