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

[Andreas B. Mundt]

Hi Afif,

On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 12:47:14AM -0700, Afif Elghraoui wrote:
> 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:
> >
[…]
> >> 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.

Perhaps it is possible to auto-generate the packages from the config
space?  Like fast development, testing and fixing with FAI and then
casting the final state into packages?

> 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.

Something like that would be great!  Most of the time developing and
keeping Debian-LAN up-to-date is preparing the VMs, running the
installations and manually checking logs.  And last not least testing
functionality.  Doing all that automatically would save a lot of
time.  I had a glance at https://jenkins.debian.net on a DebConf a few
years ago, but never followed up on it.

> >
> > 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.

Great.  Of course/if it is more comfortable/useful we can also add the
stuff to the existing Debian-LAN repository or next to it, depending
on the technical relations between the modules/packages.

OK, that sounds all very good.  I am looking forward to your work and
ideas!

Best regards,

     Andi