Re: Apply git bundle to source tree?

From: brian m. carlson <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>
Date: Sep 19, 2020, 19:28 UTC
Message-ID: <20200919192852.GG67496@camp.crustytoothpaste.net>
In-Reply-To: <CAHpGcMJy=0deaByZ=jXHRiHgHH7utHc0JTG=BMq9Yf1DOKvuGw@mail.gmail.com>

On 2020-09-18 at 21:45:01, Andreas Grünbacher wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> What I had in mind were actually distro packages: most projects
> nowadays live somewhere in git repositories. When they're packaged,
> this usually results in a source package with a diff on top of a
> baseline release, so the commit history is lost. Friendly packagers
> include the commit hashes and point users to a suitable git
> repository, but that's not enforced or consistent. Including the
> actual git history in packages would be much nicer (i.e., a git
> bundle), but if that can't replace the patch as well, it's rather
> unlikely to happen.

Debian considered using Git as part of the 3.0 (git) format, but the problem with that is that some upstreams include non-free or undistributable material in their repositories, and obviously Debian can't distribute such software in main. Tarballs can be repacked, but it's harder to rewrite Git history to exclude objects.

I do think the idea is cool and it would be a neat application, but distributing the source history of an upstream project is tricky for for packagers for practical reasons.

-- 
brian m. carlson: Houston, Texas, US