Introduction Welcome to &git-buildpackage;, a system that integrates the Debian package build system with Git. The current version of this manual can be found at here. What can these tools do for you: Import an existing &debian; package into &git; Import new upstream versions, NMUs etc. with optional filters Automatic upstream tarball generation Maintain a consistent branch and tag naming across repositories or across a team of developers Automatically sign tags Automatically push changes to remote repositories Make sure you have committed all changes to the right branch before releasing Export to a clean build area before building Automatic debian/changelog generation Automatic generation of snapshot releases for local testing Simple patch management All of this is (hopefully) being done without restricting the user to certain usage patterns. 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 corresponding to the command line and config file options is used: The (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 (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 (the default branch name used in the &git; repository is pristine-tar) holds the necessary additional information to recreate the original tarball from the . In order to use this feature you need to install the &pristine-tar; package. There can be one or more . Every patch-queue branch is related to a . If the 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 and branches like dfsg_free or snapshots might become your - 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 hook. Workflow A typical, simple workflow consists of the following steps: Import a new Debian package via &git-import-dsc;. This imports the &debian; Package on the and the upstream sources on the . 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 option. Optionally you can create the Debian changelog entries using &git-dch; and create snapshot releases for testing using its option. Once satisfied you can build the final package with &git-buildpackage; . 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. 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 . &git-import-orig; will by default try to merge the new upstream version onto the . You can skip the merge with . After resolving any potential conflicts go back to the second step. These steps will be explaind in more details in the following sections.