tirex: git branch names (DEP14)? backports? combining upstream git history/repos?

[Amanda McCann]

Hello all,

In my day job at Geofabrik, I install tirex a lot. Picking up where Felix started, I'd like to package it better in Debian & Ubuntu. I've been learning how to package in Debian. I want to backport the latest tirex deb to a few versions of Ubuntu (& Debian 12 bookworm), which I've added to my debian salsa gitlab fork¹. How can I get those backports into the debian salsa git repo?

As well as debian using these backports, I suggest the tirex git repo to be more in line with DEP14² guides. Namely, rename the branches `master` on debian salsa to `debian/latest` & `upstream` to `upstream/latest`.

I also would like to merge the upstream git repo (the `main` branch) into the debian salsa upstream branch, so that the git histories are merged. This is mentioned in DEP14.

The main reason I want to rename & merge is convenience, so that I can keep everything in one repo, in one directory. Part of my recent work on tirex³ has been to align upstream tirex more with the debian package. This will make merging easier. On the upstream repo, some of the issues are about deb build failures⁴. If everything is in one repo, it's easier to solve these issues, by telling people about the relevant branch.

So, what do you think? Can we merge the git histories? (I can open a salsa gitlab merge request). What about the backports & the debian salsa branch names? What's the procedure for that?


¹ My debian salsa fork: <https://salsa.debian.org/amandasaurus/tirex>
² <https://wiki.debian.org/PackagingWithGit> & <https://dep-team.pages.debian.net/deps/dep14/>
³ <https://github.com/openstreetmap/tirex/pull/61>
⁴ (e.g. <https://github.com/openstreetmap/tirex/issues/58> & <https://github.com/openstreetmap/tirex/issues/55>)

tirex upstream repo: <https://github.com/openstreetmap/tirex>
tirex debian salsa: <https://salsa.debian.org/debian-gis-team/tirex>

-- Amanda