[Quilt-dev] Question about quilt setup on a series file

[Jean Delvare]

Hi Andreas,

Was the support of series files as a source for "quilt setup" added as
a way to test that command, or does it have real-world use cases? Me, I
am only running "quilt setup" on spec files.

I am asking because, while extending the testing coverage of the setup
command, I found that complex series file aren't properly handled.
"quilt setup" creates a symlink to the original series file, but that
only works if a single series file is needed. If the original series
file contains more than one "# Patchdir:" directive, "quilt setup"
would have to create two or more series files, each containing a subset
of the original series file.

And it does exactly that if I just remove the special case of creating
a symlink to the original series file, to let "quilt setup" generate
the series file(s) as if it was operating on a spec file.

So I am wondering if it would be OK to drop the special case and always
have the series file(s) be generated? I see three advantages:
1* Simpler code.
2* Proper handling of complex series file.
3* Better code path coverage in the test suite - at the moment the code
   generating the series file(s) is never tested.

But I don't want to break any existing workflow that would rely on
"series" being a symlink. Maybe the idea was to be able to operate on
the series file "in place" so one can just delete the working directory
when done?

Thanks,
-- 
Jean Delvare
SUSE L3 Support