[StGit] Debian packaging update

[StGit] Debian packaging update

[Daniel White]

I've just pushed some patches up to put the debian packaging in line
with the other changes to the build system.

Most importantly, the documentation now gets included in the package.

--

The following changes since commit
42857cbe036ba5917eacc9dbb5644d395f638ed9: Samuel Tardieu (1):
        Do not mess-up with commit message formatting when sending email

are available in the git repository at:

  git://repo.or.cz/stgit/dwhite.git debian

Daniel White (2):
      debian/rules should be producing architecture independent packages
      debian/rules: take advantage of new build targets

 debian/rules |   16 +++++++---------
 1 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-)

-- 
Daniel White

Re: [StGit] Debian packaging update

[Catalin Marinas]

2008/8/18 Daniel White <daniel@whitehouse.id.au>:
> I've just pushed some patches up to put the debian packaging in line
> with the other changes to the build system.
>
> Most importantly, the documentation now gets included in the package.

The patches look allright. I'll merge them tomorrow if no other objections.

I'm not that versed in building debian packages but the .changes file
generated is still reported as "i386" rather than "all". Is this
expected?

Thanks.

-- 
Catalin

Re: [StGit] Debian packaging update

[Daniel White]

On Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:35:43 +0100
"Catalin Marinas" <catalin.marinas@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I'm not that versed in building debian packages but the .changes file
> generated is still reported as "i386" rather than "all". Is this
> expected?
>

I'm seeing the same issue by running dpkg-buildpackage.  However, I
tried building other arch-independent packages from source and still
got the same problem.  I suspect I might not be using the right set of
commands to generate the .changes file.

Since it is now packaged by Debian is it still necessary to be
maintaining Debian packaging?

Having a look at the Debian version, they have made quite a few changes
against our packaging.  It might be worth getting some patches from
them that are not specific to Debian policy (like the setup of bash
completion).

Regardless, it might be best to leave commit cf7b0b90 for now.

> Thanks.
> 

-- 
Daniel White

Re: [StGit] Debian packaging update

[Daniel White]

On Fri, 22 Aug 2008 23:51:54 +1000
Daniel White <daniel@whitehouse.id.au> wrote:

> On Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:35:43 +0100
> "Catalin Marinas" <catalin.marinas@gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > I'm not that versed in building debian packages but the .changes
> > file generated is still reported as "i386" rather than "all". Is
> > this expected?
> >
> 
> I'm seeing the same issue by running dpkg-buildpackage.  However, I
> tried building other arch-independent packages from source and still
> got the same problem.  I suspect I might not be using the right set of
> commands to generate the .changes file.
> 
> Since it is now packaged by Debian is it still necessary to be
> maintaining Debian packaging?
> 
> Having a look at the Debian version, they have made quite a few
> changes against our packaging.  It might be worth getting some
> patches from them that are not specific to Debian policy (like the
> setup of bash completion).
> 
> Regardless, it might be best to leave commit cf7b0b90 for now.
> 
> > Thanks.
> > 
> 

Not that it probably matters much, but I forgot to sign off on the
changes.  I've re-pushed the changes.

So the commit to ignore would be e4a257f0.

-- 
Daniel White

Re: [StGit] Debian packaging update

[Catalin Marinas]

2008/8/22 Daniel White <daniel@whitehouse.id.au>:
> Not that it probably matters much, but I forgot to sign off on the
> changes.  I've re-pushed the changes.
>
> So the commit to ignore would be e4a257f0.

Thanks. I picked the other commit.

-- 
Catalin

Re: [StGit] Debian packaging update

[Catalin Marinas]

2008/8/22 Daniel White <daniel@whitehouse.id.au>:
> Since it is now packaged by Debian is it still necessary to be
> maintaining Debian packaging?

This is mainly to make it easier for Debian maintainers. Someone might
also want to build a .deb package for a different version or flavour
of Debian.

> Having a look at the Debian version, they have made quite a few changes
> against our packaging.  It might be worth getting some patches from
> them that are not specific to Debian policy (like the setup of bash
> completion).

I don't follow the Debian package much but I'll have a look to see the
differences.

-- 
Catalin

Re: [StGit] Debian packaging update

[Daniel White]

On Fri, 22 Aug 2008 22:57:02 +0100
"Catalin Marinas" <catalin.marinas@gmail.com> wrote:

> 2008/8/22 Daniel White <daniel@whitehouse.id.au>:
> > Since it is now packaged by Debian is it still necessary to be
> > maintaining Debian packaging?
> 
> This is mainly to make it easier for Debian maintainers. Someone might
> also want to build a .deb package for a different version or flavour
> of Debian.
> 

I had been reading an article recently about packaging, and there was
the suggestion that upstream having packaging caused headaches when
merging new versions.

