Re: Automated backports based on Janitor work?

[Jelmer Vernooij <jelmer@debian.org>]

Hi Lucas,

On Thu, Aug 26, 2021 at 11:39:06AM +0200, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> I'm really amazed by all the great work done around the Debian Janitor
> project. It's great to see how it focuses the maintainer's work on where
> there's some actual value with having humans in the loop.
> 
> Watching the talk[0] on automatically providing packages for new
> upstream releases and new upstream git snapshots, I wondered if the same
> tooling could be used to automatically provide stable backports
> for packages in unstable/testing.
> 
> There's probably a large number of packages that just require a
> rebuild (+ test with autopkgtest) to be backported.
> 
> Additionally, one could imagine a DSL to:
> - make minor changes to the source package before building (adjust
>   dependencies, apply an additional patch, etc.)
> - tell sbuild that some build-dependencies must be pulled from backported
>   packages
> 
> Jelmer, did you already think about that? Is there a way one could help
> you?

Reviving this thread that's more than a year old...

I spent some time working on this two months ago, and it's now finally
live. You can find an overview and instructions on how to use these packages at
https://janitor.debian.net/bullseye-backports/

There's somewhere close to 5000 packages there at the moment. I haven't
done any of the other things you've suggested yet - adding a DSL for making
minor changes or loosening dependencies.

Packages get built in a schroot with stable and existing backports
available.

I think at this point it's ready for early testing. The main
thing to watch out for is that some packages might pull in too
many other dependencies from backports. If anybody does try these out,
any feedback would be great. Either here,
or on the tracking bug at https://salsa.debian.org/jelmer/janitor.debian.net/-/issues/62

Known issues that still need to be addressed:

 * backport from testing rather than unstable
 * rename the suite from bullseye-backports to something that does't
   clash with the official backports (version strings are already different)
 * finish processing the rest of the archive
 * better sanity checking to prevent too many dependencies from being
   pulled in

I haven't decided on a name yet. "auto-bullseye-backports", perhaps?

Cheers,

Jelmer