[Mageia-dev] Distributed packaging for a community distro

Sun Sep 19 11:32:33 CEST 2010

Hello,
+There is no better time than now, to lay good foundations for the new distro. 
+Among those, to choose the right tools to work with.
+
+Obviously, I'd like to bring back the issue of using *git* for Mageia.
+
+It is not a new idea. My argument against mandriva has long been that it had 
+been a bad idea to have a centralized, closed repo for packaging. It was a bad 
+idea that anybody would need an account to practically contribute to the 
+distro. You may notice that the scripts are now 1.5yr old.
+
+Here is a synopsis of the suggestion:
+ - We are decentralized. Anybody can easily clone the necessary (not big) 
+repos and try packaging things. If they have anything useful, they contribute 
+it back by any means, to the core team. All this, with minimal 
+resources/effort.
+ - No need for a central, huge, server to support the distro.
+ - Have *per package* git repositories that will contain the upstream source + 
+mageia extensions, patches, specs. Sometimes they may even be identical to the 
+upstream or simply branches in their git repos.
+ - Have one "master" repository, where each package will be a git /submodule/. 
+The "master" repo may even contain some trivial distro-packaging stuff, like 
+the release notes etc. Not more than that, however. Practically, the master 
+repo will be a few MBytes in size, with all history, Mandriva pre-history etc. 
+Easy to clone.
+ - Package repos could be hosted all over the internet. Git hashes make sure 
+we have the exact versions that the core team has approved.
+ - If needed, the build services can rebuild what the contributors submit, by 
+hash. 
+ - Working with source trees instead of patch sets means upstream projects 
+will have easy access to our work (=improvements). We thus collaborate better 
+with the projects, keep closer to upstream.
+ - Other distros may use the same system (Debian, to some extent, already 
+does) and share with Mageia.
+
+Cons:
+ - People w/o git experience will need a few days to familiarize themselves 
+with Git. (it is worth it, IMHO).
+ - We will need to add 3-4 lines per .spec . One time only, forever. (then we 
+forget about changelogs, touching specs for %version-%release etc).
+
+http://git.hellug.gr/?p=xrg/gitscripts;a=summary
+http://git.hellug.gr/?p=xrg/tar;a=commitdiff;h=3e690d39faa72652a6f46
+
+
+
+-- 
+Say NO to spam and viruses. Stop using Microsoft Windows!
+