But I definately agree that the second case is handy.

> > Having a look at the Debian version, they have made quite a few
> > changes against our packaging.  It might be worth getting some
> > patches from them that are not specific to Debian policy (like the
> > setup of bash completion).
> 

Just to clarify, I believe the automatic setup of bash completion _is_
specific to Debian policy.

> I don't follow the Debian package much but I'll have a look to see the
> differences.
> 

-- 
Daniel White

Re: [StGit] Debian packaging update

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

(Debian maintainer(s) for stgit added to CC through the generic package
redirect address).

On Fri, 22 Aug 2008, Catalin Marinas wrote:
> 2008/8/22 Daniel White <daniel@whitehouse.id.au>:
> > Since it is now packaged by Debian is it still necessary to be
> > maintaining Debian packaging?
> 
> This is mainly to make it easier for Debian maintainers. Someone might
> also want to build a .deb package for a different version or flavour
> of Debian.

Well, I happen to be a heavy STGIT user, and also a senior Debian
developer (I have been a DD for over 10 years), so I am entitled to
reply to this thread I suppose :-)

Whatever people told you guys, the sad truth is that for the
overwhelming majority of packages, the mere presence of a debian/ dir
upstream is taken as a warning sign by any seasoned Debian developer
(i.e. it is so often a problem, we take it as a bad sign).  It almost
never helps.  I have no idea where stgit is in that regard, though.  And
I have NOT checked the "upstream version of the Debian packaging", so
please don't take this personally.

But I can tell you that most DDs would prefer that upstream dumped the
debian/ dir, unless it is kept *really* current.  And really, at that
point, you are losing a lot of the benefits of a downstream maintainer
anyway (i.e. you are not delegating the whole issue to him, so that you
can ignore the packaging and just pay attention to stgit itself).

Of course, this changes a lot when upstream is also a Debian developer
and spends a few hours per week keeping up-to-date with Debian policy
and toolset changes, etc.

> > Having a look at the Debian version, they have made quite a few changes
> > against our packaging.  It might be worth getting some patches from
> > them that are not specific to Debian policy (like the setup of bash
> > completion).
> 
> I don't follow the Debian package much but I'll have a look to see the
> differences.

I have looked at it once or twice.  From what I recall, it is mostly
trying to make sure the tree is *really* clean, and moving some files to
where Debian wants them.  Also, it breaks the stuff into two packages,
stgit and stgit-contrib, and updates a lot of the packaging metadata.

I think you guys should CC the Debian developer on any threads about the
debian/ dir.

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh

Re: [StGit] Debian packaging update

[Karl Hasselström]

On 2008-08-28 11:09:29 -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:

> Whatever people told you guys, the sad truth is that for the
> overwhelming majority of packages, the mere presence of a debian/
> dir upstream is taken as a warning sign by any seasoned Debian
> developer (i.e. it is so often a problem, we take it as a bad sign).
> It almost never helps. I have no idea where stgit is in that regard,
> though. And I have NOT checked the "upstream version of the Debian
> packaging", so please don't take this personally.
>
> But I can tell you that most DDs would prefer that upstream dumped
> the debian/ dir, unless it is kept *really* current. And really, at
> that point, you are losing a lot of the benefits of a downstream
> maintainer anyway (i.e. you are not delegating the whole issue to
> him, so that you can ignore the packaging and just pay attention to
> stgit itself).
>
> Of course, this changes a lot when upstream is also a Debian
> developer and spends a few hours per week keeping up-to-date with
> Debian policy and toolset changes, etc.

So the optimal solution if we want to carry a debian/ directory (to
allow users to easily build their own .debs, or whatnot) would maybe
be to simply politely ask our Debian maintainer to send us patches or
pull requests to keep it up-to-date?

-- 
Karl Hasselström, kha@treskal.com
      www.treskal.com/kalle

Re: [StGit] Debian packaging update

[Sebastian Harl]

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Hi,

On Sat, Aug 23, 2008 at 01:58:55PM +1000, Daniel White wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Aug 2008 22:57:02 +0100
> "Catalin Marinas" <catalin.marinas@gmail.com> wrote:
> > 2008/8/22 Daniel White <daniel@whitehouse.id.au>:
> > > Since it is now packaged by Debian is it still necessary to be
> > > maintaining Debian packaging?
> > 
> > This is mainly to make it easier for Debian maintainers. Someone might
> > also want to build a .deb package for a different version or flavour
> > of Debian.
> > 
> 
> I had been reading an article recently about packaging, and there was
> the suggestion that upstream having packaging caused headaches when
> merging new versions.

Including a debian/ dir in the upstream VCS usually should not be a
problem as long as it's not included in release tarballs. The main
problem _I_ see when the latter is not given (and I suppose that's why a
lot of people don't like it either) is that you'd get a really ugly diff
between upstream sources and the Debian packaging (the .diff.gz of a
Debian source package).

