[Pkg-rust-maintainers] Override file format for debcargo

[Vasudev Kamath]

Ximin Luo <infinity0 at debian.org> writes:

> Vasudev Kamath:
>> [..]
>>>
>>> We'd also need recommends, suggests, etc etc.
>> 
>> OK alright I can work on that part. And also I'm not sure If I really
>> implemented applying dependency override. Its in override and parsed but
>> need to check if its applied.
>> 
>
> Ack, I'll remember to test this too.

OK.

>
>>>
>>> The various possible options should be documented somewhere.
>> 
>> Currently I'm using README.md for documenting various options. May be we
>> can utilize rust documentation feature.
>> 
>
> I noticed this after I wrote my email, so I take my comment back :)
> Either way sounds good to me, but if you have two copies then it's
> more work to keep it up-to-date.

Yep. Lets keep it in README.md for now and move it if it goes beyond our
control ;-).

>
>>> [..]
>>>
>>> When a user runs "debcargo package", they can optionally give it an
>>> overrides directory. Then we could:
>>>
>>> 1. apply debcargo.toml as an overrides file like you implemented already
>>> 2. then, use copyright and changelog *verbatim* from the overrides directory
>>> 3. then, append an entry onto the d/changelog
>> 
>> This sounds OK to me. Do you think its better if I could just drop
>> overriding copyright and changelog from override TOML file completely?.
>> It does not make sense to keep it if we go this way.
>> 
>
> Yes, that's what I meant. If we override d/changelog and d/copyright
> we don't need to support it in the overrides.toml, so we can remove
> all of that code.

OK I will start to work on this part.

>
>>> 4. then, autogenerate a copyright file, and put it in d/copyright.debcargo
>>> 5. then, download the older version of d/copyright.debcargo from the older debian package (or even autogenerate it from the older crate)
>>> 6. then, diff the old and new d/copyright.debcargo, and put it in
>>> d/copyright.debcargo.diff for the maintainer to review
>> 
>> I would rather depend on licensecheck and feature used in CDBS package
>> to generate copyright_hints instead. Idea is to avoid re-inventing
>> wheel. Use copyright file already provided by maintainer and then run
>> licensecheck with newer copyright to provide copyright_hints file which
>> can then be committed to version to detect only new stuffs.
>> 
>
> Using licensecheck sounds good to me. Though, you wrote some code in
> debcargo to do some specific copyright detection/guessing for rust git
> repos - it would be a shame to delete it, but I'm also not sure if
> it's appropriate to merge it into licensecheck because (a) it's in
> rust not perl and (b) it's only for rust git repos.

I think we can keep the git code as such and see how we can integrate
licensecheck in the procedure.

>
>>>
>>> The maintainer can then update d/copyright manually, update anything
>>> else, check it into VCS, and run "debcargo package" again. Because the
>>> current crate version is the same as what's in d/changelog, debcargo
>>> will know to skip steps (3-6).
>> 
>> May be if we utilize licensecheck then this part is not really needed I
>> guess.
>> 
>
> licensecheck is far from perfect so I think we have to assume a
> reasonable amount of manual maintenance will be required at least for
> some crates - the workflow I presented (diffing etc) is me trying to
> make a smooth process for this, automating away as much of the boring
> repetitive stuff as possible.

There is already code in CDBS which does what you suggested. It
generates copyright_hints and also displays the diff on to the screen.
Its not perfect I agree but its always helpful. I think we can see how
we can port that code from CDBS to our need.

PS: If you are interested you can pick one of my package and run
following command to see how it works.

DEB_MAINTAINER_MODE=1 fakeroot debian/rules pre-build

Though diff comes out only on importing new source.