Bug#691624: ITP: dput-ng -- next generation Debian package upload tool

[Arno Töll <arno@debian.org>]

Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
Owner: "Arno Töll" <arno@debian.org>

Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
Owner: Arno Töll <arno@debian.org>
thanks
* Package name    : dput-ng
  Version         : 1.0.0
  Upstream Author : Arno Töll <arno@debian.org>, Paul Tagliamonte <paultag@debian.org>
* URL             : http://people.debian.org/~paultag/dput-ng
* License         : GPL-2+
  Programming Lang: Python
  Description     : next generation Debian package upload tool


dput-ng is a Debian package upload tool which provides an easy to use inter-
face to Debian (like) package archive hosting facilities. It allows anyone who
works with Debian packages to upload their work to a remote service, including
Debian's ftp-master, mentors.debian.net, Launchpad or other package hosting
facilities for Debian package maintainers.

dput-ng features many enhancements over dput, such as more comprehensive
checks, an easy to use plugin system, and code designed to handle the numerous
archives that any Debian package hacker will interact with.

dput-ng aims to be backwards compatible with dput in command-line flags,
configuration files, and expected behavior.


Informal part in case someone is curious:


Everyone interested can look at our work at
http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=collab-maint/dputng.git. As of today
dpdput-ng is ready to use for early adotors.  Users should beware, this first
version is just barely feature complete, so it's recommended for use by those
who wish to provide early feedback or testing. That being said, the authors are
running this on a daily basis, and most features in both dput and dcut have
been tested in production. Problems are infrequent, but may cause breakage in
these early stages. Having that said, we are not aware of any serious problem,
and it can be used right away for most use cases Documentation on dput can be
found in the -doc package built from this source, or at http://dput.rtfd.org/

Finally, as always: Contributions and suggestions are extremely welcome.


Highlights:


* Compatibility with dput.cf configuration files ("old style configuration")
* A new extremely flexible configuration format permitting inheritance of profiles
* Pluggable interface for third party pre- and post-upload checks
* A public Python API for those who want to embed dput in their own code
* A detached user interface for a future dput GUI
* Pluggable dcut command support (DM permission handling integrated!)
* Support for SFTP uploader and SHA256 checksums
* We avoid common and open issues with dput (old), including but not limited to
  the absence of hardcoded paths for commands, checking distribution mismatches,
  and more.


Limitations:


* We do not support all dput (old) configuration flags, most notable we do not
  have support for progress indication (yet) and we do not support run_dinstall
  (we believe this is barely used anymore these days but relies on SSH scraping
  instead)
* We do not support "method = rsync" uploads (relies on SSH scraping
  again)
* A few other options are not supported because they are superseded by (in our
  opinion) superior replacements * Command line options from dcut differ to the
  original