[debian-lan-devel] Maintaining Debian LAN as a set of packages

[Afif Elghraoui]

Hi, Andi,

على الثلاثاء 16 آب 2016 ‫09:38، كتب Andreas B. Mundt:
> On Fri, Aug 12, 2016 at 11:23:21PM -0700, Afif Elghraoui wrote:
>> على الجمعـة 12 آب 2016 ‫04:22، كتب Andreas B. Mundt:
> 
[...]
>>>  Then, it should be
>>> flexible, because in my experience there are so many use cases and
>>> network installations, people need to be able to modify it by simple
>>> means.
>>
>> Agreed. I thought with a set of packages, the default configuration is
>> provided as a set of packages implementing the configuration you have
>> now. Anyone intending to change a certain aspect can change the package
>> source (without needing to make a new one).
> 
> But that means, even for a minimal modification or a test, the package
> needs to be built again, right?
> 

Yes, that's true, but I think this is an advantage because even minimal
modifications can break things. The package build makes sure that
transformations apply successfully, and other checks could be made to
run during the build. In any case, package building is very quick since
there is nothing to compile. I'm planning to add a top-level makefile
with targets to build and upload packages, which can streamline this
process.

Another bonus would be the ability to locally run something like debci
for the system configuration. I understand that autopkgtest supports
nested VMs now, so administrators might be able to do integration tests
of all of their Debian-LAN based configuration this way.

> 
> This morning, I read a bit about the 'history' of the problem, starting
> with some links Jonas' provided, and I had a quick look at Debathena
> and the config-package-dev package.  I am currently not sure how to
> continue best, and as I am in the process of moving to another
> country, time is limited on my side.  My focus for the next months
> will lie on fixing the current Debian-LAN for stretch.

No problem. I wasn't expecting you to do anything for this without me
having shown that it's viable yet--and definitely not before the stretch
freeze.

>  However, I
> appreciate your ideas very much.  Please keep us up to date with
> thoughts and results you encounter during the proof-of-concept.
> 

Will do. For anyone who wants to see, I'll be working with a set of
repositories under
<https://anonscm.debian.org/git/users/afif/debian-lan>. I have some more
stuff locally than what is currently there, but that is the expected
destination for all this work.

regards
Afif

-- 
Afif Elghraoui | عفيف الغراوي
http://afif.ghraoui.name