Re: Status of bazel-bootstrap packaging

[Christoph Berg <myon@debian.org>]

Hi,

I was talking about this with waldi over lunch. Afaict the issue
is/was that the changelog doesn't say why the package needs to include
the full source now, so no one in the ftp team was touching the
package. Waldi is going to reject the package now, can you try
reuploading it with some "ship source in bazel-bootstrap-source
package to enable .... to do ... because ... " note?

Re: Moessbauer, Felix
> Hi Olek, thanks for the quick answer.
> 
> > From: Olek Wojnar <olek@debian.org> 
> > Sent: Friday, June 3, 2022 4:14 AM
> > To: Moessbauer, Felix (T CED SES-DE) <felix.moessbauer@siemens.com>
> > Cc: Kiszka, Jan (T CED) <jan.kiszka@siemens.com>; Jesse Chan <jc@linux.com>; debian-bazel@lists.debian.org
> > Subject: Re: Status of bazel-bootstrap packaging
> > 
> > Hi Felix,
> > On 6/2/22 10:28, Moessbauer, Felix wrote:
> > Dear Maintainers,
> >  
> > at Debian Reunion Hamburg I had a discussion about the main blocking points in properly packaging tensorflow.
> > One of these was that bazel-bootstrap in Debian is very outdated.
> > 
> > Yes, it is.
> > 
> > There is a fairly trivial packaging change [1] which unfortunately blocks all future packaging work. That change has been sitting in NEW for over a year. I have no idea why. I have reached out to the FTP Team numerous times both by email and on IRC and never received a response, much less an explanation. Given all the work that I've put into this project, that is extraordinarily demoralizing, to say the least. It has also completely destroyed the great momentum that the Bazel packaging effort initially had.
> > 
> > I just don't have the energy to keep trying to have a conversation with a brick wall. If you happen to know someone on that team and can get any information about what's going on over there, that would be rather helpful.
> 
> Putting Christoph in CC. We talked about that at DebReunion. Maybe he can help.
> 
> > 
> > 
> > There have been attempts by Jesse Chan (in CC) to package bazel 4.x but these have never integrated.
> > 
> > Correct. I was going to merge those changes once we were able to build a -source package. (The change implemented in [1])
> 
> Understood.
> 
> > 
> > 
> > Having not even 4.0 packaged makes the whole attempt questionable as all bazel based projects (at least I know of) require at least bazel 4.
> > Maybe one of you could loose a couple of words on what is blocking us.
> > 
> > See my explanation above. Also, as a point of clarification, bazel-bootstrap is a very hacked package and not sustainable. The goal [2] is to replace it once the Bazel ecosystem can successfully build itself within Debian. Before the fiasco with NEW, we had hoped to use bazel-bootstrap to allow a bazel-4 package to be built along with all of its dependencies. We would have created a bazel-5 package once that version was stable and (likely) maintained all stable Bazel versions to allow maximum flexibility for dependencies such as TensorFlow.
> 
> Very good strategy. I was not aware of the bazel-team/meta doc.
> I would be happy to assist once the road-blocks are solved.
> 
> In the end, we probably have to fix things at various places (bazel, tensorflow, Debian) to get a working and maintainable solution.
> Carrying the bazel-bootstrap patchlist from version to version is a lot of maintenance effort.
> 
> > 
> > At this point I don't know when, or if, any of that will happen.
> > 
> > 
> > BTW: there are two mailing-lists. For me it looks like the more recent one is the list at lists.debian.org, but the control file still points to the launchpad list.
> > 
> > Correct. We use the launchpad list for packaging notifications and the l.d.o list for project coordination. [2]
> 
> Then let's continue this discussion on the l.d.o list.
> 
> Felix
> 
> > 
> > 
> > -Olek
> > 
> > [1] https://ftp-master.debian.org/new/bazel-bootstrap_3.5.1%2Bds-4~exp1.html
> > [2] https://salsa.debian.org/bazel-team/meta

Christoph