Re: Some packaging questions

[Otto Kekäläinen <otto@debian.org>]

I don't have the answer to all your questions, but I wanted to comment
that having reverse dependency builds enabled permanently in CI is
considered abuse of Salsa CI runner resources. If you encounter
permanently enabled rdeps in Node JS team packages, I suggest you
remove them.

When using the Salsa CI provided build reverse dependencies jobs, note
that they  are **disabled**, by default. It is recommended to run
these jobs **on demand** only, for specific pipelines. There are a
couple of ways to do it:

* From the Salsa web UI:

  1. Open `https://salsa.debian.org/<project>/-/pipelines/new`
  2. Scroll down to **Variables**
  3. Find the entry for `SALSA_CI_DISABLE_BUILD_REVERSE_DEPENDENCIES`
  4. Change its value from `1` (default, disabled) to `0` (on-demand enabled)

* From the command line when `git push`ing:

  ```bash
  git push -o ci.variable="SALSA_CI_DISABLE_BUILD_REVERSE_DEPENDENCIES=0"
  ```

This way, build reverse dependencies jobs are enabled only when you
choose to run them, avoiding unnecessary load on the Salsa
infrastructure.


See also https://lists.debian.org/debian-js/2025/09/msg00004.html