Re: pkgquilt

On Thu, 11 Jun 2026, Robert Elz wrote:

> that isn't "let us" but "require us to", as with per-file patches
> there's no way (in general) to just apply one of them at a time,
> they can all depend upon each other (a changed function signature,
> in a source file, or using an added field in a struct, needs a
> corresponding change in a header file, or using a new function needs
> an additional library, and hence changes to the Makefile).

A long long time ago pkgsrc had topical patches. patch-aa, patch-ab, etc. 
were applied in alphabetical order. IIUC, you could have patches that were 
cumulative, i.e. multiple ones for the same file. You could also have more 
than one patched file per patch.

(By the way, my memory is fuzzy, this may have been in OpenBSD ports, not 
pkgsrc, but the point stands.)

Personally, I am very happy that the current standard is to have exactly 
one patch file per file, named after the file it patches. I am against the 
sort of per-topic patches that you describe, because it makes it so much 
more difficult to rebase when you update the package to a new version.

Honestly, if you would like this kind of thing, then pkgsrc patches are 
the wrong medium. Create a VCS branch on top of the original sources, add 
your patches there (one commit per "topic"), then rebase when a new 
version comes in. This needs no new development from scratch. You can do 
it today, with git, hg, fossil or a similar tool.

-- 
Benny