Hi all,
For those unfamiliar, 'debcheckout' is a tool in devscripts which is meant
to automate the traversal of Vcs-* metadata for Debian packages to let
developers check out the correct VCS repository for a package.
The 'debcheckout -a' option maps the Vcs-* fields to authenticated URLs for
known code hosting services, so that if you have commit access to the
repository, your checkout will be set up such that a push works out of the
box.
This is a useful tool in principle, and historically where packages were
maintained in Ubuntu we have taken care to populate Vcs-* fields in
debian/control to point to the right place.
The problem, from my perspective, is that I can't just trust 'debcheckout
-a' to do the right thing for me as an Ubuntu developer. I always have to
run 'apt-cache showsrc' first to check whether Vcs-* is pointing to a
suitable repo, to know whether I want to run 'debcheckout -a' or 'git-ubuntu
clone'.
I would like to fix this. I believe the desirable properties are:
- if I am running 'debcheckout -a' for a package that I have upload rights
on, I should get a checkout that I can push from, and the next Ubuntu
developer to do 'debcheckout -a' should see my changes, whether or not I
upload them to the archive
- if I do not have upload rights, running 'debcheckout -a' should give me a
checkout that shares commit history with the above, so that I can raise
sensible MPs
With the work on git-ubuntu support for staging branches happening this
cycle, git-ubuntu will soon satisfy this for the majority of packages in the
archive (but not yet). So I think the implementation we want - at the end
of this cycle - would be:
- if there is a Vcs-* field pointing to a repository in Launchpad, use that
- otherwise, call git-ubuntu clone
- if git-ubuntu clone fails (because the package is missing from the
importer), fall back to apt-get source
Now the reason I think this needs discussion before I just run off and
implement it is that I know some teams use ubuntu branches on
salsa.debian.org today for their work. But those repositories would be
unsuitable for the above workflow, because the ubuntu branch on salsa
doesn't know about Launchpad ~ubuntu-dev ACLs.
Do folks who use non-Launchpad repositories as the primary vehicle for their
packaging work mind if 'debcheckout -a' stops pointing at those
repositories? Should we add a new option to debcheckout ('--debian'?
'--upstream'?) to unconditionally follow the fields in debian/control?
Now, another place where the above implementation will give wrong results
today is that there are various Ubuntu-specific Vcs-* fields pointing at
launchpad branches that have effectively been abandoned and have not been
used for any recent uploads (stretching back for years). This is a problem
that can fix itself over time if more people are using debcheckout, as the
wrong metadata gets fixed - ideally, by grafting the repo history into the
git-ubuntu repos and then dropping the stale Vcs-* fields.
Cheers,
--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer https://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
