Re: RFC: DEP-14: Recommended layout for Git packaging repositories
On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 12:11:12PM +0100, Guillem Jover wrote:
> Hi!
>
> On Wed, 2014-11-12 at 15:38:59 +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
> > On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 3:34 PM, Gergely Nagy wrote:
> > > I'd like to note that there are very good reasons for a debian-only,
> > > overlay-style packaging repository too. This section should, in my
> > > opinion, at least acknowledge that, and briefly mention it as an option.
> > > I find it a bit sad that it was outright discouraged.
> >
> > Personally I wouldn't use anything other than debian-only repos, at
> > least for those where I have a choice. I also actively avoid
> > contributing to packages that don't use such repos.
>
> Exactly. In addition I also only tend to «git clone» native packages,
> for anything else I just simply «apt-get source» and can be pretty sure
> what I will get, because the alternatives are just annoying.
>
> As a maintainer and upstream, I also find crawling the packaging repos
> for many of the RPM based distros, Gentoo and BSDs port collections for
> example, actually way more pleasant and clear than many of the Debian
> packaging repos with packaging bits mixed with upstream code TBH, because
> they only have the build recipes and possibly patches, so I don't need
> to know their tools or path layouts to be able to find the packaging
> bits, because they are just obviously there, in front of you, alone.
>
> Not to mention the “unholy” practice of having to store autogenerated
> stuff shipped only in release tarballs in a git repo! :)
>
> I also fantasize sometimes of a day where the whole distribution would
> be stored on VCSs (per package) with a debian-only layout, so that I
> could have a local copy for the whole archive, taking only a couple of
> GiB at most, instead of the monstrosity of a complete exploded sources
> archive (according to <http://sources.debian.net/stats/>, that's currently
> 205 GiB, w/o including git history, which could easily double that
> size); and don't tell me space is cheap, because that does not take
> into account the downloading, nor the huge amount of wasted space if
> you only want the packaging bits.
>
> Even though it might be more convenient for the maintainer, in general
> I find the mixed up repos to be a disservice to the rest of the world.
I share your point of view so much. Having upstream history into a
packaging repo is probably too much for most of the debian packages. Not
to mention pristine-tar, Debian servers already contain .orig.tar.gz
tarballs...
Making buildd be able to work directly from VCS can be a plus also. No
more sync problem between NMU, and/or contributor that forgot (or
ignore) to push onto the repository. Where the VCS *is* the
.debian.tar.gz. From this, it's easy to formalize helper tools.
Ok, I know that is too much changes. But maybe there is some ideas here.
Greetings,
--
Maxime Chatelle (xakz)
gpg: 5111 3F15 362E 13C6 CCDE 03BE BFBA B6E3 24AE 0C5B
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