Importing Sources

Table of Contents
Importing already existing Debian packages
Importing a new upstream version
Converting an existing Git repository
Starting a Debian package from scratch
When upstream uses GIT

Importing already existing Debian packages

Importing an already exsting debian package into a git repository is as easy as:

git-import-dsc package_0.1-1.dsc
    
This will create a new git repository named after the imported package, put the upstream sources onto the upstream-branch and the debian patch on the debian-branch. In case of a debian native package only the debian-branch is being used. You can specify alternative branch names via the --upstream-branch and --debian-branch options or via the upstream-branch and debian-branch options in the configuration file.

If you want to be able to exactly recreate the original tarball (orig.tar.gz) from Git you should also specify the --pristine-tar option. This is recommended.

If you want to import further versions you can change into your shiny new Git repository and just continue with the same command:

cd package/
git-import-dsc package_0.1-2.dsc
git-import-dsc package_0.1-3.dsc
git-import-dsc package_0.2-1.dsc
    

Or you can import all versions at once using git-import-dscs:

git-import-dscs /path/to/history/package_*.dsc
    
This will create a Git repository if necessary and import all versions sorted by version number.


Importing a new upstream version

Change into your git repository (which can be empty), make sure it has all local modifications committed and run either of:

git-import-orig /path/to/package_0.2.orig.tar.gz
git-import-orig /path/to/package_0.2.tar.bz2
git-import-orig /path/to/package-0.2/
    
This puts the upstream souces onto the upstream-branch and tags them accordingly (the default tag format is upstream/%(version)s). The result is then merged onto the debian-branch and a new Debian changelog entry is created. You can again specify different branch names via the --upstream-branch and --debian-branch options. You can also filter out content you don't want imported:
git-import-orig --filter='CVS/*' /path/to/package_0.2.orig.tar.gz
    
The --filter option can be used multiple times for more complex filtering.

If you expect a merge conflict you can delay the merge to the debian-branch via the --no-merge and pull in the changes from the upstream-branch later.

If you want to be able to exactly recreate the original tarball (orig.tar.gz) from Git you should also specify the --pristine-tar option. This is recommended.

To customize the commit message used by git-import-orig use the --import-msg option. This string is a standard python format string, into which the version variable is interpolated. (i.e., use %(version)s in your message to get the imported upstream version).


Converting an existing Git repository

If the Git repository wasn't created with git-import-dsc you have to tell git-buildpackage and friends where to find the upstream sources.


Upstream sources on a branch

If the upstream sources are already on a separate branch things are pretty simple. You can either rename that branch to the default upstream-branch name upstream with:

git branch upstream theupstream-branch
git branch -D theupstream-branch
    
or you can tell git-buildpackage the name of the branch to use as upstream-branch:
cat <<EOF > .git/gbp.conf
[DEFAULT]
# this is the upstream-branch:
upstream-branch=theupstream-branch
EOF
    
If you then use git-import-orig to import new upstream sources, they will from now on end up on theupstream-branch and merged to the debian-branch.


Upstream sources not on a branch

If you don't have an upstream branch but started your repository with only the upstream sources (not the debian patch) you can simply branch from that point. So use gitk or git-log to locate the commit-id of that commit and create the upstream branch from there, e.g.:

    COMMIT_ID=`git log --pretty=oneline | tail -1 | awk '{ print $1 }'`
    git branch upstream $COMMIT_ID
The important thing here is that the COMMIT_ID specifies a point on the master branch that carried only the upstream sources and not the debian modifications. The above example assumes that this was the first commit to that repository.

Warning

There's currently no easy way to create the upstream-branch if you never had the upstream sources as a single commit. Using git-import-orig on such repositories might lead to unexpected merge results.

In order to fix this you can prepend the upstream sources as a single commit to your tree using Git's grafts. Afterwards you can simply create a branch as explained above and git-import-orig will work as expected.

Alternatively, if you are only importing source from original tarballs (for instance when converting from a Subversion repository where the mergeWithUpstream was set for svn-buildpackage), you can create an empty upstream branch with the following commands:

    git checkout --orphan upstream
    git rm -rf .
    git commit --allow-empty -m 'Initial upstream branch.'
    git checkout -f master
With Git versions lower than 1.7.2.3, the commands are slightly more complicated:
    git symbolic-ref HEAD refs/heads/upstream
    git rm --cached -r .
    git commit --allow-empty -m 'Initial upstream branch.'
    git checkout -f master


Starting a Debian package from scratch

So far we assumed you already have a Debian package to start with but what if you want to start a new package? First create an empty repository:

mkdir package-0.1
cd package-0.1
git init
    

Then you import the upstream sources, branch off the upstream-branch branch and add the debian files (e.g. via dh_make):

git-import-orig -u 0.1 ../package-0.1.tar.gz
dh_make
    
That's it, you're done. If you want to publish you're new repository you can use gbp-create-remote-repo.


When upstream uses GIT

If upstream already uses git for packaging there are several ways to handle packaging. Two will be described in a bit detail here:


No upstream tarballs

If upstream doesn't build upstream tarballs or you don't care about them the simplest way is to clone upstreams repository and create a separate packaging branch in there.

git-buildpackage will by default create an upstream tarball for you. By default it will be created from the tag name given by the --git-upstream-tag option. You can customize it's value via the upstream-tag configuration variable.

A common upstream format is to put a v in front of the version number. In this case the configuration option would look like:

[git-buildpackage]
upstream-tag = v%(version)s
	

version will be replaced with the upstream version number as read from debian/changelog.

If you're using pristine-tar you can make git-buildpackage commit the tarball back to the pristine-tar branch by using the --git-pristine-tar-commit option.


Upstream tarballs

If you want to track upstream's git but continue to import the upstream tarballs, e.g. to make sure the tarball uploaded to Debian has the same checksum as upstream's you can use the --upstream-vcs-tag option when importing new tarballs with git-import-orig. Assuming you have the upstream source in your repository with a tag v0.0.1 you can use:

	    git-import-orig --upstream-vcs-tag=v0.0.1 foo_0.0.1.orig.tar.gz
	  
to add upstream's tag as additional parent to the merge commit. See #664771 for more details.