Quilt

Really good tutorial : Quilt Tutorial - Shakthi Kannan, April 6, 2006

To know which patch you are on :

quilt top

To move down the series ( to go to older patch)

quilt push

To move up the series ( to go to a newer patch)

quilt pop

The normal state ( code is untouched , all changes in patches )

$ quilt top
No patches applied

Workflow for patching source with quilt.

Assuming we are in a git repo setup for a git-buildpackage ,

To create a new patch ( to edit a file unrelated to older patch ) :

quilt new that_failing_test.patch

Then let quilt know which files are to be tracked in this patch :

quilt add spec/some_spec.rb

Now go ahead and edit the file spec/some_spec.rb

Run the test runner to verify your modifications fixed the tests.

/usr/bin/ruby -I/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/gem2deb/test_runner.rb

/usr/bin/ruby1.8 -I/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/gem2deb/test_runner.rb

Once done , update the patch file by

quilt refresh

This will update the patch file in patches folder, reflecting the changes you newly edited.

Unapply all patches, so that our source directory is clean. Commit the patches (IMPORTANT: Just the patches and the series file)

When it makes more sense to add a change to an older patch we can make quilt to add changes to that old patch instead of creating a new patch.

Navigate to the required patch using quilt pop and quilt push . You might want to do a quilt pop -a -f to force unapply all the patches

Verify if you are at the required patch by quilt top.When you are sure about the patch , edit the source code files.When done , update the patch using

quilt refresh

Commit the modified patch file to the git repo and don’t forget to git checkout the source code file you patched.

Useful bash aliases

For gem2deb test-runner :

alias tr='/usr/bin/ruby -I/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/gem2deb/test_runner.rb'

alias 18tr='/usr/bin/ruby1.8 -I/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/gem2deb/test_runner.rb'