[linuxkernelnewbies] vcs-pkg

[Peter Teoh]

http://vcs-pkg.org/ vcs-pkg Edit RecentChanges History Preferences ?Discussion Charter The aim of the vcs-pkg project is to investigate the use of version control for distro package maintenance. We bring together people interested in taking the next step in distro package maintenance: the proper integration of version control into the package maintenance workflow. This effort originated in the bowels of the Debian project, but it’s not specific to Debian. The cross-distro aspect of vcs-pkg is its most powerful aspect. Maintainers of a specific package in all distros basically have the same task. We could benefit from each other if we joined forces: less workload, improved access to patches in use by other distros, more structured communication, a wider spread of innovation, etc.. A lot of Debian is already using version control for the task, but everyone cooked up something of their own, more or less. We think the situation is similar in the other distros: the current approach to package maintenance doesn’t scale too well, given today’s needs (teams, offline work, increasing number of users and increased use of the bug trackers), and discussions of how to improve things are on the way, but have not yet carried fruit. Why not approach the challenge together? Our goal is to integrate version control with distro package maintenance. We want to recognise all involved in the process, from upstream, the package maintainers of the various distributions, their security and release teams, and power users, who aren’t afraid to fix their own bugs, and give maximum flexibility to them. vcs-pkg is (D)VCS-agnostic, and it’d be ideal if it stayed that way. However, part of what we do is comparing version control systems and assessing their merits, and one tool may outperform the others. We want to avoid the religious wars of version control and instead argue technically and sensibly about their individual advantages and shortcomings in the context of distro package maintenance. A desired output could be a VCS-agnostic wrapper of the concepts involved in maintaining and developing a distro package of an existing software. Resources mailing list (archived and also on gmane) vcs-pkg people planet (blog aggregator) IRC channel: #vcs-pkg/irc.debian.org list receiving commit messages Browse this web site’s Git repository (clone links are to be found there) Links General stuff: Thoughts on consolidating packaging workflows across distros Reasons for pushing patches upstream LWN.net coverage of Jeff’s “Disintermediating Distributions” talk at LCA 2008 Tools: pristine-tar, a tool to make it possible to store/extract pristine (original) tarballs in/from a Git repository (blog post). bzr-loom, a bzr-plugin to work with multiple patches/branches at once (HOWTO, discussion). TopGit, a tool to manage patch queues with inter-patch dependencies (announcement, README, Debian package, description of Debian packaging approach) Conary and a discussion of how it relates to vcs-pkg. Another discussion on #conary Project-Builder, a tool to create packages from an upstream VCS (CVS or SVN at the moment) or upstream tar files for multiple distributions (using Virtual QEMU machines or pbuilder/mock in future version) using configuration file managed in a VCS. Other lists: distributi...@freedesktop (see this post about how it’s related to vcs-pkg) desktop_archite...@linux-foundation, although that’s only marginally related. Related sites: Distributed bug tracking systems, a sister site dedicated to to investigating and developing distributed bug tracking systems. Admin: vcs-pkg Alioth project Debian, Ubuntu Source packages and VCS: Suggestion how to use VCS to replace package uploads in Debian How Ubuntu wants to get/has gotten rid of source packages and their previous approach, which is not entirely obsolete yet. Joey Hess’ evolutionary source package format based on Git The W&P specification (outdated) and latest status “dpkg-source’s future and relation with VCS” thread on debian-d...@lists.debian.org (massive) thread on the handling of patches in response to the OpenSSL fiasco, and lwn.net coverage. Thanks, Jonathan! Workflows: madduck’s Git-based packaging workflow described and an offer for an online tutorial How to convert an SVN-maintained package to madduck’s Git workflow Cate’s brainstorm on how to use Git for Debian packaging madduck’s LCA 2008 presentation of his workflow: slides, video Pierre’s FOSDEM 2008 presentation of his workflow: slides, video madduck’s DebConf8 presentation of a TopGit-using workflow: slides, video Tools: debcheckout, a tool to obtain the sources from VCS for any Debian package, manpage, introductory blog post, and blog post about new features unperish (homepage), a tool for building, testing, and publishing a software release git-buildpackage and a bit of a how-to use it, as well as its manual gitpkg darcs-buildpackage and a bit of a how-to use it hg-buildpackage (which has been orphaned) bzr-builddeb debnest Fedora / RedHat Doug Ledford’s homepage, with thoughts on using VCS as an alternative to SRPMs Plague, Fedora’s distributed package build system How Fedora want to use VCS for packaging and their architecture draft How to use VCS for packaging in Fedora FAQ ?make-srpm-tool cvs exporter for producing generic srpm’s from VCS repositories Last edited Tue 16 Dec 2008 07:40:46 UTC