[Pkg-xen-devel] debian-xen git workflow

[Ian Jackson]

Hans van Kranenburg writes ("debian-xen git workflow"):
> I'd appreciate if you just would let me do this for a while and see what
> track record we achieve while rolling forward.

OK.

> The rest of this wall of text is a collection of thoughts and things
> that happened in the last months. Feel free to read or ignore (but not
> ask questions which are answered here already) or let me know how I
> could have provided the same information using less words.
> 
> -------- >8 --------

I have read everything you wrote.  Thanks for the writeup.  I will
only reply to the bits I had any kind of comment on:

...
> But, I quickly ran into a set of problems and inconveniences:
>  * git-pbuilder can't handle the git-attributes replacement magic when
> creating an orig tar, so it always ends up with a failing build because
> of unexpected upstream changes. I couldn't figure out a way to work
> around this.

The gitattributes are very annoying.  My approach with the security
releases has been to (i) completely disable them (ii) generate my own
orig tarballs using appropriate `git archive' runes.

>  * Having the upstream source attached to the packaging is not a good
> match for the parallel-development style repo that Xen upstream has.
> There is no path forward from e.g 4.10-stable to 4.11. Merge commits of
> upstream source make wip-rebasing, branching and merging of packaging
> changes between versions very awkward, noisy and highly meaningless.

I have a new tool (`git-debrebase') in development which may make some
of this easier, but I don't get the impression that you want to be an
early adopter of novel git tools, so think it would be best for you to
avoid it until it's more mature.

> It was only in March 2018 when I learned about the dgit system and
> discovered the part of the packaging for the current Stretch release.
> However, after playing around for a few hours with dgit, I wasn't able
> to construct a local repository which made much sense. What I ended up
> with was multiple initial commits and unrelated branches based without
> finding out how to combine them into a meaningful history.

The stretch branches are not in a very convenient state for anyone but
the most hardcore git expert.  My apologies for that.

> Let useful discussions continue, but aside from that, I would really
> like to end up with an upload of Xen 4.10 to Debian Unstable soon.

Yes.

Regards,
Ian.

-- 
Ian Jackson <ijackson at chiark.greenend.org.uk>   These opinions are my own.

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