Re: Adding a subpackage

[Adam Dinwoodie <adam at dinwoodie dot org>]

On 08/08/2015 06:31, Achim Gratz wrote:
> Adam Dinwoodie writes:
> > I've discovered a neat Git tool -- git subtree -- which is part of Git's
> > "contrib" directory and isn't something we currently distribute as part
> > of any of the existing Git-related packages.
> openSUSE ships this in git-core since some time.  AFAIK the only reason
> it is still in contrib is the fact that it can't work on Windows.

Yes, I discovered it at least in part via my Mac, where Homebrew 
installs it as part of the core Git installation too. I'd been planning 
on just adding it as a new package in Cygwin, without really thinking 
about whether that's actually the right thing to do; do you/anyone else 
think it'd be preferable to just roll this into the main Cygwin package 
instead of defining a new one?

(I'm assuming its dependencies are a subset of those for the main Git 
package; if it doesn't that'd be a very strong argument for keeping them 
separate.)

> > I'd like to start adding this to the stack of Git packages I build and
> > distribute.  I don't think the build stage is going to be difficult, but
> > what (if anything) do I need to do to get git-subtree as a package
> > that's in setup.ini?  Is it just a case of uploading the new package and
> > setup.hint, or do I need to do some additional magic?
> If it's a sub-package (i.e. the source package is "git"), then you just
> package it up the usual way.  If you'd want it standalone (not advisable
> in this case) you would need to ITP it so it gets added to the list of
> packages you maintain.

Yes, my expectation was that it'd fall under my responsibility as Git 
maintainer, rather than being something that's tracked separately, 
although I wasn't entirely sure whether just adding the new package 
would require an ITP (although given it's included in several other 
major distros, I didn't think there'd be a problem there either way).

Good to know that, since it comes from the same source and is already 
included in the source bundle for the Git packages, that I don't need to 
do anything to add the new package to those available other than update 
git.cygport to build and package the new files.

> BTW, git-merge-changelog (from GNUlib) would be
> a candidate for this treatment and is currently lacking from Cygwin.

Not something I've heard of until now, but it seems sensible. Are you 
planning on ITPing this yourself, or would you like me to look at 
maintaining it? I'm happy with either, provided building it on Cygwin is 
reasonably trivial; it's not a tool I use so I can't say I'm 
particularly invested in spending time on it.

Adam