Imho, keeping a debian/ dir in the upstream VCS is a nice service to the
user and keeping it close to the "official" Debian packaging is even
better.

Cheers,
Sebastian

-- 
Sebastian "tokkee" Harl +++ GnuPG-ID: 0x8501C7FC +++ http://tokkee.org/

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.         -- Benjamin Franklin


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Re: [StGit] Debian packaging update

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Thu, 28 Aug 2008, Karl Hasselström wrote:
> On 2008-08-28 11:09:29 -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> > Whatever people told you guys, the sad truth is that for the
> > overwhelming majority of packages, the mere presence of a debian/
> > dir upstream is taken as a warning sign by any seasoned Debian
> > developer (i.e. it is so often a problem, we take it as a bad sign).
> > It almost never helps. I have no idea where stgit is in that regard,
> > though. And I have NOT checked the "upstream version of the Debian
> > packaging", so please don't take this personally.
> >
> > But I can tell you that most DDs would prefer that upstream dumped
> > the debian/ dir, unless it is kept *really* current. And really, at
> > that point, you are losing a lot of the benefits of a downstream
> > maintainer anyway (i.e. you are not delegating the whole issue to
> > him, so that you can ignore the packaging and just pay attention to
> > stgit itself).
> >
> > Of course, this changes a lot when upstream is also a Debian
> > developer and spends a few hours per week keeping up-to-date with
> > Debian policy and toolset changes, etc.
> 
> So the optimal solution if we want to carry a debian/ directory (to
> allow users to easily build their own .debs, or whatnot) would maybe
> be to simply politely ask our Debian maintainer to send us patches or
> pull requests to keep it up-to-date?

Yes, but that assumes you release often.  Otherwise users get an old
version of the packaging all the time.

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh

Re: [StGit] Debian packaging update

[Yann Dirson]

On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 11:09:29AM -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> (Debian maintainer(s) for stgit added to CC through the generic package
> redirect address).
> 
> On Fri, 22 Aug 2008, Catalin Marinas wrote:
> > 2008/8/22 Daniel White <daniel@whitehouse.id.au>:
> > > Since it is now packaged by Debian is it still necessary to be
> > > maintaining Debian packaging?
> > 
> > This is mainly to make it easier for Debian maintainers. Someone might
> > also want to build a .deb package for a different version or flavour
> > of Debian.
> 
> Well, I happen to be a heavy STGIT user, and also a senior Debian
> developer (I have been a DD for over 10 years), so I am entitled to
> reply to this thread I suppose :-)
> 
> Whatever people told you guys, the sad truth is that for the
> overwhelming majority of packages, the mere presence of a debian/ dir
> upstream is taken as a warning sign by any seasoned Debian developer
> (i.e. it is so often a problem, we take it as a bad sign).  It almost
> never helps.  I have no idea where stgit is in that regard, though.  And
> I have NOT checked the "upstream version of the Debian packaging", so
> please don't take this personally.

In this case, they are mostly in sync, except that lately I have not
been very active on the stgit front (and on the debian front as well
BTW), so that I did not take the time to formalize a set of patches
for integration of the latest changes into stgit.

And most of the problem then boils down to the current package diffs
not being handled as a series of patches, which is quite a shame for
stgit :).  Indeed I had started trying to change that at the very
beginning of my involvment in the package, but finally decided I had
no time for that - and I'm also quite frustrated by the various ways I
have tried to maintain debian packages as patch series, unfortunately
(eg. see my experiment in debian/README.maint in the tau package).  I
still have to come with a decent way of doing that.


> Of course, this changes a lot when upstream is also a Debian developer
> and spends a few hours per week keeping up-to-date with Debian policy
> and toolset changes, etc.

Hey, that's not far of what used to happen :)

Another benefit to having uptodate packaging upstream would be to have
deb snapshots regularly generated, alhough we don't take advantage of
this for the moment.


> I think you guys should CC the Debian developer on any threads about the
> debian/ dir.

I'm on the ml too, but CC'ing never hurts, especially since other
people can subscribe to the address via the Package Tracking System.

