Example

As an example, you could use the following script (fix-fsf-address.sh) to update the FSF address in copyright headers:

 #!/bin/sh

 perl -i -pe \
 'BEGIN{undef $/;} s/Free Software
 ([# ]+)Foundation, Inc\., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA/Free Software
 \1Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301  USA/smg' *

 echo "Update FSF postal address."

Say you a wanted to create a merge proposal with these changes against offlineimap. First, log into GitHub (this needs to be done once per hosting site):

 $ svp login https://github.com

To see what the changes would be without actually creating the pull request, do a dry-run:

 $ svp run --dry-run --diff ./fix-fsf-address.sh https://github.com/offlineimap/offlineimap
 Merge proposal created.
 Description: Update FSF postal address.

 === modified file 'offlineimap.py'
 --- upstream/offlineimap.py 2018-03-04 03:28:30 +0000
 +++ proposed/offlineimap.py 2019-04-06 21:07:25 +0000
 @@ -14,7 +14,7 @@
  #
  #    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  #    along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
 -#    Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA
 +#    Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301  USA

  import os
  import sys

 === modified file 'setup.py'
 --- upstream/setup.py       2018-05-01 01:48:26 +0000
 +++ proposed/setup.py       2019-04-06 21:07:25 +0000
 @@ -19,7 +19,7 @@
  #
  #    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  #    along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
 -#    Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA
 +#    Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301  USA

  import os
  from distutils.core import setup, Command

Then, create the actual pull request by running:

 $ svp run ./fix-fsf-address.sh https://github.com/offlineimap/offlineimap
 ...
 Reusing existing repository https://github.com/jelmer/offlineimap
 Merge proposal created.
 URL: https://github.com/OfflineIMAP/offlineimap/pull/609
 Description: Update FSF postal address.

This would create a new commit with the updated postal address (if any files were changed) and the commit message Update FSF postal address. You can see the resulting pull request here.

Debian-specific operations

To make working with Debian packaging repositories easier, Silver Platter comes with a wrapper (debian-svp) specifically for Debian packages.

This wrapper allows specifying package names to refer to packaging branches; packaging URLs are retrieved from the Vcs-Git header in a package. For example:

1

$ debian-svp run ~/fix-fsf-address.sh offlineimap

to fix the same issue in the offlineimap package.

(Of course, you wouldn’t normally fix upstream issues like this in the Debian package but forward them upstream instead)

There is also a debian-svp lintian-brush subcommand that will invoke lintian-brush on a packaging branch.

Supported technologies

Silver-Platter currently supports the following hosting platforms:

• GitHub
• GitLab instances (for example Salsa or GNOME gitlab)
• Launchpad (both Git and Bazaar repositories through Breezy)

It works in one of three modes:

• propose: Always create a pull request with the changes
• push: Directly push changes back to the original branch
• attempt-push: Attempt push, and fall back to propose if the current users doesn’t have permissions to push to the repository or the branch.

Installation

There is a Silver Platter repository on GitHub. Silver Platter is also available as a Debian package in unstable (not buster).

More information

For a full list of svp subcommands, see svp(1).