UNB/ CS/ David Bremner/ blog/ posts/ Converting nauty packaging to git-debpatch

I've been experimenting with a new packaging tool/workflow based on marking certain commits on my integration branch for export as quilt patches. In this post I'll walk though converting the package nauty to this workflow.

  1. Add a control file for the gitpkg export hook, and enable the hook: (the package is already 3.0 (quilt))

    % echo ':debpatch: upstream..master' > debian/source/git-patches
% git add debian/source/git-patches && git commit -m'add control file for gitpkg quilt export'
% git config gitpkg.deb-export-hook /usr/share/gitpkg/hooks/quilt-patches-deb-export-hook

    This says that all commits reachable from master but not from upstream should be checked for possible export as quilt patches.

  2. This package was previously maintained in the "recommend topgit style" with the patches checked in on a seperate branch, so grab a copy.

     % git archive --prefix=nauty/ build | (cd /tmp ; tar xvf -)

    More conventional git-buildpackage style packaging would not need this step.

  3. Import the patches. If everything is perfect, you can use qit quiltimport, but I have several patches not listed in "series", and quiltimport ignores series, so I have to do things by hand.

    % git am  /tmp/nauty/debian/patches/feature/shlib.diff

  4. Mark my imported patch for export.

    % git debpatch +export HEAD

  5. git debpatch list outputs the following

    afb2c20 feature/shlib
Export: true

makefile.in |  241 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------------------------
1 files changed, 136 insertions(+), 105 deletions(-)

    The first line is the subject line of the patch, followed by any notes from debpatch (in this case, just 'Export: true'), followed by a diffstat. If more patches were marked, this would be repeated for each one.

    In this case I notice subject line is kindof cryptic and decide to amend.

     git commit --amend

  6. git debpatch list still shows the same thing, which highlights a fundemental aspect of git notes: they attach to commits. And I just made a new commit, so

    git debpatch -export afb2c20
git debpatch +export HEAD

  7. Now git debpatch list looks ok, so we try git debpatch export as a dry run. In debian/patches we have

    0001-makefile.in-Support-building-a-shared-library-and-st.patch series

    That looks good. Now we are not going to commit this, since one of our overall goal is to avoid commiting patches. To clean up the export, rm -rf debian/patches

  8. gitpkg master exports a source package, and because I enabled the appropriate hook, I have the following

     % tar tvf ../deb-packages/nauty/nauty_2.4r2-1.debian.tar.gz | grep debian/patches
 drwxr-xr-x 0/0               0 2012-03-13 23:08 debian/patches/
 -rw-r--r-- 0/0             143 2012-03-13 23:08 debian/patches/series
 -rw-r--r-- 0/0           14399 2012-03-13 23:08 debian/patches/0001-makefile.in-Support-building-a-shared-library-and-st.patch

    Note that these patches are exported straight from git.

  9. I'm done for now so

    git push 
git debpatch push

the second command is needed to push the debpatch notes metadata to the origin. There is a corresponding fetch, merge, and pull commands.

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