Things we ought to do to improve our packaging

[Nikolaj Sjujskij]

On Thu, 22 Aug 2013 01:43:06 +0400, Matt Mackall <mpm at selenic.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 2013-08-21 at 14:30 +0400, Nikolaj Sjujsckij wrote:
>> On Wed, 21 Aug 2013 01:19:34 +0400, Matt Mackall <mpm at selenic.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > On Mon, 2013-08-19 at 23:17 +0400, Nikolaj Sjujskij wrote:
>> >> Den 2013-08-19 02:29:49 skrev Matt Mackall <mpm at selenic.com>:
>> >>
>> >>> On Sun, 2013-08-18 at 16:44 +0200, Dirkjan Ochtman wrote:
>> >>>> On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 8:29 AM, Matt Mackall <mpm at selenic.com>  
>> wrote:
>> >>>>> I don't know, but I suspect there is. How does one grab the
>> >> equivalent
>> >>>>> of a nightly on Gentoo? How long do I have to wait to install 2.7  
>> if
>> >>>> the
>> >>>> > packager is on vacation? Is there stuff that requires manual
>> >>>> > intervention from release to release like adding new files?
>> >>>>
>> >>>> As Nikolaj mentioned, you can trivially build packages from your
>> >>>> public repo's tip. There are two packagers, so you might have to  
>> wait
>> >>>> a little bit, but it's only a filename move away (in an overlay) if
>> >>>> you want it badly (e.g. no actual building). No intervention is
>> >>>> generally required for version bumps.
>> >>>
>> >>> Ok, so it's fairly painless. Let's flip the question around: is  
>> there
>> >>> any reason we should NOT be doing automated nightly Gentoo builds to
>> >>> spot problems, given how easy it is?
>> >
>> >>   What for?
>> >
>> > Because automatic builds are a bog-standard quality assurance  
>> mechanism
>> > that I shouldn't even have to explain. Yes, Gentoo is very shiny and
>> > apparently makes this especially easy... so why oh why are you
>> > resisting?
>>    Hm. I may have misunderstood you. I've got nothing against
>>    autobuilding
>> Mercurial on Gentoo. I thought you were talking about _distributing_
>> those
>> autobuilds, for Gentoo users to actually, well, use them. If we, say,
>> just
>> build every revision, install it and check list of installed files,
>> mailing changes in this list (or something like this), that's by me.
>> Useful, too.
>
> I do in fact plan to put the binary packages on line for everything we
> autobuild for consistency and for reference. For instance, a dev who
> doesn't use or intend to use Gentoo (let's call him 'mpm') might
> encounter a need to check what's getting packaged to diagnose a
> Gentoo-specific issues. That's a small matter of disk space. I haven't
> had to do this yet for Gentoo, but I've done it in the past for Ubuntu,
> Windows, RHEL, Mac, Solaris, and even VMS. I have my reasons!
>
> Availability of nightly builds for end users is just one of a dozen
> stated global goals for doing packaging better. Please think of the
> bigger picture. Whether Gentoo end users will actually want to use the
> builds is not a terribly interesting question.
  All right, sorry for the fuss, then. In so far as there are no plans to  
test Mercurial nightlies on unsuspecting Gentoo users, you can rely on my  
help (I suspect Dirkjan has a lot of Gentoo stuff to worry about as it is).