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

Tue Dec 6 00:29:03 CET 2011

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
+