Re: Generate diff with git-diff and use in patches field of packages

[Leo Famulari]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 04:11:34AM +0100, Léo Le Bouter wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> While patching packages for security issues, I often am needing to get
> some patches from git repos because upstream does not make releases.
> 
> Including patch in "patches" directory etc. is a bit troublesome, I
> would rather have some Scheme code do this with: upstream git url,
> commit selector range or not, with hash checking like origins.
> 
> Is that possible?

We do this sometimes. Check out how Bash is patched, and also the
vestigial qemu-patch procedure.

However, I think it's more reliable to include the patches in Guix
itself, and a lot easier for other packagers — including from other
distros — to read them. I often look at what other distros have done
when deciding how to fix things in Guix, and it's helpful when they
don't make things too obscure.