PatchingSources

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[[Include(MOTU/Headers/WikiMergePackaging)]]

This page should get merged into the Packaging Guide, where we have a definite chapter about it.
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Include(MOTU/Headers/WikiMergePackaging)

This page should get merged into the Packaging Guide, where we have a definite chapter about it.

Patching Ubuntu packages

Why use separate patches?

In earlier times, people just applied patches inline (i. e. directly in the source code tree). However, this makes it very hard to extract patches later to modify them, send them upstream, etc. Also this means that new upstream versions are a pain, since they generate a lot of rejections when applying the package diff.gz to them. With split-out patches it is much easier to send them upstream, keep track of them, develop them, etc., since you always see which changes belong together. The ideal state is an unmodified tarball from upstream, plus clean and separate patches, plus the packaging bits in debian/. That means that lsdiff <sourcepackage>.diff.gz only contains debian/.

The first attempts to split-out patches were pretty trivial: storing patches in debian/patches/, and adding some patch and patch -R snippets to debian/rules. This worked for small patches, but it provided no tools for editing these patches, updating them for new upstream releases, etc.

Thus, several standard patch systems were created which are easy to deploy and provide tools for patch juggling and editing.

What I would like to do now is to introduce the most common patch systems and show some hands-on demos, describing how to add a new patch and how to edit one. For demoing, we will use some real-world packages as examples. We will look at one package for each of the available patching systems. It is recommended that you follow the same steps in a terminal, so that you get a better feeling for the process.

Warning: These examples were originally written up using packages from Ubuntu Dapper (6.06). Things may have since changed; the packages may no longer use the same patching systems.

If you want to try the stuff yourself, please execute the following commands as preparation:

  sudo apt-get install dpatch dbs quilt patchutils cdbs
  apt-get source cron udev pmount gnome-volume-manager ed xterm

inline patches (example package: cron)

In this case, no formal patch system is used at all; there's nothing much to say about this. You directly edit the files in the source tree. This is convenient for a simple and quick change, but will bite back for new upstream versions (see above).

separate patches, but no patch system (example package: udev)

This case is the most complicated one since you have to do all the hard work manually. In order to make you understand what a patch system does, and to give you a fallback method that will *always* work with any patch system, I handle this first.

The general approach is:

  1. copy the clean source tree to a temporary directory. for example: cp /path/to/clean-source /tmp/old

  2. apply all patches up to the one you wish to edit; if you want to create a new patch, apply all existing ones (this is necessary since in general patches depend on previous patches)

    if you want, you can use debian/rules for this: remove the patches that come *after* the one you want to edit, and call debian/rules patch. The actual name for the patch target varies, I have seen the following ones so far: patch, setup, apply-patches, unpack, patch-stamp. You will have to look in debian/rules to see how it should be invoked.

  3. copy the whole source tree again. for example: cp -a /tmp/old /tmp/new

  4. go into /tmp/new, and make your modifications
  5. create the patch:
    •    cd ../
         diff -Nurp old new > mypatchname.patch
  6. go back into your original source directory and move the patch to the proper place:
    •    cd /path/to/clean-source
         mv mypatchname.patch ./debian/patches/mypatchname.patch

udev example 1: Let's create a new patch 90_penguins.patch:

  cd /wherever/you/unpacked/the/source/udev-079
  cp -a . /tmp/old
  pushd /tmp/old
  debian/rules patch
  cp -a . /tmp/new; cd ../new
  sed -i 's/Linux/Penguin/g' README
  cd ..
  diff -Nurp old new > 90_penguins.patch
  popd
  mv /tmp/90_penguins.patch debian/patches
  rm -rf /tmp/old /tmp/new

Now take a look at your shiny new debian/patches/90_penguins.patch.

udev example 2:

  cd /whereever/you/unpacked/the/source/udev-079
  cp -a . /tmp/old
  pushd /tmp/old
  cp -a . /tmp/new; cd ../new

  # apply the current version of the patch, so that you can edit it
  patch -p1 < debian/patches/10-selinux-include-udev-h.patch

  # make some silly changes...
  sed -i '1 s/$/***** HELLO WORLD ****/' udev_selinux.c

  cd ..
  diff -Nurp old new > 10-selinux-include-udev-h.patch
  popd
  mv /tmp/10-selinux-include-udev-h.patch debian/patches
  rm -rf /tmp/old /tmp/new

Now debian/patches/10-selinux-include-udev-h.patch contains both the original change and our modification of the first line of the source file.

