Hi! > With all the recent talk about increasing the use of git for > packaging, I'd like to address one thing: git-buildpackage is very > complex to use. As an alternative, I'd like to propose a simpler > setup: .. > sick of it and I can tell you it only makes me want to ignore you. If > you ask me it's git-buildpackage's irreducible difficulty of use > that's the largest road block to increase the use of git for > packaging.
I think git-buildpackage is great, and I am a happy user. It did however take me quite a while to figure out what is the best practice to use it, as it has so many options. I see you are also using it at https://salsa.debian.org/science-team/chuffed so you seem to have learned to use it. Can you elaborate, is there a specific thing you think git-buildpackage falls short on? Instead of trying to write a new tool from scratch, I hope more people would offer help to Guido to maintain and polish git-buildpackage and docs. I am for example proposing doc improvements in https://salsa.debian.org/agx/git-buildpackage/-/merge_requests/6 and I tried make git-buildpackage use DEP-14 branches (debian/latest and upstream/latest) by default in https://salsa.debian.org/agx/git-buildpackage/-/merge_requests/1, although I ran out of steam with this latter one as it turned out to be quite complex. I was also planning to suggest updates the the Developers Reference on how to use git-buildpackage in the context of daily package maintenance tasks so people would more easily discover them (draft at https://salsa.debian.org/debian/developers-reference/-/merge_requests/63). To make it easier for contributors I publish in my packages debian/gbp.conf, so the settings are automatically correct, and also README.source(.md) so contributors can discover the correct gbp comands easily. See examples at https://salsa.debian.org/debian/entr/-/blob/debian/latest/debian/gbp.conf and https://salsa.debian.org/debian/entr/-/blob/debian/latest/debian/README.source.md. I am contemplating if I should also make videos on Debian packaging best practices, or have start a new Matrix channel specifically to help maintainers setup their git repositories correctly and find the optimal git-buildpackage commands for each thing they want to do.
