[Pbuilder-maint] Bug#391100: pdebuild: should allow to keep current source tree untouched

[Yann Dirson]

Package: pbuilder
Version: 0.159
Severity: wishlist

It can be annoying to have the current tree cleaned for a pbuilder run -
I often find myself having to do more work before finalizing a version,
and have to rebuild completely each time, which is quite annoying for
CPU-hungry packages.

A useful option (for both command-line and conffile) would be to copy
the whole source tree into temporary storage, possibly using cowdancer
or another trick to save disk space, and then clean and build the source
package from there.

A bonus could be a mode where pdebuild goes to the background as soon as
the copy is ready, so the user knows when it can start to hack on the
next version, with a single tty used (I already have too many screen
sessions openned, and the running build does not inform me much, a log
is much more useful).

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (90, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.15.4-smp-gbbde1285
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)

Versions of packages pbuilder depends on:
ii  cdebootstrap                  0.3.11     Bootstrap a Debian system
ii  coreutils                     5.97-5     The GNU core utilities
ii  debianutils                   2.17       Miscellaneous utilities specific t
ii  debootstrap                   0.3.3      Bootstrap a basic Debian system
ii  gcc                           4:4.1.1-7  The GNU C compiler
ii  wget                          1.10.2-2   retrieves files from the web

Versions of packages pbuilder recommends:
ii  cowdancer                     0.23       Copy-on-write directory tree utili
ii  devscripts                    2.9.21     Scripts to make the life of a Debi
ii  fakeroot                      1.5.10     Gives a fake root environment
ii  sudo                          1.6.8p12-4 Provide limited super user privile

-- no debconf information