Raphaël Halimi <raphael.hal...@gmail.com> writes: > I'm trying to fully understand the git-buildpackage workflow and I'm > kind of stuck on a specific part of the process, regarding the handling > of the upstream branch when upstream uses git but the maintainer still > wants to use pristine-tar to commit upstream tarballs. > > If I understand [1] and [2] correctly, one would need two upstream > branches : one originating from upstream, with the full commit history, > and one managed by gbp import-orig, which would contain upstream sources > imported as single tarballs commits. > > [1] http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/notes/debian/git.html#combine > [2] http://honk.sigxcpu.org/projects/git-buildpackage/manual-html/gbp.html > > I don't understand the reason for having two separate upstream branches. > Is there a specific reason against having a single upstream branch, > which would contain the full upstream commit history, and maintaining > the pristine-tar branch with a plain old "pristine-tar commit <tarball> > <upstream branch>"
The content of the upstream development branch usually does not match exactly the content of the distributed tarballs: for example, the latter often contains autotool intermediate files, which are not present in the upstream development branch. These differences matter, especially when the maintainer is upstreaming patches. Thus it's handy to have these on separate branches, and this also reduces the size of the pristine-tar delta files. > (since gbp import-orig would want to import the tarball files and > create a new tag, which both may conflict with the upstream > branch/tags) ? See http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep14/ for namespacing ideas. > Would it make sense to file a wishlist bug report against > git-buildpackage to ask for a new option to gbp import-orig, which would > manage the pristine-tar branch without importing anything in the > upstream branch, and without creating a second upstream tag ? The > advantage over plain old "pristine-tar <tarball> <upstream branch>" > would be to rely on gbp.conf for the upstream branch name instead of > specifying it every time, and automatic tarball download with the > --uscan option, whereas plain old pristine-tar needs running uscan > manually beforehand to download the tarball. If you use gbp, you seldom invoke pristine-tar directly, if ever. > Or maybe I didn't understand correctly how --upstream-vcs-tag is > supposed to work ? It links the upstream development branch with your upstream tarball branch by making the tarball commits merges from the provided tag. -- Regards, Feri
