[Pkg-shadow-devel] out of my depth

[Mike Frysinger]

On Thu, Dec 1, 2016 at 2:49 PM, Serge E. Hallyn wrote:
> Quoting Mike Frysinger (vapier at gentoo.org):
>> On Thu, Dec 1, 2016 at 8:57 AM, Bálint Réczey wrote:
>> > 2016-12-01 8:25 GMT+01:00 Mike Frysinger:
>> >> On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 6:45 PM, Bálint Réczey wrote:
>> >>> 2016-11-27 9:02 GMT+01:00 Mike Frysinger:
>> >>>> On 25 Nov 2016 13:42, Serge E. Hallyn wrote:
>> >>>>> On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 02:23:56AM +0100, Bálint Réczey wrote:
>> >>>>> > Please don't use make dist.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Huh.  That's the first time I've heard that suggestion.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> it's a bad suggestion in this case.  some people try to be super strict
>> >>>> in that the releases are always reproducible from git.  while that might
>> >>>> work for some projects, it doesn't for ones that use a generated build
>> >>>> system like autotools.  in order to pull it off, you'd have to actually
>> >>>> commit the generated output (e.g. "configure" and "config.h.in" and all
>> >>>> the rest) to git which is an even worse idea.
>> >>>
>> >>> I may not have been clear enough, but I had no intention to suggest
>> >>> storing generated files in git. This would be a bad idea. I would like to ask
>> >>> for basing the Debian package on a tarball _not_ containing generated
>> >>> files such as Makefile.in.
>> >>
>> >> i have no opinion at all how Debian wants to maintain their .deb sources
>> >
>> > This thread was about that question.
>>
>> no, this thread was about including gmo files in the dist tarball.  it
>> then spiraled into the weeds with people giving bad advice for how to
>> do a release.
>>
>> >>> Reviewing changes when autogenerated files pollute the diff is harder
>> >>> and shadow is an important package.
>> >>
>> >> yes, but as a general thing, always rebuilding autotools from scratch
>> >> is kind of wasteful and can be a pain when the sources aren't kept up
>> >> to date (and you try to use newer autotools which have new
>> >> warnings/errors).  i'm not familiar with how Debian typically builds
>> >> things though, so maybe that's "normal".
>> >>
>> >>>> so when making shadow releases, you should be using `make distcheck`.
>> >>>> you can then attach the tarball to the github page under the releases
>> >>>> section.
>> >>>
>> >>> Why? Who can't use the git archive output?
>> >>
>> >> forcing all users of shadow to build autotools from scratch is
>> >> fundamentally wrong.  it defeats the entire purpose of autotools.  if
>> >> *you* don't want to use them, then fine, don't, but Debian is not the
>> >> entire ecosystem.
>> >
>> > Please open an issue at upstream if you really need ./configure
>> > generated for you:
>> > https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow
>>
>> opening a bug report for an issue that can't be solved by a
>> creating&pushing a commit won't help.  the release process here is
>> broken and that's external to the code in git.
>
> I've uploaded a new tarball and signature to
>         http://people.ubuntu.com/~serge-hallyn/shadow-4.4
> (just to not pollute github right now).  Could you take a look and tell
> me whether that looks ok to you?

running a few sanity tests on it looks good.  there's a few build
errors, but it's unrelated to the packaging tarball, so i'll send PRs
for them :).

while we're looking at this, how do people feel about dropping bzip2
and moving to xz instead ?  some larger projects (like everyone hosted
on kernel.org) have opted to only release gzip (for legacy/wide
compatibility) & xz (for smaller size) now and no longer post bz2's.
-mike