From: Samuel Tardieu <sam@debian.org>
To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>
Subject: yada util to generate patches
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 15:45:05 +0100
Message-Id: <19991214144505.BD8C010F12@antinea.enst.fr>
Sender: sam@antinea.enst.fr

Package: yada
Version: 0.9
Severity: wishlist

I use the Patches: line for all my packages to keep my changes in distinct
and clearly identifiable patch files. However, generating a patch file is
a pain:

  - copy the file you want to modify in file.orig
  - edit file
  - diff -u file.orig file > debian/newpatch.dpatch
  - edit debian/newpatch.dpatch to add #PATCHOPTIONS: -p0
  - move file.orig to file back

Now, let's imagine that yada makes a build-directory (under debian/ maybe)
and builds everything in this build-directory after making a copy of the
source. This would let the source untouched. If I want to modify "file",
I could go in the build-directory, where I could find the package source
already patched by the other patches. I can then modify "file" there,
and launch "yada makepatch debian/newpatch.dpatch". yada would compare
the current sources against the pristine sources (found just above) + the
other patches already applied, and generate a new patch file
debian/newpatch.dpatch containing the difference made to "file", with the
right PATCHOPTIONS added.

Well, that's not easy to explain, but did you get the idea?

Moreover, the idea of having a debian/build-directory is that making a
"debuild clean" is easier: just remove debian/build-directory, debian/tmp-*,
debian/*-stamp, etc.

One more reason to do this is that I have packages that modify binary files
that belong to the distribution (and that are needed to build the package,
such as byte codes for building Erlang). In my scripts, I have to preserve
the original files at the beginning of the build and restore them at
clean time. This is painful.

-- System Information
Debian Release: potato
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux antinea 2.2.13 #1 Mon Nov 8 12:40:02 CET 1999 i686

Versions of packages yada depends on:
ii  dpkg-dev                      1.6.3      Package building tools for Debian 
ii  perl-5.004 [perl5]            5.004.05-3 Larry Wall's Practical Extracting 
ii  perl-5.005 [perl5]            5.005.03-4 Larry Wall's Practical Extracting