Re: Packaging of various XStatic dependencies for an eventual MoinMoin 2 package

[Thomas Goirand <zigo@debian.org>]

On 6/9/22 18:00, Paul Boddie wrote:
> Hello,
>
> For a while, some renewed attention has been directed towards packaging
> MoinMoin 2 ("Moin 2") for Debian, and we have identified a number of XStatic
> packages or modules that Moin 2 would need in order to be delivered as a
> Debian package itself:
>
> XStatic-AnyWikiDraw
> XStatic-autosize
> XStatic-CKEditor
> XStatic-jQuery-File-Upload
> XStatic-Pygments
> XStatic-svg-edit-moin
> XStatic-TWikiDraw-moin
>
> Since we have been a bit slow in getting going with our efforts, one of the
> previously unpackaged modules is now packaged for Debian:
>
> https://salsa.debian.org/openstack-team/xstatic/python-xstatic-jquery.tablesorter
>
> Having had to reacquaint myself with Debian packaging, I have been pursuing
> the packaging of some other software needed for Moin 2, attempting to follow
> the Debian Python Team guidelines, and so I just wanted to clarify any
> deviations from those guidelines when preparing packages that are more closely
> related to those maintained by the Debian OpenStack Team.
>
> For example, I see that the packaging repositories in Salsa do not employ an
> "upstream" branch, but I presume that the "master" branch is used for that
> purpose. There also does not appear to be usage of a "debian/master" branch.
> Not being familiar with OpenStack terminology, I can only assume that the
> branch naming follows OpenStack release names.
>
> It seems to me that if I and others were to start packaging the above modules,
> people in this part of the Debian community might have a stronger opinion
> about how this should be done. Such efforts also might complement (or
> conflict) with existing activities, and so it also seems reasonable to mention
> them here first. Maybe there are even plans to package some of this software
> already.
>
> In the first instance, I imagine preparing Debian packaging repositories and
> uploading them to the following location:
>
> https://salsa.debian.org/moin-team
>
> Any advice, guidance or other observations would be most helpful, particularly
> if it prevents us from going down the wrong path in some regard.
>
> Thanks for any help that can be offered!
>
> Paul

Hi Paul,

What we do in the OpenStack team, is that we package from git tag. This 
means that we do not use pristine-tar, and use a single Debian packaging 
branch.

Indeed, the branch names are according to the OpenStack branches. This 
is useful for us, because we have automation to build backports for 
every release of OpenStack (every 6 months), based on it.

The workflow to update a package is *very* efficient: that's in practice 
a way faster than if using upstream tarballs. Here's the list of commands:

# Fetches latest tag
./debian/rules fetch-upstream release
# Merge the tag in the packaging branch
git merge -X theirs <TAG_NAME>
# Edit changelog so it matches the new upstream tag
dch -i
# Generate the tarball using git-archive
./debian/rules gen-orig-xz

I'd prefer if you could package the XStatic package you mentionned in 
the moins-moins group. If you do, you don't really have to use the 
OpenStack packaging workflow. The only thing is, if one day, we need one 
of these XStatic packages, then maybe it'd be best to allow us to move 
them to the OpenStack team.

Your thoughts? Are the above explanations enough?

Cheers,

Thomas Goirand (zigo)