Fellow packagers, I would like to start a discussion, hopefully resulting in a packaging policy regarding patches in our packages. Very often it is difficult to see in a package, when a patch was added, when it was modified, when disabled, and when deleted. In order to address all those questions, and some more, we would like to globally introduce (for Factory it might become mandatory; autobuild team is considering to enforce the rule), a new policy about this. It mainly consists of one additional line per patch added, the so-called patch markup line, in the .spec file. It looks similar to: # PATCH-FIX-UPSTREAM <packagename>-<whatdoIfix>.patch <bufrefs> <who> -- Description of the patch, possible source. The line is as simple as: - Type of Patch - Patch filename - Whom to address in case of questions re: the patch And a short description. This does not yet address the entire lifecycle of the patch. For this, every touched patch needs to be mentioned, by filename, in the .changes file. - Added patch-super1.patch - Rebased patch-super2.patch - Disabled patch-super1.patch due to API break. NEEDS REBASE - Drop patch-super1.patch, upstream fixed. Thanks to this, an entire story / life of any given patch file can be followed. A patch accidentally dropped is less likely to happen like this. Patches, that are flagged for rebase can be automatically identified and reported on. There is a wiki page explaining the various Types of patches at http://old-en.opensuse.org/Packaging/Patches Looking forward to have a lively, factical discussion going on around this subject. Dominique -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+help@opensuse.org