Re: concerns about Salsa
Wookey writes ("Re: concerns about Salsa"):
> Buildds don't run the packaged version either, and this contributes to
> it being much harder than it should be to set up local buildd
> infrastructure. There are good reasons for this from the admin's POV,
> but the side-effects are signifcant and I'd like us to try harder to
> use packaged stuff.
>
> But I've not done the necessary work myself, so can't really
> complain. I just observe that it is a real issue for people setting up
> their own CI infra. One day I may have the tuits to improve things in
> this area (I plan to start retiring soon, which might help, or may
> simply introduce different distractions :-)
Packages are great for software which you can just install and use
without much fuss. That is often true for mature software. But for
services which are less mature, and more complex, and which have more
tentacles, the admin is likely to need to change things. This makes
using packages awkward.
I think that the right answer is not to spend heroic amounts of effort
on packaging the unpackageable, shortening the deployment pipeline for
packaged software on machines where the service admin doesn't have
root, etc. etc.
The right answer IMO is that every part of every Debian service which
is not running a Debian packaged version, should make its own running
source code available automatically. That is what I have done with
git.dgit.d.o.
Unfortunately even this seems to have been too much work for some
teams, and I haven't had the effort to go to each of the relevant
teams and add auto-source-publishing to their setup. I'm glad to see
that the Salsa folks have done this, by having their system setup done
by having a public ansible playbook do the deployment from the
application software git repository which is itself public.
So I guess what I am saying is that I applaud the Salsa team's
approach in this area. They are demonstrating best practice: better
than many teams in Debian, who are still running secret versions of
their software.
Ian.
PS the word "dogfooding" is ridiculous. Our software is much better
than dogfood. I prefer "champagning" - as in, Debian often drinks its
own champagne.
--
Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> These opinions are my own.
If I emailed you from an address @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk, that is
a private address which bypasses my fierce spamfilter.
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