The state of the package, and where we go from here

[James Westby]

On (25/11/06 18:00), Wouter van Heyst wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 23, 2006 at 09:00:41PM +0000, James Westby wrote:
> I haven't made use of the code a python developer yet, just browsing
> through it and end-user use of bzr-builddeb. Something like the bzrlib
> api promises may be too heavy-weight, someone who has a vested in the
> api not changing under their feet should speak up.

I'd also be interested to hear if we have any API users. It would
certainly be good so that we can warn them if things are going to
change, and try and provide features that they want.

> > I think dato had some ideas on this, and I am reluctant to do too much
> > with the package in his absence, but we can at least do something useful
> > with this code that we have.
> 
> Did dato leave some sort of vision in what direction to go, or can we
> contact him?

He didn't really leave a vision, there are a few hints in the ITP 

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2006/08/msg00274.html

and he did mention that he had different ideas to me. As for contacting
him I'm not sure about that.

> > As for infrastructure/colloboration type things I would like to know
> > what you think.
> > 
> > We have 3 lists discuss, maint and commits, I think the purposes are
> > pretty clear. I'll see about setting up the commits list at some point.
> 
> I'm only on -discuss atm, do we need the others yet?

The package has just been uploaded with -maint as the maintainer. You
can subscribe there if you want to try and help deal with the flood of
bug reports I'm sure we will receive.

-commits is dead at the moment. In fact you'll know better than me how
to get it going. I haven't ever used hooks from bzr yet.

Enrico, could Wouter be added to the alioth group please? His account is 
larstiq-guest.

> > As for collaboration I am happy for you to change whatever you want
> > really. I would really appreciate people updating debian/copyright (and
> > the files themselves) if you make a significant contribution to someone
> > elses work (including the packaging).
> > 
> > My changelog.py is only used by bzr-builddeb as far as I know. So I
> > would at least like a notice if you change the API so that I can update
> > it. I would also like if big changes were discussed on the mailing list
> > first, and a consensus could be reached on where to go. It's probably
> > not that important with a small code base, but I think it's good to get
> > in to good habits. 
> 
> With the decentral nature of bzr anyone can go ahead and make changes as
> they like, but certainly for pushing to bzr.debian.org I'd suggest
> people communicate first, untill there is a team that has a good idea of
> what everyone is up to and enough confidence to just go ahead.

It sounds like a very good idea to me. We've already had John working on
changelog.py on his own branch, and I'll make sure to look over the
changes and merge something soon.

Everyone should also feel free create a subdir in the bzr repository and
push any branches there should they feel the need.

On another note, I think there are two things we can do with the
package,

  1) Provide a uniform and clean API for manipulating Debian related
     data. I think this will come with time. I personally haven't looked
     over the rest of the code yet to see how it does it's stuff. I also
     think I'll benifit from learning from the people involved that can
     actually code python.

  2) Add more capablities. With deb822 and changelog we can access a lot
     of data from a source package. With debtags we have full access to
     that data. python-apt covers a lot of other things. It would be
     interesting to find what other formats we can add modules for.

Cheers,

James

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