[Pkg-Cyrus-imapd-Debian-devel] RFC: Rules for upstream patches taken from CVS

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

Upstream patches are special. We _know_ they will be in the next upstream
tarball, unmodified.  We also fix the OTHER patches to apply on top of them,
and not the inverse.

I propose the following rules for dealing with patches we take from upstream
CVS.  I have dealt with CMU CVS for a _long_ time, and with cvsps for as
much time as it has been in Debian, too.

1. Identify the upstream patch using:
   cvsps (see Debian package in *unstable*) patchset number
   patch description (from cvs log, cvsps gives you this)

   optional:
   one of the files affected and cvs revision ids (cvsps also gives you
   this).

   cvsps is known to change the numbering from time to time, so the
   other information helps us relocate everyting when that happens.

   The above identification goes in:
     DP lines on the patch
     changelog

   *** Always use the patch and patchset number from the correct branch.
       That means HEAD right now, and not cyrus-imapd-2.3... even if the
       patches themselves are the same (which they often are) ***

2. Identify source as upstream cvs, and patch author as the author CMU
   listed in the commit comment, or if none, CMU commit user in dpatch
   header.  You can just use upstream CVS in the Debian changelog.

3. Name the dpatch file as:
   00-<cvsps number>-upstream-<patch description>.

This makes the housekeeping job when the next upstream version arrives
trivial, we just remove all 00-*upstream* patches...

Example:

* Added upstream patchset 6662:
  imap/spool.c:1.7->1.8: don't catch our own NULL (off by one error)
  (Closes: #342314)

Of course, a better description for what the patch really does would be
fine, but ALWAYS keep the upstream one somewhere, because if cvsps renumbers
everything, we will need to know that.  Fortunately, that's unlikely since
cvsps is fairly stable now, and we drop all those patches every new upstream
anyway...

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh