Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end single-person maintainership)

From	Simon Richter <sjr@debian.org>
Newsgroups	linux.debian.devel
Subject	Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end single-person maintainership)
Date	2024-05-20 04:10 +0200
Message-ID	<IG0Dn-exar-1@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
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Hi,

On 5/20/24 04:32, Otto Kekäläinen wrote:

> I agree that duplication is bad - but I disagree that use of version
> control duplicates the use of the Debian archive for source code
> storage, or that use of GitLab for code reviews would duplicate
> Debbugs.

Outside of DM uploads, I'm not sure that there is much of a need for a 
code review on packaging -- really what we want is to reduce the amount 
of code for packaging, by moving it into declarative frameworks whenever 
possible, so the vast majority of packaging changes should be trivial 
ones like upgrading a dependency version.

> Would you be kind and try to understand the opposing viewpoint by
> trying it for one day?

I am using it for most of my packages. It has not made my life easier, 
it's just another layer that I need to communicate my intentions through.

I generally do test builds of my packages in a local pbuilder instance, 
with a hook script to drop me into a shell if the build fails, so the 
workspace is kept for my investigation. The only CI system that offers a 
similar feature is Jenkins, but even there I can only inspect the files 
through a clunky web interface, as soon as I need to look at a binary 
file or search for a string, I need to download it as a zipfile, and 
re-running commands inside the same environment to test them is 
completely out.

> You could go to
> https://salsa.debian.org/debbugs-team/debbugs/-/merge_requests/19 and
> conduct a code review?

At first glance, looks good to me.

Looking at the changes:

1. The outdated build dependency is not in the package currently in 
Debian. If it was, it would have been spotted by Debian's archive 
analysis tools already, without the need for a build attempt.

This static analysis is cheaper than a rebuild, so to achieve the same 
level of coverage, Salsa would need to perform a full archive rebuild 
daily, and it would still not catch the broken Suggests: in the binary.

2. The missing file in debian/docs was already reported as #903413.

3. The other changes are "upstream" changes, which should have a 
separate CI that is more extensive than "still builds."

Native packages should only be used for things where it does not make 
sense to maintain a separate upstream package because they only exist 
within the package ecosystem, like the "menu" package. Debbugs should 
really be split into separate "upstream" and "packaging" efforts.

> You might discover that GitLab is useful and is not duplicating
> Debbugs or anything else in Debian

Well, there is an issue tracker (where tickets go unresponded for a 
year), that is certainly a duplication of debbugs. It would make sense 
to maybe track "upstream" bugs there and forward them from debbugs (a 
feature not present in GitLab's issues handling, but important for 
package maintenance).

  - it is currently the only platform
> to conduct code reviews on in a way that has automatic testing and
> comment-response-resolved -tracking. Doing code reviews patches
> attached in email does not have that.

Well, I take the diff, prepend each line with > and insert my comments, 
then send it back. The author then responds to that email, and once the 
discussion is over, I get a new proposed patch. Not much difference.

> If you try it out, and still think Salsa is bad for Debian, then I am
> more willing to accept your stanze.

It's not *bad*, but for a lot of our workflows, it's the wrong tool 
because the use cases it was designed for are different from ours, and 
there is little we can do to make them meet.

Debian's workflow for collaboration on things that are not yet 
release-ready is clunky to the point that almost no one uses it that 
way, but in principle it is there: one can always upload a package to 
experimental and get it autobuilt on the major architectures, and other 
DDs can download it from there if they want to take a look at it.

This workflow is what packaging in git mostly replaces: in 
pkg-electronics, we quite often have changes that are not ready for 
release that we want to distribute to the other team members. Quite 
often, these changes do not build straight away, and the reason they are 
shared is specifically so other people can take a look at them.

Git is a lot better for fostering this collaboration than uploads to 
experimental, because we get change tracking for individual files, which 
is invaluable when dealing with a behemoth like ghdl that takes a few 
hours to build and run tests.

The review process still takes place via mail here, because part of the 
process is that everyone involved needs to be able to build the package 
locally and investigate failures. We can quickly incorporate changes 
from others using git and do a minimal rebuild locally, that is useful, 
but this essentially means that we are pushing commits to an offside branch.

Attaching the discussion to individual changes is not that useful for us:

1. changing an annotated line in a commit hides the annotation when 
looking at another commit, so the entire discussion would need to take 
place in the "all changes" view, or we risk losing context.

2. a lot of the discussion is "things that will need to be changed", not 
"things that have been changed and we don't like it." GitLab does not 
have a workflow for discussing that as part of a MR.

