[DRE-maint] Regarding your comment in my blog (re: Ruby Gems)

[Richard Hurt]

Not to add any fuel to this fire, but I have a couple of more  
questions/comments.  :)

On Dec 11, 2008, at 1:43 PM| Dec 11, 2008, Gunnar Wolf wrote:

>>  - Is there any thought around moving to Git?
>
> I am also a recent svn->git convert, however, I do see a fundamental
> difference here: pkg-ruby-extras group works doing integration of many
> different projects. Although our repository is not _that_ big, it is
> very well suited to Subversion - much better than to git. They are
> related to each other:
>
> - It consists of many projects. Git does not implement partial
>  checkouts - If I wanted to work on packaging libsomething-ruby, I
>  can just check out
>  svn+ssh://svn.debian.org/svn/pkg-ruby-extras/packages/libsomething- 
> ruby.
>  With git, I'd have to check out the whole repository.

Not really, a Git repository can be as small as you want.  So instead  
of one SVN repository with multiple modules, we would have several Git  
repositories.
>
> - We build using svn-buildpackage, which works very well on this
>  multi-package tree - As it builds on the SVN paradigm where any
>  subtree can be independently checked out. Now, I have also become a
>  fan of git-buildpackage... But it is a tool aimed to one package per
>  repository. And makes sense - In SVN, each branch is a directory, so
>  we can just move them to wherever we want in a larger tree. In Git,
>  that would make no sense.
>
> Now, of course, several courses of action could solve this... i.e. we
> could create a skeleton outer tree just linking to each of the
> subtrees via git submodules... But I do feel that to be overkill.
>
Ultimately, its not that big of a deal.  I was thinking that it might  
make it easier to use Git if everyone else (in Debian) was using it.   
The only thing that bugs me about SVN are the .svn directories it puts  
everywhere, but thats no reason to uproot and change everything.  Keep  
SVN, I'm fine with it.

>>  - Why are we still using mailman and not something more flexible?
>
> More flexible? In what way?
>
> This group has little interaction either over the lists or over IRC
> (although they are quite important, precisely for idea interchanges
> such as the one I want here ;-) )... What tool would you find better
> suited than mailman?

Again, mailman seems to work OK for everyone and while I like to keep  
things out of my mailbox, others don't work that way.  I'm fine with  
that.
>
>
>>  - How can we make it easier to onboard people and projects?
>
> Well... What have you found to be hard? ;-) Yes, I know that Debian's
> ways are quite different to much of the ruby community, and I expect
> both projects to remain quite different for a long time... And there
> will always be a cultural divide. But I hope it won't be too big.

This is where I have large problems with our (& Debian's) community.   
There is almost no information on how to package a Ruby (or other  
scripting) program for Debian.  Almost everything I've ever found  
about Debian packaging centers around compiling programs.  Everything  
centers around building, compiling, linking, etc. and when you don't  
do any of those things it gets very confusing and hard to extract the  
information you need from the documentation.  To top it off there are  
a multitude of programs out there that do almost the same thing: what  
is the difference between pdebuild and debuild, and which one is  
better for building Ruby packages?

I think that if we gave the Ruby developers a way to easily package  
their stuff for Debian they would do so in a heartbeat.  Heck, just  
writing down a clear, concise list of what you need and the steps you  
need to go through would be a great thing.  Even a sample package to  
download and play with would be a start.  And once you have a package  
what do you do with it?  Upload it to your own server or some central  
server?  Since Ruby packaging is still pretty new do we want to  
discuss it here before sending it "upstream" to the normal Debian  
packagers?  Even if I wanted to build packages for Debian, it seems  
like everything is working against me.  Maybe I'm just not bright  
enough to understand the whole process or something...
>
>
>> BTW: I am still working on getting Redmine packaged up but it seems
>> like there is not much Ruby action happening on Debian lately (at
>> least there are no SVN commits).  One real reason I haven't been to
>> active lately is that I don't want to get in front of Lenny.  I  
>> figure
>> people are too busy trying to get a release out the door to bother
>> them with a new RoR package.  :/
>
> Hey, please go on! It won't bother Lenny, as it is not touching
> anything already inside. I'm a bit ashamed that I told you "go on"
> before and then disappeared... But anyway, please bug me if you need
> anything. We _do_ want Redmine!

On that note I have packaged up Redmine 0.8.0-RC1 and it is ready for  
you guys to take a look at[1].  It has been placed on my server for  
your convenience.  Please check it out and let me know what you think.

Problem areas include:
  - There are several lintian overrides for empty directories.  These  
are for things like sweepers and plugins and I'm not sure what to do  
with them.
  - There are several lintian overrides for script-not-executable  
problems.  Upstream says that these are not really made to be run by  
users but are called from internal code.
  - The copyright file is pretty complex but I am using the new  
proposed standard to try and make it machine readable.  Is there an  
automated way to check this?
  - This is my first package for anything so it's probably really  
broken in a lot of ways.  Please let me know a better way to do  
something.

Thanx!
   Richard

[1] http://update.kangaroobox.com/remote/redmine/