Re: Introducing Flight Deck: Infrastructure-as-Code for Debian Go Team Repositories
Adding ML for better visibility
On 09/09/25 3:21 pm, Arthur Diniz wrote:
> On Mon, 8 Sept 2025 at 18:42, Nilesh Patra <nilesh@debian.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I don't know how much value my feedback holds here. As such, I am
>> not a devops engineer (at least professionally) and I had to do a bit
>> of reading to understand what this tool is doing.
>>
>> First off, I have 3 quick questions:
>>
>> - Do I have to add in a hcl file for each package individually for
>> flight-deck to configure it?
>>
>
> Yes, that's how OpenTofu/Terraform works, that's also to isolate and
> protect each repository individually
> and make it possible for specific customization cases that need for example
> a different branch protection
> or any related configuration.
>
>
>> - Is there a way to enable it across all packages where I am listed
>> as an uploader in?
>>
>
> We have a section on README explaining how you can bulk import a list of
> repositories.
>
> https://salsa.debian.org/go-team/flight-deck#bulk-importing-multiple-repositories
>
> But for that you will need to manually get the list of packages you are
> uploader.
>
>
>> - Does it have any significant advantages over existing workflow?
>>
>
> Yes, the current workflow using dh-make-golang only creates the existing
> repository with
> team configuration but it does not keep it in sync, meaning that if someone
> decided to
> unprotect a branch dh-make-golang will not correct that.
>
> That's just one example but flight-deck can also help the team to manage
> repositories in
> scale, updating multiple repository configurations at once without having
> to maintain
> complex scripts.
>
>
>>
>> Unless I misunderstood, the eventual functionality is somewhat similar
>> to what one would achieve with dh-make-golang and existing tools in
>> devscripts, no?
>>
>
> No, I've explained in the previous paragraph but for full feature details
> check https://salsa.debian.org/go-team/flight-deck#features
>
>
>>
>> I don't have strong opinions about using or not using flight-deck (in fact
>> no strong opinions about anything-software in general) and I am all in for
>> giving
>> it a try. But I am a little reluctant to spend time on it unless there are
>> significant
>> benefits -- and I'd be happy to hear you.
>>
>
> I'm currently trying to improve the adoption and working on making the
> creating and importing repositories easier.
>
> I've launched a web interface yesterday to be able to create new
> repositories similar to dh-make-golang create-salsa-repo.
>
> https://flight-deck.debian.net
>
> This web interface will prepare the HCL file and automatically open a
> merge-request for you to review and merge.
>
> I'm now working on the import existing repositories feature for the web
> interface.
>
> Hope that will reduce the barrier and increase adoption.
>
>
>>
>> Also, just a suggestion: it would help if you describe the features first
>> and
>> how it works later in the readme. I ended up reading a bit of documentation
>> about opentofu which probably wasn't needed, but it never hurts to read
>> more :P
>>
>
> ACK
>
>
>>
>> And a couple of example commits (in the readme) on how to enable
>> it (on example packages) could be helpful.
>>
>> Thanks for your work,
>> Nilesh
>>
>
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