Using git for patch management in Fedora

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 04:25:00PM +0100, Kevin Kofler wrote:
> Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> 
> > Several packages are using git for patch management.  eg:
> > 
> > http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/erlang.git/tree/erlang.spec#n46
> > http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/libguestfs.git/tree/libguestfs.spec?h=f20#n22
> > http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/qemu.git/tree/
> > http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/ocaml.git/tree/ocaml.spec#n16
> 
> Ewww, we need packaging guidelines banning this bizarre practice.
> 
> I can see using git-am if you're backporting upstream patches from upstream
> git (though patch and thus %patchN is usually good enough for that, too),
> but for Fedora-specific patches, it's really the wrong tool for the job.
> 
> > Some of these packages have invented home-brewed methods to generate
> > the Patch lines in the spec file, eg:
> > 
> > http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/erlang.git/tree/otp-get-patches.sh
> > http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/libguestfs.git/tree/copy-patches.sh?h=f20
> 
> Ewww! Yuck!

Could you explain why you don't like this?  If you had actually used
it, I'm sure you would see it is far more sensible than manually
managing and rebasing patches.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
virt-df lists disk usage of guests without needing to install any
software inside the virtual machine.  Supports Linux and Windows.
http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-df/