[debpool] Possible use of git for debpool?

[Andres Mejia]

On Jan 3, 2008 9:05 AM, Magnus Holmgren <holmgren at lysator.liu.se> wrote:
> On onsdagen den 2 januari 2008, Andres Mejia wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I was wondering if debpool would benefit more with being hosted using
> > git instead of SVN. One of the things I here about using git is the
> > ease of merging between branches that it provides. Any thoughts?
>
> That's probably true, but I'd like to try Mercurial someday too. It's also
> quite popular, as I understand it.

Ok, we could use an hg repository for debpool, but I don't think it
will be a good idea, at least if we want to attract more support for
debpool. Right now it seems that it's only you and me that have an
interest in debpool. Here's my thoughts.

I would like to use the {hg,git,<etc>}-buildpackage tools to continue
building packages. I'm not familiar with mercurial or hg-buildpackage,
but I already see some issues with using hg-buildpackage over
{git,svn}-buildpackage. For instance hg-buildpackage doesn't make use
of a config file, like svn-buildpackage does with
~/.svn-buildpackage.conf. I find this limiting as there's no way to
specify common options that I use. hg-buildpackage needs an
environment variable DBP_BUILDER to use another command besides the
default it specifies, which is debuild. Using pdebuild is a must for
me, even with trivial packages, so having to keep specifying
DBP_BUILDER would be annoying. I know I could write my own script for
this, but I don't see why I have to. Then there's the issue of passing
common options along. hg-buildpackage just passes all options to
debuild or DBP_BUILDER, meaning I have to keep typing each option
everytime I use hg-buildpackage. Again, I know I could write my own
script, I just don't want to have to. And what if I want to pass along
more or less options to my DBP_BUILDER? Do I have to write my own
complicated scripts or write a script for each DBP_BUILDER or option I
may use? Sure I could write them, but I don't want to. It means time
and effort that could have been better spent elsewhere. I'm sure other
users will feel the same way.

Actually the option problem is also a problem I find using the other
*-buildpackage tools as well, but I have an idea of how to get them
fixed for the other tools (besides hg-buildpackage). svn-buildpackage
is in perl, git-buildpackage is in python, but hg-buildpackage is
written in C. Yet another issue with hg-buildpackage.

-- 
Regards,
Andres Mejia