[Mageia-dev] RFC: Opening Backports (once again...)

[Anssi Hannula]

On 06.12.2011 00:56, Thomas Backlund wrote:
> 
> Now,
> 
> here comes the question about backports once again.
> 
> We are now 6+ months into Mageia 1, and we are nowhere closer to opening
> backports that we were at Mageia 1 release time.
> 
> Because of that there are 3rdparty repos popping up everywhere...,
> something we hoped to avoid atleast partly when starting this project.
> 
> And at current rate we will probably release Mageia "infinity"
> before backports is opened.
> 
> 
> It has been delayed because of needed infrastructure changes,
> something no-one have had time to do so far...
> 
> I know there is "only some coding missing" and "someone should
> do it", buth truthfully there are only a few that knows the
> code used in the buildsystem enough to actually make it happend,
> and they are already othervise busy or overloaded...
> (this is no rant against them, as all here are using their
>  personal free time to help out)

The biggest problem for me is that it is really difficult to test any
changes, one'd need a mockup of the whole buildsystem... and I don't
want to propose any patches blind :)

> And to be honest I dont see that changing anytime soon...
> 
> 
> So here is a suggestion to get some value to our endusers:
> 
> we add a backports branch on svn
> 
> So packages for backports would use:
> 
> svn.mageia.org/packages/backports/1/<package>/{current,pristine,releases}
> 
> and allow that to be used for backports.
> 
> Using a separate branch is also a cleaner way of providing
> backports, and makes it easy to separate changes needed only
> for Cauldron (or backports).

Hm, how does this help with enabling backports (i.e. compared to simply
using cauldron repo)?

Anyway, would the above branch work like this:

e.g. lets imagine I want to, in order:
1. provide foobar 1.1 to backports.
2. cauldron foobar upgraded to 1.2, some patches added, some removed,
   and other changes
3. provide foobar 1.2 to backports
4. 1.3 to cauldron and backports

To backport foobar 1.1, I guess I'd simply do
  svn copy svn+ssh://svn.mageia.org/svn/packages/cauldron/foobar \
           svn+ssh://svn.mageia.org/svn/packages/backports/1/foobar
and then the submit command.

When time comes to provide foobar 1.2 to backports, the options are:
Option 1:
  svn del svn+ssh://svn.mageia.org/svn/packages/backports/1/foobar
  svn copy svn+ssh://svn.mageia.org/svn/packages/cauldron/foobar \
           svn+ssh://svn.mageia.org/svn/packages/backports/1/foobar
  and submit. Changelog is the same as in cauldron.

Option 2:
  svn checkout \
    svn+ssh://svn.mageia.org/svn/packages/backports/1/foobar/current \
    foobar
  cd foobar && svn merge -r prevrev:HEAD \
	svn+ssh://svn.mageia.org/svn/packages/cauldron/foobar/current
  svn commit
  # copy all the log entries from the cauldron interval to the log msg
  and submit.
  Note: results in broken changelogs unless one does manual
  markreleases, but changelogs are already broken both in mga1 updates
  and in cauldron (youri issue [1]). This is more notable here, though,
  as backports happen generally more often multiple times than updates.

Repeat with 1.3.

Correct?

[1] https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2633

-- 
Anssi Hannula