Repository Layout and Terminology

The only requirement on the repository layout for using git-buildpackage and friends is, that the branch the debian work is being done on is different from the branch the upstream sources are being maintained on (this, of course, has no meaning for Debian native packages). This is necessary to be able to build upstream tarballs and to merge in new upstream versions. To distinguish these two branches the following terminology [1] is used:

• The debian-branch (the default branch name used in the Git repository is master) holds your current development work. That's the branch you usually cut your releases from and the default branch new upstream releases are merged onto.

• The upstream-branch (the default branch name used in the Git repository is upstream) holds the upstream releases. This can either be a branch you import to or a branch of an upstream repository you pull from.

• The pristine-tar branch (the default branch name used in the Git repository is pristine-tar) holds the necessary additional information to recreate the original tarball from the upstream-branch. In order to use this feature you need to install the pristine-tar package.

• There can be one or more patch-queue branches. Every patch-queue branch is related to a debian-branch. If the debian-branch is called master the corresponding patch-queue branch is called patch-queue/master. The patch-queue branch is the debian branch plus the contents of debian/patches applied. These branches are managed with gbp-pq.

You're completely free to pick any repository layout and the branch names above are only git-buildpackage's defaults. They can be changed at any point in time and you can work with an arbitrary number of branches. For example branches like nmu, bpo or stable might (temporarily or permanent) become your debian-branch and branches like dfsg_free or snapshots might become your upstream-branch - it doesn't matter if these branches are maintained with git-import-orig or not.

Since Git-Buildpackage only works with local Git-repositories you have to use git-push in order to publish your changes to remote repositories like git.debian.org, this can also be automized with git-buildpackage's post-tag hook.

Workflow

A typical, simple workflow consists of the following steps:

1. Import a new Debian package via git-import-dsc. This imports the Debian Package on the debian-branch and the upstream sources on the upstream-branch.

2. Develop, test, commit changes. During this time you can always build the package with git-buildpackage. In case you have uncommitted changes in your source tree you can use the --git-ignore-new option.

3. Optionally you can create the Debian changelog entries using git-dch and create snapshot releases for testing using its --snapshot option.

4. Once satisfied you can build the final package with git-buildpackage --git-tag. This additionally creates a tag within Git so you can switch back to that version later at any time. The format of the tags can be specified, tags can be GPG signed.

5. When a new upstream version is released and upstream isn't using Git you can import the new version via git-import-orig onto the upstream-branch. git-import-orig will by default try to merge the new upstream version onto the debian-branch. You can skip the merge with --no-merge. After resolving any potential conflicts go back to the second step.

These steps will be explaind in more details in the following sections.