Re: [StGit] Debian packaging update

[Yann Dirson]

On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 04:16:25PM -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Aug 2008, Karl Hasselström wrote:
> > On 2008-08-28 11:09:29 -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> > > Whatever people told you guys, the sad truth is that for the
> > > overwhelming majority of packages, the mere presence of a debian/
> > > dir upstream is taken as a warning sign by any seasoned Debian
> > > developer (i.e. it is so often a problem, we take it as a bad sign).
> > > It almost never helps. I have no idea where stgit is in that regard,
> > > though. And I have NOT checked the "upstream version of the Debian
> > > packaging", so please don't take this personally.
> > >
> > > But I can tell you that most DDs would prefer that upstream dumped
> > > the debian/ dir, unless it is kept *really* current. And really, at
> > > that point, you are losing a lot of the benefits of a downstream
> > > maintainer anyway (i.e. you are not delegating the whole issue to
> > > him, so that you can ignore the packaging and just pay attention to
> > > stgit itself).
> > >
> > > Of course, this changes a lot when upstream is also a Debian
> > > developer and spends a few hours per week keeping up-to-date with
> > > Debian policy and toolset changes, etc.
> > 
> > So the optimal solution if we want to carry a debian/ directory (to
> > allow users to easily build their own .debs, or whatnot) would maybe
> > be to simply politely ask our Debian maintainer to send us patches or
> > pull requests to keep it up-to-date?
> 
> Yes, but that assumes you release often.  Otherwise users get an old
> version of the packaging all the time.

Well, stgit does not require so much packaging change for each
release.  The current debian/ dir in the git repo, while not 100%
uptodate, still allows anyone to build snapshots.

Best regards,
-- 
Yann

Re: [StGit] Debian packaging update

[Yann Dirson]

On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 09:24:50PM +0200, Yann Dirson wrote:
> In except that lately I have not been very active on the stgit front
> (and on the debian front as well BTW)

Well, let's hope that will get me excused of writing bullshit :)

No, as you noticed, the packaging in stgit.git is not in sync with the
official package.  This ought to be fixed :).  I have started trying
to address that.

The official package ships a copy of documentation pages from the
wiki, because they contain information not otherwise available.  Do we
want to keep a copy of these files in the official repo ?

Re: [StGit] Debian packaging update

[Karl Hasselström]

On 2008-08-28 22:52:55 +0200, Yann Dirson wrote:

> The official package ships a copy of documentation pages from the
> wiki, because they contain information not otherwise available. Do
> we want to keep a copy of these files in the official repo ?

We discussed this a while back, and i believe we agreed that having
the primary copy in the StGit tree is a good idea. So, yes.

-- 
Karl Hasselström, kha@treskal.com
      www.treskal.com/kalle

Re: [StGit] Debian packaging update

[Catalin Marinas]

2008/8/28 Karl Hasselström <kha@treskal.com>:
> On 2008-08-28 22:52:55 +0200, Yann Dirson wrote:
>
>> The official package ships a copy of documentation pages from the
>> wiki, because they contain information not otherwise available. Do
>> we want to keep a copy of these files in the official repo ?
>
> We discussed this a while back, and i believe we agreed that having
> the primary copy in the StGit tree is a good idea. So, yes.

Yes, indeed. And it's on my plan to tidy up and improve the
documentation (though I wasn't that active recently either :-(  ). The
generated html docs could be put on the web somewhere.

-- 
Catalin

Re: [StGit] Debian packaging update

[Catalin Marinas]

2008/8/28 Yann Dirson <ydirson@altern.org>:
> Another benefit to having uptodate packaging upstream would be to have
> deb snapshots regularly generated, alhough we don't take advantage of
> this for the moment.

As a side-note, in the Python world it seems that more people started
using the Python Package Index (http://pypi.python.org/pypi) and
install a package easily using "easy_install". This doesn't have the
.deb features but it is more universal across various Linux
distributions (the bad thing, it doesn't seem to allow uninstalling).
At some point I might create a pypi entry (shouldn't take long but
I've been too busy with other things).

-- 
Catalin

Re: [StGit] Debian packaging update

[Karl Hasselström]

On 2008-08-30 23:33:01 +0100, Catalin Marinas wrote:

> 2008/8/28 Karl Hasselström <kha@treskal.com>:
>
> > On 2008-08-28 22:52:55 +0200, Yann Dirson wrote:
> >
> > > The official package ships a copy of documentation pages from
> > > the wiki, because they contain information not otherwise
> > > available. Do we want to keep a copy of these files in the
> > > official repo ?
> >
> > We discussed this a while back, and i believe we agreed that
> > having the primary copy in the StGit tree is a good idea. So, yes.
>
> Yes, indeed. And it's on my plan to tidy up and improve the
> documentation (though I wasn't that active recently either :-( ).
> The generated html docs could be put on the web somewhere.

Relatedly, I'm right now teaching the command-line option parser
thingy to be able to generate asciidoc man page output (in addition to
the interactive help it already features). The end result should be
man pages for all stg commands -- with contents that can and should be
improved over time. :-)

This would allow some documentation about a specific command to live
in its man page, and allow the other docs to hyperlink to the man
page, etc.

-- 
Karl Hasselström, kha@treskal.com
      www.treskal.com/kalle