Auto Backporting (Was: Backports of scientific packages)

[Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu>]

[Reply-To set to debian-devel because this topic belongs here.]

On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 12:58:00PM +0200, Manuel Prinz wrote:
> 
> Yes. I like the idea but we simply can't rebuild everything from the
> task pages of these blends since there are also tools from KDE or GNOME
> which would mean to backport quite a lot of unrelated stuff. Also,
> packages with code in interpreted language can almost always be used
> directly from testing. But I think auto-building could work for a
> well-defined subset of packages.

IMHO this problem is not really Debian Science or Blends related and the
idea to handle backports analog to non-free autobuilds sounds quite
reasonable - but in this case we *really* make it analog tp non-free which
works with a debian/control field

    XS-Autobuild: yes

So why not using a similar field

    XS-Autobackport: yes

?  Well, it's definitely not that easy but I see a quite large set of
packages (specifically in the Debian Science field) which perfectly
compiles against Build-Depends of stable.  If we could handle this set
automatically for a first shot and think later about those packages
which need Build-Depends which are not available in stable this would
be an interesting thing.

So in short: we should choose the "well-defined" subset of packages
which are candidates for autobackporting according to their feature to
be buildable inside stable and using an control field to mark the
packages that way. 

Kind regards

        Andreas.

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