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

[Sebastiaan Couwenberg]

On 9/18/24 1:54 PM, Amanda McCann wrote:
> 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?

It depends on the nature of those backports. If those are unofficial backports for the geofabrik repo, they should use an appropriate prefix like those for UbuntuGIS and OSGeoLive:

  https://debian-gis-team.pages.debian.net/policy/repositories.html#other-git-branches

The geofabrik/ prefix is an obvious choice for your unofficial backports.

Official backports require firm commitment for the entire support lifetime of those distribution releases. If you are serious about helping to maintain the tirex package in Debian and Ubuntu, you need to follow the appropriate procedures.

For Debian that means you need to read: https://backports.debian.org/Contribute/

I can sponsor uploads to bookworm-backports as well as to unstable.

As Canonical doesn't pay me to care about Ubuntu, I won't comment on their procedures. But triaging bugs and providing SRUs is very welcome as pretty much all packages of ours are in universe and therefor effectively unmaintained in Ubuntu.

> 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`.

We won't be adopting DEP14 as that requires changing far too many repositories.

> 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.

That won't happen either. We stick to importing tarballs in the upstream branch as we want our commits to focus on the Debian packaging changes, and not have the history cluttered with upstream commits.

> 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.

You adopt DEP14 and any other changes in the upstream tirex repo, we will keep using the repo on Salsa for the package maintained in Debian.

You can then cherry-pick changes from the salsa remote to incorporate changes from the package in Debian into the upstream packaging for 3rd party repos and such.

> 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?

Merge requests quickly become unsuitable. They're fine for providing a single patch, but not so much for more in depth collaboration.

Backports and branch names are documented in our team policy, you should always consult when working in this team:

  https://debian-gis-team.pages.debian.net/policy/

Also note the contact information on parent site:

"
  debian-gis at lists.debian.org
      for internal communication as well as the contact place for others;
      mailing list subscription and archives are on lists.debian.org
  [...]
  pkg-grass-devel at lists.alioth.debian.org
      for the Maintainer field and the automatic mails related to that;
      mailing list subscription and archives are on lists.alioth.debian.org
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https://debian-gis-team.pages.debian.net/

This mailing list is mostly for automated mails sent to the Maintainer address of our packages, debian-gis at l.d.o is for communications amongst humans.

Kind Regards,

Bas

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