bzr for packaging

Introduction

I was recently doing some security CVE patches into wireshark and placed the wireshark repository under bzr control, and found it a really great way to work, which (usually) saves me a lot of time. I thought I would outline the process here and maybe it can be useful to others.

I am by no means an expert of packaging, diffing, or bzr-ing, so please feel free to correct or improve this entry!

Why use Bazaar (bzr)

The reasons for using bzr can be found on the bzr homepage.

My reasons for using bzr for package maintenance include:

1. Revision control 2. Generating diffs is easy 3. Easy merging into other bzr branches 4. Ability to push it into Launchpad or let others branch from me

Notes

The trick to using any version control system (VCS) like bzr is to commit in logical groups. Don't change large amount of code or text and then commit. Break it down to as small as possible related units. For example, if I was including a specific feature I would just change the files that do that, and then commit and give it a good commit log entry about that feature.

In this way, if I wanted to remove just that feature, i could. If i wanted to merge that feature into another branch, i could also do that. This becomes useful for me when I need to patch into Intrepid, Hardy, Gutsy and Dapper. Often i can just merge the corresponding entry straight into the other branch.

Practical Example

<ok, still busy here...>