Since this is so hideously complicated, patch systems were invented to aid you with that. Let's look at the most popular ones now (they are sufficient to allow you to patch about 90% of the archive's source packages; for the rest you have to resort to the manual approach above).

cdbs with simple-patchsys (example package: pmount)

cdbs' simple-patchsys.mk module matches its name; it has no bells and whistles whatsoever. However, it is pretty popular since it is sufficient for most tasks, and long ago I wrote a script 'cdbs-edit-patch' which most people can live with pretty well. This script is contained in the normal cdbs package.

You just supply the name of a patch to the script, and depending on whether it already exists or not, it will create a new patch or edit an existing one.

Example with pmount:

  cd /wherever/you/unpacked/the/source/pmount-0.9.11
  cdbs-edit-patch 03-simple-readme.patch
  echo 'This should document pmount' > README
  <press Ctrl+D to end your editing session>

Editing an already-existing patch works exactly the same way.

Since the Ubuntu Edgy version of cdbs, cdbs-edit-patch also works for packages using tarball.mk, and it can edit patches which produce rejections.

dpatch (example package: ed)

dpatch is a pretty robust and proven patch system which also ships a script 'dpatch-edit-patch'. The two most important things you should be aware of:

  • dpatch does not apply patches under debian/patches/, but instead applies all patches mentioned in debian/patches/00list, in the mentioned order. That means that you do not have to rely on asciibetical ordering of the patches and can easily disable patches, but you must make sure you do not forget to update 00list if you add a new patch.

  • dpatch patches are actually scripts that are executed, not just patches fed to the patch command. That means you can also do fancy things like calling autoconf or using sed in a dpatch if you want.

The manpage is very good and has examples, too, so I will only give an example here:

  cd /whereever/you/unpacked/the/source/ed-0.2
  dpatch-edit-patch 05_ed.1-warning-fix
  <edit stuff, press Ctrl+D>

This will edit an already existing patch and make sure that all previous patches are applied in order.

  dpatch-edit-patch foo.dpatch 06_testsuite-Makefile.dpatch
  <edit stuff, press Ctrl+D>
  echo foo.dpatch >> debian/patches/00list

This will create a new patch foo.dpatch relative to the already existing 06_testsuite-Makefile.dpatch. If your patch is very confined and does not depend on other patches, you can leave out the second argument.

quilt (example package: xterm)

quilt is the other non-dumb standard patch system. Like dpatch, it has a list of patches to apply in patches/series (to use debian/patches, a package needs to add a symlink). It is non-trivial to set up and has a lot of advanced commands which make it very flexible, but not very easy to use.

So I will only show a small example here, too. First, use the existing machinery to set up symlinks and directories for quilt:

  cd /wherever/you/unpacked/the/source/xterm-208
  ln -s debian/patches patches
  cd patches
  touch series
  cd /wherever/you/unpacked/the/source/xterm-208
  export QUILT_PATCHES=debian/patches

Now let's edit the already existing patch 901_xterm_manpage.diff:

  quilt push 901_xterm_manpage.diff
  sed -i 's/Copyright/Copyleft/' xterm.man
  quilt refresh 901_xterm_manpage.diff
  quilt pop -a

So unlike the other patch systems, quilt works with patched inline sources, but keeps track of modifications.

Finally, let's add a new patch to the top of the stack:

  quilt push -a
  quilt new muhaha.diff
  quilt add README  # you have to do that for all files you modify
  sed -i '1 s/^/MUHAHA/' README
  quilt refresh
  quilt pop -a


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MOTU/School/PatchingSources (last edited 2008-08-06 16:38:32 by localhost)