[GLLUG] Tied up in Quilt

[Chris Bell]

Hello,
Please can someone help, I am not a programmer.

There is an upstream package called ZoneMinder which is now at version 1.28.1 
but it is version 1.26.5 that is now in debian experimental because the 
patches in  zoneminder_1.26.5-3.1.debian do not find the correct file locations. 
I am trying to correct this for debian jessie, effectively creating an upgrade 
to  zoneminder_1.26.5-3.2.debian and then I hope to sort any obvious problems 
in the latest upstream version. 

I am having trouble using quilt (as requested by debian).

I copied the packages from the debian pool, extracted them into directories 
/zoneminder_1.26.5-3.1.debian.orig and /zoneminder_1.26.5.orig then copied 
both the extracted packages into a new directory /zoneminder_quilt to give 
/zoneminder_quilt/debian/ and /zoneminder_quilt/ZoneMinder-1.26.5
I changed directory to /zoneminder_quilt/debian and entered

# quilt series

which listed the original packages starting with vendor_perl, which was a 
patch to modify /zoneminder_1.26.5/configure.ac

# quilt new vendor_perl-1
# quilt add ../zoneminder_1.26.5/configure.ac
# quilt edit ../zoneminder_1.26.5/configure.ac

edited and saved the file to match the original patch vendor_perl which I hoped 
would correct the listed file location.

# quilt diff vendor_perl-1

showed no changes, and the patch appeared to be empty.

# quilt refresh vendor_perl-1

showed no changes, and the patch appeared to be empty.

# quilt header -e

allowed me to edit and save the header, but the patch had no other content. 

Some of the other original patches are designed to modify several blocks 
within multiple files, and each replacement patch also showed no changes after 
editing the target files. The quilt documentation shows how to manage patches 
to a single file rather than a complete package including multiple directories, 
while even /zoneminder_quilt/debian/control will need to be changed to match 
the Build-Depends and Depends.  

I assume that I am making a mistake somewhere, and it is not a problem in 
quilt.

Thanks for any advice.