Hi,

On Sat, May 17, 2008 09:41, martin f krafft wrote:
[...]
> I just got this error:
>
> Error: Changes files have different Format fields:
> puppet_0.24.4-6~bpo40~madduck+1_source.changes:Format: 1.8
> puppet_0.24.4-6~bpo40~madduck+1_amd64.changes.binonly:Format: 1.7
>
> and I wonder why mergechanges refuses to do the work. Is there
> actually a reason why it shouldn't just take the newer format and
> merge, adding fields only the older format defines? I realise this
> sounds like a bad idea, but I do genuinly wonder why it wouldn't
> work... mind you, I don't have much experience with the different
> changes file formats...

It wasn't an arbitrary decision - when I discussed this with Raphael
Hertzog on IRC before making the changes, he advised that mergechanges
should only attempt to merge changes with the same format; I've added the
dpkg list to CC for further input.

Regards,

Adam


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Hi,

On Sat, 17 May 2008, Adam D. Barratt wrote:
> On Sat, May 17, 2008 09:41, martin f krafft wrote:
> [...]
> > I just got this error:
> >
> > Error: Changes files have different Format fields:
> > puppet_0.24.4-6~bpo40~madduck+1_source.changes:Format: 1.8
> > puppet_0.24.4-6~bpo40~madduck+1_amd64.changes.binonly:Format: 1.7
> >
> > and I wonder why mergechanges refuses to do the work. Is there
> > actually a reason why it shouldn't just take the newer format and
> > merge, adding fields only the older format defines? I realise this
> > sounds like a bad idea, but I do genuinly wonder why it wouldn't
> > work... mind you, I don't have much experience with the different
> > changes file formats...
>
> It wasn't an arbitrary decision - when I discussed this with Raphael
> Hertzog on IRC before making the changes, he advised that mergechanges
> should only attempt to merge changes with the same format; I've added the
> dpkg list to CC for further input.

It was a generic advice, you can't sanely merge two formats if you don't
know the specific of each format. Thus it's best to fail by default when
you need to merge two files which have different formats.

In the particular case of 1.7 and 1.8, it should be always possible to
drop the Checksums-* fields from a 1.8 changes. That should make it
fully compatible with a 1.7 changes file and they can be merged together.

(Alternatively, you can generate the Checksums-* for the 1.7 changes file
but you have to make sure that you have the same set of Checksums-* fields
as in the 1.8 file that you're merging with)

Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog

Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch :
http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/


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Hi,

Raphael Hertzog wrote, Tuesday, May 20, 2008 12:39 PM

On Sat, 17 May 2008, Adam D. Barratt wrote:
On Sat, May 17, 2008 09:41, martin f krafft wrote:

[...]

> > I just got this error:
> >
> > Error: Changes files have different Format fields:
> > puppet_0.24.4-6~bpo40~madduck+1_source.changes:Format: 1.8
> > puppet_0.24.4-6~bpo40~madduck+1_amd64.changes.binonly:Format: 1.7

[...]

> It wasn't an arbitrary decision - when I discussed this with Raphael
> Hertzog on IRC before making the changes, he advised that mergechanges
> should only attempt to merge changes with the same format; I've added
> the

> dpkg list to CC for further input.



It was a generic advice, you can't sanely merge two formats if you don't
know the specific of each format. Thus it's best to fail by default when
you need to merge two files which have different formats.


Indeed; it was also a generic solution :-)


In the particular case of 1.7 and 1.8, it should be always possible to
drop the Checksums-* fields from a 1.8 changes. That should make it
fully compatible with a 1.7 changes file and they can be merged together.


Thanks. That's what I suspected but wanted to triple-check.


(Alternatively, you can generate the Checksums-* for the 1.7 changes file
but you have to make sure that you have the same set of Checksums-* fields
as in the 1.8 file that you're merging with)


I suspect I'll go for downgrading the 1.8 file(s) to 1.7 as it's
significantly easier to add that functionality to the current implementation
of mergechanges than attempting to work out which files are missing which
checksums and generate them correctly.


Cheers,

Adam



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also sprach Adam D. Barratt <adam@adam-barratt.org.uk> [2008.05.20.1316 +0100]:
> I suspect I'll go for downgrading the 1.8 file(s) to 1.7 as it's
> significantly easier to add that functionality to the current
> implementation of mergechanges than attempting to work out which
> files are missing which checksums and generate them correctly.

Sounds like the right thing to do. Merging == good.
Merging+downgrading == acceptable. Merging+upgrading == asking for
trouble.

--
.'`. martin f. krafft <madduck@debian.org>
: :' : proud Debian developer, author, administrator, and user
`. `'` http://people.debian.org/~madduck - http://debiansystem.info
`- Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing systems

what do you mean, it's not packaged in debian?