Hi,

I'll first have to get some answers, as currently I feel that I have too less 
information to do a decision.

> I believe there are three main ways to handle this. We've tried the
> first two ones below (A and B) extensively. You might be proposing
> a third one (C):
> 
> A) Treat feature/buster as any other topic branch (status quo)
>    
>    Pros:
>    - We don't have to maintain a full-blown feature-buster APT suite.

What is meant by "full-blown APT suite". Why we would need that for other 
solutions? How much work is this to maintain this?

>    - All our CI results are always about a product that makes sense.

Well at least for my information state, I'd say no the CI gives wrong status.
 
> B) Treat feature/buster as a "main" branch, like stable and devel

> Pros:
>     - No automatic merge so as long as changes in Debian don't break     
>       stuff, the branch should always build on Jenkins ⇒ more data
>       from our CI.
> 
> Cons:
>     - We need to maintain a full-blown feature-buster APT suite.   
>       We've done that in the past and it's been super painful and
>       error-prone (as in: "oops, I've replaced Buster-specific
>       packages with Stretch-specific ones in feature-buster").

Can you explain this? It all sounds like there is one level I don't really 
have in mind/understood.

>       Our release process doc assumes we're in this case but very
>       often, in this option the "merge devel into feature/buster" step
>       is just too hard _at the APT level_ so the RM skips it, and in
>       the end feature/buster lags behind devel like crazy most of the
>       time. Or sometimes even worse, it's in sync' at the Git level
>       but outdated at the APT level, which gives very
>       confusing results.

Are you talking about "packages built for the tails apt repository, that would 
also need to be rebuild for feature/buster"? 

>     - Sometimes feature/buster will FTBFS because it needs an update
>       that's been done in devel (e.g. Linux ABI bump). So all in all,
>       we don't necessarily get more data from our CI.

but we still need to merge such a patch to feature/buster. So a failing 
feature/buster makes sense for me in that case. 

> C) Treat feature/buster as a special case, i.e. use devel APT suite as
>    a basis + feature-buster overlay, but no automatic Git merge from
>    devel into feature/buster

> Cons:
 >     - One more special case to reason about. I've found our whole
>       Git/APT integration to be one of the most complex pieces in the
>       Tails build system puzzle for newcomers and long-timers alike to
>       wrap their mind around. Making it more complex will make it
>       even harder.

Ah this sounds familiar ;D Okay I need to learn more about this before 
deciding. Your text sounds like, we should try to make it simpler. 

hefee

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