[Mageia-webteam] Proposal for maintainers database API

Tue Mar 8 03:53:11 CET 2011

+Here is a proposal for an API that can be used on the maintainers
+database, with the list of URLs and what they should do :
+
+***
+An html page with the list of all packages, and their maintainer :
+http://maintdb.mageia.org/packages.html
+As we have many packages, the page will be long, so maybe we want to
+split the list by first letter of package name :
+http://maintdb.mageia.org/packages_a.html
+http://maintdb.mageia.org/packages_b.html
+http://maintdb.mageia.org/packages_c.html
+...
+The list of all packages and their maintainers, in text format :
+http://maintdb.mageia.org/packages.txt
+With the output like this :
+package1:maintainerlogin1
+package2:maintainerlogin2
+package3:maintainerlogin3
+...
+
+***
+An html page to show the maintainer of one package (with
+[packagename] replaced with the name of a package) :
+http://maintdb.mageia.org/packages/[packagename].html
+The same in text format :
+http://maintdb.mageia.org/packages/[packagename].txt
+With output like this (only one line):
+packagename:maintainerlogin
+If the package is unmaintained, it appears like this :
+packagename:nobody
+If the package does not exist, an empty file is returned.
+
+***
+The list of maintainers (all maintainers who maintain at least one
+package) :
+http://maintdb.mageia.org/people.html
+
+***
+The list of packages maintained by someone (with [loginname] replaced by
+a login) :
+http://maintdb.mageia.org/people/[loginname].html
+And the same in text format :
+http://maintdb.mageia.org/people/[loginname].txt
+With the same format for output :
+package1:loginname
+package2:loginname
+package3:loginname
+...
+If the login does not exist, an empty file is returned.
+
+***
+The list of unmaintained packages :
+http://maintdb.mageia.org/people/nobody.html
+And the same in text format :
+http://maintdb.mageia.org/people/nobody.txt
+With this output :
+package1:nobody
+package2:nobody
+package3:nobody
+...
+
+***
+The URL to add a package, used by the buildsystem when a package is
+uploaded on the repository :
+https://maintdb.mageia.org/admin/setnewpackage
+Protected with basic http authentication (with a login/password that was
+set in maintdb or apache configuration).
+Accessed with a POST request and the following two arguments :
+package: [packagename]
+maintainer: [maintainername]
+If the package already exists in the database, it is not updated.
+
+***
+The same as the previous URL, but the package maintainer is updated when
+the package already exists in the database :
+https://maintdb.mageia.org/admin/setpackage
+
+---------
+
+Maintainers also need to be able to drop maintainership of their
+packages, and take maintainership of unmaintained packages. For doing
+this, I think there is two solutions :
+
+1) On the html pages, maintainers are able to authenticate using
+   their login and ldap password. When authenticated, the packages
+   maintained by nobody have a link "take maintainership". And the
+   packages maintained by the authenticated user have a link "drop
+   maintainership".
+
+2) The website does not allow changing maintainership. Instead, we add a
+   command in mgarepo to do it. And to do it, mgarepo connects to valstar,
+   is authenticated by ssh, and run a script on valstar to request the
+   change. This script has access to the admin password and will connect
+   to the "admin/setpackage" URL to update the package maintainer.
+
+I think the 2nd solution is better, because it allows scripting, for
+example to drop/take maintainership of all packages using a regexp.
+You manage maintainership using the same tool used to submit packages.
+And I think it's maybe less work to implement it as it avoids adding ldap
+authentication in maintdb, and creating pages to do the updates. Maybe
+we also don't need html pages at all in that case.
+
+And I think that's all we need for the first version.
+
+If we compare with the maintainers db website used at mandriva, their
+version also has :
+ - media name for each package, with pages to list packages from only
+   one media
+ - a search box to search for a package
+ - links to bugzilla for each package
+But I don't think we should store the media name in maintdb. And to
+search for packages, see media names, find bugs, we should use sophie
+or mageia-app-db instead. Actually users who want to see the maintainers
+of packages should probably also use mageia-app-db or sophie.
+
+maintdb should mainly be used in the following cases :
+ - by sophie, mageia-app-db and other package databases which want to show
+   maintainers of packages. They download the full list of packages and
+   maintainers every day (or hours) from the text file, to synchronize
+   with their database.
+ - by bugzilla if we want to assign bugs automatically to maintainer
+ - by build system or svn, for example if we want to send emails to package
+   maintainers when someone else commits to their packages
+ - by other tools which may need it ...
+
+
+
+For version 2 or later, we can also have those features :
+ - a changelog page, to see who took/dropped maintainership of which
+   packages. Maybe with an rss too. And a text files containing the
+   changes from the last 2 days (to avoid downloading the full list, if
+   you only want to synchronise).
+ - an URL to remove package (with admin password):
+   https://maintdb.mageia.org/admin/removepackage
+ - maybe support for groups and/or multiple maintainers
+
+For groups, we'll first have to see where we want to store them. But
+for the maintdb text output, we could use something like this :
+package1:maintainer1,maintainer2,maintainer3
+package2:%group1
+package3:%group2,maintainer4
+...
+
+And with the following pages to list packages maintained by a group :
+http://maintdb.mageia.org/groups/groups/[groupname].html
+http://maintdb.mageia.org/groups/groups/[groupname].txt
+
+
+