Re: [fyi] patches used by git distributors

[Todd Zullinger <tmz@pobox.com>]

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Hi Jonathan,

Thanks for putting this together.

Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> In an ideal world, each patch applied by downstream distributors would
> fall into one of two categories: (a) adapting the package to some
> esoteric distro-specific requirement (i.e., special-interest patches)
> or (b) in the process of being generalized and reviewed for eventual
> application upstream, so everyone can benefit from it.  Unfortunately
> that takes time.  I should do better --- sorry about that.

> A few other packaging projects:
>
>  - git://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/git.git master --- 3 patches (using
>    SERVER_NAME for home link, reviving vc-git.el, compatibility with
>    newer cvsps)

To review the patches we have in Fedora/EPEL:

- git-1.5-gitweb-home-link.patch¹

This predates my involvement in git packaging.  The default for
++GITWEB_HOME_LINK_STR++ is projects.  The patch just uses
git://$SERVER_NAME if SERVER_NAME is available, falling back to
projects if it is not.

I'm not sure exactly why that's an improvement over using projects, to
be honest.  It's only a text string and it links to the gitweb home,
not to the contents of the string, so whether it reads projects or
git://$SERVER_NAME it takes the user to the same place.  Definitely
doesn't seem like something we'd want to push into gitweb and I'm
wondering why we even want to carry it in Fedora/EPEL at this point in
the morning. :)

- git-1.7-el5-emacs-support.patch²

This is only applied to builds for EL-5, where emacs is too old for
the current emacs git support.  From the commit message:

    This is the vc-git.el from 1.6.4.1, the last version to include
    it.  Most uses will be better served by the vc-git.el which is
    provided by emacs >= 22.2, but on EL-5 we don't have the luxury of
    a modern emacs.

Basically, to not break emacs support for folks who were using
git-1.5.x from EPEL, we had to provide something to allow us to push
git-1.7.x.  It seems there are relatively few emacs-git users running
EL-5, as getting testers for this was difficult.  At the same time,
we've gotten 0 bug reports.  So it either works about as well as it
did with git-1.5.x or no one uses it to notice that it doesn't work.

- git-cvsimport-Ignore-cvsps-2.2b1-Branches-output.patch³

This one became necessary when Fedora moved to cvsps 2.2b1 and git
cvsimport got noisy⁴.  As cvsps is pretty much dead upstream, it didn't
seem like this patch was worthy of inclusion in git.

If any of these seem like candidates for inclusion, I'm happy to
properly submit them.

¹ http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/gitweb/?p=git.git;a=blob;f=git-1.5-gitweb-home-link.patch;hb=HEAD
² http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/gitweb/?p=git.git;a=blob;f=git-1.7-el5-emacs-support.patch;hb=HEAD
³ http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/gitweb/?p=git.git;a=blob;f=git-cvsimport-Ignore-cvsps-2.2b1-Branches-output.patch;hb=HEAD
⁴ https://bugzilla.redhat.com/490602

-- 
Todd        OpenPGP -> KeyID: 0xBEAF0CE3 | URL: www.pobox.com/~tmz/pgp
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