Debian Bug report logs - #694105
coreutils: Please use a distributed VCS (git?)

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Message #5 received at [email protected] (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Samuel Bronson <[email protected]>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <[email protected]>

Subject: coreutils: Please use a distributed VCS (git?)

Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2012 17:46:13 -0500

Source: coreutils
Version: 8.13-3.3
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

Please consider maintaining coreutils in a distributed VCS; this would
make it easier for others to help with the packaging (and could even
make things easier for you).  As far as I can tell, git has the best
support (in git-buildpackage):

  * Easy importing: if a linear history in dpkg-version-order is fine,
    "git-import-dscs --pristine-tar /path/to/*.dsc" gets you that, or
    "git-import-dscs --debsnap --pristine-tar coreutils" if you don't
    have all the .dscs somewhere (and do have enough space in /tmp).

    (Caveat: snapshots.debian.org doesn't have them all, either: even
    some recent versions, such as 8.20-1, didn't make it in.)

  * Upstream tarball storage: pristine-tar stores enough information to
    reconstitute upstream tarballs from the upstream source trees that
    git-buildpackage stores anyway, rather than requiring tarballs to be
    managed externally.

  * Changelogs: git-dch(1) transcribes changelog entries from commits
    messages to debian/changelog, which makes it easy to include draft
    entries in patches without worrying about merge conflicts.

Of course, the most important thing is that git is a distributed VCS, so
contributors can take full advantage of version control without any
prior arrangement or trust: commit first, ask questions later!

(Actually, the most important thing is to use a VCS: just about any VCS
would at least make it pretty easy to get a useful diff to send in,
whereas it's not at all obvious how to do this with an unpacked & edited
source package.)


-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-4-686-pae (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages coreutils depends on:
ii  dpkg          1.16.9
ii  install-info  4.13a.dfsg.1-10
ii  libacl1       2.2.51-8
ii  libattr1      1:2.4.46-8
ii  libc6         2.13-35
ii  libselinux1   2.1.9-5

coreutils recommends no packages.

coreutils suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information

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