Wookey writes ("Re: concerns about Salsa"): > Buildds don't run the packaged version either, and this contributes to > it being much harder than it should be to set up local buildd > infrastructure. There are good reasons for this from the admin's POV, > but the side-effects are signifcant and I'd like us to try harder to > use packaged stuff. > > But I've not done the necessary work myself, so can't really > complain. I just observe that it is a real issue for people setting up > their own CI infra. One day I may have the tuits to improve things in > this area (I plan to start retiring soon, which might help, or may > simply introduce different distractions :-)
Packages are great for software which you can just install and use without much fuss. That is often true for mature software. But for services which are less mature, and more complex, and which have more tentacles, the admin is likely to need to change things. This makes using packages awkward. I think that the right answer is not to spend heroic amounts of effort on packaging the unpackageable, shortening the deployment pipeline for packaged software on machines where the service admin doesn't have root, etc. etc. The right answer IMO is that every part of every Debian service which is not running a Debian packaged version, should make its own running source code available automatically. That is what I have done with git.dgit.d.o. Unfortunately even this seems to have been too much work for some teams, and I haven't had the effort to go to each of the relevant teams and add auto-source-publishing to their setup. I'm glad to see that the Salsa folks have done this, by having their system setup done by having a public ansible playbook do the deployment from the application software git repository which is itself public. So I guess what I am saying is that I applaud the Salsa team's approach in this area. They are demonstrating best practice: better than many teams in Debian, who are still running secret versions of their software. Ian. PS the word "dogfooding" is ridiculous. Our software is much better than dogfood. I prefer "champagning" - as in, Debian often drinks its own champagne. -- Ian Jackson <ijack...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> These opinions are my own. If I emailed you from an address @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk, that is a private address which bypasses my fierce spamfilter.