Bug#675790: "dch -r" refuses to proceed

[James McCoy]

On Sun, Jun 03, 2012 at 10:18:48PM +0200, Luk Claes wrote:
> On 06/03/2012 09:13 PM, James McCoy wrote:
> > On Sun, Jun 03, 2012 at 08:52:06PM +0200, Harald Dunkel wrote:
> >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> >> Hash: SHA1
> >>
> >> On 06/03/12 13:39, James McCoy wrote:
> >>> On Sun, Jun 03, 2012 at 01:27:09PM +0200, Harald Dunkel wrote:
> >>>> If I run "dch -r" to change the distribution entry in debian/changelog from "UNRELEASED" to the real distribution (e.g. "unstable"), then dch refuses to proceed. It just says
> >>>>
> >>>> dch: debian/changelog unmodified; exiting.
> >>>
> >>> You didn't save the file before exiting your editor.  That's the typical way of acknowledging the changes that have been automatically applied by dch.  See DEBCHANGE_FORCE_SAVE_ON_RELEASE if you don't like the behavior.
> >>>
> >>
> >> Thats a misunderstanding. I just called dch -r to change the
> >> distribution from "UNRELEASED" to "unstable", as intended.
> >> There was nothing to save in the editor, since dch did all
> >> the necessary changes _before_ running vi.
> > 
> > No, it's not a misunderstanding.  Just make vi write the file again
> > (:wq).  We use the modification time to determine whether the changes
> > are acceptable.
> > 
> > Alternatively, you can one of the options suggested in the man page.
> > Either "dch -r """ (i.e., run -r and supply an empty changelog message)
> > or use --no-force-save-on-release.
> 
> Did you actually try it? When you do save the changes after invoking
> 'dch -r' it gives 'dch: debian/changelog unmodified; exiting.' even when
> it changed from UNRELEASED to unstable.

Yes.  This is what I do every time I upload a package.  It works fine.

So, either your editor is double-forking and releasing control back to
dch before you've done any editing, you aren't writing the (unchanged)
file to disk before exiting, or you're somehow doing it so fast that the
mtime hasn't changed.

> Personally I use the workaround
> of typing a character I remove again right after it to fool the
> procedure to believe it has changed...

Then I'm sorry your editor won't write out an unmodified file.  As I've
already stated, you can set the config variable if you don't want dch to
require a save for "dch -r".

-- 
James
GPG Key: 4096R/331BA3DB 2011-12-05 James McCoy <jamessan at debian.org>
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