[Pkg-shadow-devel] out of my depth

[Serge E. Hallyn]

Quoting Mike Frysinger (vapier at gentoo.org):
> 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 :).

Great, thanks.

> 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

make dist created both gz and bz2.  I'll post the gz for now, and once
there is a patch to make 'make dist' produce xz i'll post those :)