[arch-dev-public] To the developers that went to froscon 09

[Allan McRae]

Thomas Bächler wrote:
> He also told me about a project on http://patches.debian.net (the site 
> was down at the time) which is aiming at providing a portal where 
> patches from all distributions are collected, so others can find them 
> more easily and it's easier to see who does what. He asked whether it 
> would be possible to provide some way for Arch so that this 
> information is automatically submitted. I was definitely intersted in 
> that.
> The most interesting thing was a Debian Enhancement Proposal at 
> http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep3/: It is about providing a standard 
> format for adding metadata to unified diff files. This is extremely 
> interesting and I am definitely interested in having such metadata in 
> all patches we add to the Arch repositories. Just read the proposal 
> and see what it includes. This would be especially useful with the 
> cross-distro patch project mentioned above. He told me not to hesitate 
> to write thoughts about improvements to the other of the DEP so this 
> could maybe become a standard format that is not limited to Debian, 
> but could be used for all patches that you will find on the Internet.
> I told him that I would bring these things up on our mailing lists and 
> that I am definitely interested in those.

This is very interesting.   Adding some metadata to our patches has been 
something I have been meaning to propose every since I realized how 
helpful the information at the top of patches in LFS is.  At the moment, 
it is very difficult to tell what some of our patchs do unless you are 
familiar with the package.  Cross-distro patch management sounds an 
awesome idea to me.

Allan