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Re: Removal of wanna-build from sbuild



On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 07:57:44PM +0000, Philipp Kern wrote:
> On 2011-03-10, Bernd Zeimetz <bernd@bzed.de> wrote:
> > On 03/10/2011 06:56 PM, Philipp Kern wrote:
> >> On 2011-03-10, Hector Oron <hector.oron@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> I was planning to start using a wanna-build instance, but i was not
> >>> sure which one to use.
> >>> As I have not yet started to use any of them I have no real objection
> >>> for its removal, on the other hand I would not mind to try to merge
> >>> current wb used on buildd with the one shipped in sbuild. Just let me
> >>> know your preferences.
> >> The two codebases don't have much in common, given that the sbuild one was
> >> heavily refactored.
> > So why the hell are these two branches not merged and developed by a team?
> 
> Volunteer time is limited and the focus of the wanna-build team is a different
> one than providing packages, at least at the moment.  (Especially as it's
> hard to produce something that works equally well as a package and as a
> central installation that's updated differently.)  There's also no benefit
> in moving the central wanna-build to a refactored code base that has less
> features and fixes.

Exactly.  I was planning to merge the wanna-build.git changes into
sbuild.git for a *long* time.  I just haven't had time to do it, and
no one else has seemed especially interested.  Certainly not
sufficiently interested to volunteer their time to do it.

> buildd in unstable was severely broken for ages, because the packages
> weren't at all tested after heavy refactorings (and still aren't
> because the maintainer doesn't have a test setup).  wanna-build will
> have suffered the same fate.

The main sticking point for me being able to properly test buildd is
that is requires a functional wanna-build setup to do so.  And
setting one up is decidedly non-trivial.  wanna-build.git is unusable
without all the extra support scripts on grieg, and the schema files
are broken.  I was not able to set up a working wanna-build environment.

What I'm thinking of doing here is writing a "fake" wanna-build that
can emulate the real one.  To the extent that e.g. --list=needs-build
can return a list of packages to build.  This would allow buildd
testing in the absence of a full wanna-build setup.  Again, it needs
time to do.  Any help here would be appreciated.

wanna-build was a little different from buildd.  It was /never/ truly
functional from the start, either before or after any refactoring,
and with zero users, there just hasn't been the demand to work on
it above sbuild or buildd.

> For buildd-0.61.0 the situation seems to be a bit better, I only needed
> some few hours instead of days to get it working again.  buildd *is* living
> in the same repository as sbuild, though.  It's just wanna-build that's
> separate.

That's good to know.  Adding the testsuite has reduced the chance of
regressions somewhat.  Getting buildd in the testsuite as well would
be even better.

> That said, if you want to step up in maintaining a hellish Perl codebase,
> feel free to send patches.

Help is always appreciated.  It's not the nicest codebase in the world,
but I think we've improved it significantly in recent years.  sbuild
at least is now usable by mortals, though it could still be easier to
set up; documentation is the main lacking here.


Regards,
Roger

-- 
  .''`.  Roger Leigh
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