[Debian-olpc-devel] How can this be bypassed in the future? [Fwd: Your message to Debian-olpc-devel awaits moderator approval]

Jonas Smedegaard dr at jones.dk
Fri Aug 8 18:06:19 UTC 2008


[responding to list instead of privately!]

On Thu, Aug 07, 2008 at 06:44:04PM -0400, ffm wrote:
> Hey, I posted a patch to the -devel mailing list, is that the right place?
>
> It seems to have been held by the list software.
[snip]
>The reason it is being held:
>
>    Message body is too big: 858761 bytes with a limit of 40 KB

Yes - your patch is huge.

Which is showing that I/we really need to document better how the 
packaging is best done - cause I believe such big patches are not 
necessary, even when updating to new upstream source.


Looking over your patch (which was sent to me privately), it seems you 
used "git-import-orig" with no options except the new tarball.

What I do instead (which I notice now is not properly documented in 
README.Packaging) is to track upstream development in an "upstream-git" 
branch, and merge that with each of the "upstream" and "master" branches 
before importing new tarball.

Also, I use the --pristine-tar option to git-import-source to allow 
recreating a pristine tarball entirely from our Git. (this seems to not 
work correctly, actually, but that might be a problem later in the chain 
so I do it anyway).


This is more detailed how I currently syncronize with upstream:

   1. checkout upstream-git
   2. pull upstream master branch
   3. checkout upstream
   4. merge latest upstream release tag
   5. checkout master branch
   6. merge (again) latest upstream release tag
   7. add fake changelog entry for new release, with Debian revision 0
   8. temporarily comment out DEB_UPSTREAM_TARBALL_MD5 in debian/rules
   9. do "debian/rules get-orig-source"
  10. remember the MD5 hash
  11. reset temporary stuff with "git reset --hard HEAD"
  12. git-import-orig --pristine-tar --sign-tags
  13. move tarball from ../tarballs to .. (due to pristine-tar problem)
  14. adjust changelog entry (I dislike the all-initial-caps style)
  15. replace DEB_UPSTREAM_TARBALL_MD5 with remembered MD5 hash
  16. commit changelog and DEB_UPSTREAM_TARBALL_MD5 changes

This should result in the following changes:

On branch "upstream-git":
   * a bunch of changes... (step 2 above)

On branch "upstream":
   * upstream-git -> upstream merge (step 4 above)
   * diff between upstream-git and upstream tarball (step 12 above)

On branch "pristine-tar":
   * new pristine-tar binary diff (step 12 above)

Om branch "master":
   * upstream-git -> master merge (step 6 above)
   * new changelog entry and MD5 hash (step 15 above)

The changes to upstream-git should always be completely identical to 
upstream, so you should need only to pass on the changes from the other 
3 branches - a neat 5 small patches which I believe should make it below 
the 40Kb limit of this mailinglist (but haven't tried myself, so I could 
be wrong!)


I know, I know.  That's a hell of a lot of steps.  They really should be 
automated.  And you know what?  I am working on just that, initiated by 
your request for helping out here :-D

The above listing identifying what I actually do is part of that work. 
Attached is my current work on actual automation (implementing steps 
1-11 so far).  When polished some more, I intend to embed it in the CDBS 
snippets (by extending upstream-tarball.mk and possibly adding new 
upstream-git.mk or git.mk). But until then, have a look at my interim 
mksugarsync.sh.

Also attached is a couple of older scripts I use to initialize a Git 
environment for new packages.


>@@ -1,3 +1,9 @@
>+sugar (0.82.0-1) intrepid; urgency=low
>+
>+  * New Upstream Version
>+
>+ -- firefoxman <ffm at laptop.org>  Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:10:02 -0400


Using a pseudonym is perfectly fine.  But I do recall Vagrant mentioning 
a technical twist in that GPG does not play well with realnames lacking 
a lastname (so he invented the surname "Cascadian").  You should 
probably do the same (how about "iceweasel" as surname ;-) ).

I would really appreciate it if you create a PGP identity and sign all 
your Git commits.

If then later you want to reveal your real identity, you should be able 
to do that by creating a new identity and cross-sign with ultimate trust 
(indicating that the "old you" and the "new you" both claim to be 
eachother).  I am no GPG expert, so there might be more elegant ways - I 
just want to promote the use of it, even for your pseudonym.



Thanks alot for your interest in Sugar packaging here at Alioth!  As you 
can see, even if your current patch was not usable, you've helped expose 
the lack of documentation and triggered my work on fixing that.

Hope this was helpful to you.


Kind regards,

  - Jonas

P.S.

I am cc'ing you privately, ffm.  The reason is you did not respond to my 
last mail sent to the list, so I wondered if you are properly subscribed 
there yet?  Please do - or tell me if it somehow doesn't work, or if you 
for some reason deliberately avoid subscribing.

-- 
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

    [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
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