On Fri, 12 Apr 2024 at 17:17, Simon Richter <s...@debian.org> wrote: > > Hi, > > On 13.04.24 00:19, Marc Haber wrote: > > >> 'Require' is probably the wrong word. I simply have heard from several > >> potential young contributors that they feel blocked by the tooling and > >> specifically not everything in Git. > > > That does not only apply to young contributors. I am an old fart and I > > still shy back from packages where I need to familiarize myself with > > an uncommon packaging toolchain. > > We cannot help people who want Debian packaging to work like Git, > because Git is not a packaging tool, and neither are the forges. > > We're not even doing anyone a favour by introducing the git based > workflows first, because about half of the techniques people know from > git will conflict with something git-buildpackage or dgit does, and > without a mental model of how Debian packaging is supposed to work > standalone, they have no chance of solving even the simplest problem. > > For example, any repository that does not list debian/files and > debian/*.substvars in the gitignore will fail to build twice in a row, > because these files are created and are subsequently untracked. Only > Debian packaging knowledge can tell you that these should never be > checked in and can be ignored -- or we make people reliant on a magic > tool to set it up properly for them. > > Once people are familiar with how Debian packaging works, we can > introduce the git interfaces on top. Before that, git is more of a > hindrance than a benefit to new contributors, precisely because it looks > familiar, but the knowledge is not transferable.
New contributors won't start in a vacuum, most will start contributing first to existing projects on Salsa, which are already set up and configured to do what is needed, if it is needed. Git is the bare minimum these days, and has been for years. Salsa is the best thing that has happened to Debian the past decade, and the Salsa team will forever have my gratitude for the great job they have done and continue to do.
