Sean Whitton

Accepted Talks:

Debian Policy BoF

Discussion about the current state of the Debian Policy Manual and related documents. Expected topics of discussion include:

  • where volunteer time is most needed
  • Q&A about the process by which Policy is modified
  • difficult normative bugs that are stuck and how we might unstick them
  • Sphinx issues: remaining bugs and infrastructure needed for translations
  • recruiting volunteers to translate Policy.

Not strictly within the remit of Policy, but something we might discuss, is the state of the Developer’s Reference, and other pieces of Debian internal documentation.

dgit and git-debrebase workshop

git-debrebase is a new tool for managing Debian packaging in git. dgit is a bidirectional gateway between git and the Debian archive. These tools can be used independently or in combination.

We have published a tutorial for using the combination of git-debrebase and dgit to maintain Debian packages: the dgit-maint-debrebase(7) manpage. There are also: dgit-maint-gbp(7), dgit-maint-merge(7) and dgit-simple-nmu(7).

In this workshop we will help package maintainers start using the workflows described in these tutorials to maintain their packages. We can also answer general questions about dgit and git-debrebase.

We also hope to gain feedback as to how dgit-maint-debrebase(7), and git-debrebase and dgit more generally, could be improved.

For more information about git-debrebase, see the abstract for the talk about git-debrebase. Before joining this workshop, it would be useful to review some of the dgit-maint-*(7) manpages.

git-debrebase - new tool for managing Debian packaging in git

With git-debrebase the Debian changes to the upstream source are represented and manipulated as git commits, with one commit corresponding to one quilt patch. However, unlike with gbp-pq and git-dpm, git-debrebase uses just a single git branch.

git-debrebase branches are:

  • directly buildable
  • directly editable with git-commit(1) (whether of Debian files, upstream files, or both);
  • directly useable with dgit (without –quilt= option);
  • automatically made fast forwarding when published; and
  • have a history useful for git log, git blame etc.

Unlike with gbp pq, there is no need to switch back and forth between public and patch queue branches and there is no need to apply and unapply patches. Unlike git-dpm, git-debrebase requires no in-tree metadata.

Uploads of git-debrebase branches done with dgit publish the source both as:

  1. a git branch which anyone new to Debian can immediately use, and which Debian contributors can directly work on;
  2. a perfect `3.0 (quilt)’ source package as expected by non-git users.