In that process, CI would only tell us that the package fails to build, 
but we already know that: that's why we shared it in this way. If it 
worked, we would have uploaded it already. Trying to build it in CI is a 
waste of four hours of CPU time, and we iterate a lot faster than that 
usually because we do incremental builds in between, and a full build 
inside pbuilder only as part of the final upload procedure.

After an upload is done, the discussion and intermediate stages become 
less useful for us, so GitLab's approach of isolating them in the MR is 
acceptable from my point of view, even if other people would like to 
have them archived in the mailing list archive so it is easily 
accessible to search engines.

Also, we usually get build failures from ports, which is kind of 
unavoidable because CI testing everywhere is prohibitively expensive, 
and the high level of optimization we need to run means that we will get 
bitten by target specific bugs. We cannot avoid uploading "broken" 
packages, unless we integrate the autobuilder network into CI and wait 
four days for jobs to finish.

What Debian does instead is to filter broken packages from reaching 
testing -- this is way stricter than any CI process on Salsa can 
provide, although with a longer turnaround time, because the CI 
processes performed by the Debian archive software take a lot longer.

This, too, is something that Salsa cannot replicate because of the way 
GitLab is designed, so it cannot supplant this process, just duplicate 
some aspects of it, so we would end up with build failure reports from 
two sources, in two different places.

There is likely a spot where collaborating on packages through MRs is 
useful, but I'd argue that the majority of packages will either get only 
trivial MRs that don't require discussion, or require workflows that 
cannot be easily mapped to MRs, and attempting to make the workflow fit 
the tool rather than the other way around will create additional 
friction here.

    Simon

Thread

Re: finally end single-person maintainership Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> - 2024-04-07 16:10 +0200
  Re: finally end single-person maintainership Wouter Verhelst <w@uter.be> - 2024-04-07 16:20 +0200
    Re: finally end single-person maintainership Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> - 2024-04-07 16:50 +0200
      Re: finally end single-person maintainership Scott Kitterman <debian@kitterman.com> - 2024-05-20 22:50 +0200
        Re: finally end single-person maintainership Andrey Rakhmatullin <wrar@debian.org> - 2024-05-21 09:00 +0200
        Re: finally end single-person maintainership Philip Hands <phil@hands.com> - 2024-05-21 12:10 +0200
          Re: finally end single-person maintainership Andrey Rakhmatullin <wrar@debian.org> - 2024-05-21 13:00 +0200
          Re: finally end single-person maintainership Stefano Rivera <stefanor@debian.org> - 2024-05-21 16:40 +0200
            Re: finally end single-person maintainership Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> - 2024-05-21 18:30 +0200
            Re: finally end single-person maintainership Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> - 2024-05-22 07:40 +0200
          Re: finally end single-person maintainership Salvo Tomaselli <tiposchi@tiscali.it> - 2024-05-22 00:30 +0200
            broad goals (Re: finally end single-person maintainership) Holger Levsen <holger@layer-acht.org> - 2024-05-22 11:30 +0200
      Re: finally end single-person maintainership Salvo Tomaselli <tiposchi@tiscali.it> - 2024-05-21 16:00 +0200
        Re: finally end single-person maintainership Salvo Tomaselli <tiposchi@tiscali.it> - 2024-05-22 00:40 +0200
          Re: finally end single-person maintainership Luca Boccassi <bluca@debian.org> - 2024-05-22 01:50 +0200
            Re: Documenting packaging workflows (was: finally end single-person  maintainership) Philip Hands <phil@hands.com> - 2024-05-22 15:30 +0200
            Re: Documenting packaging workflows (was: finally end single-person  maintainership) PICCA Frederic-Emmanuel <frederic-emmanuel.picca@synchrotron-soleil.fr> - 2024-05-22 08:40 +0200
            Re: Documenting packaging workflows Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> - 2024-05-22 09:00 +0200
              Re: Documenting packaging workflows (was: finally end single-person  maintainership) Salvo Tomaselli <tiposchi@tiscali.it> - 2024-05-22 10:20 +0200
            Documenting packaging workflows (was: finally end single-person maintainership) Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues <josch@debian.org> - 2024-05-22 07:20 +0200
          Re: finally end single-person maintainership Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> - 2024-05-22 01:50 +0200
          Re: finally end single-person maintainership Andrey Rakhmatullin <wrar@debian.org> - 2024-05-22 07:50 +0200
          Re: finally end single-person maintainership Holger Levsen <holger@layer-acht.org> - 2024-05-22 11:30 +0200
          Re: finally end single-person maintainership Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> - 2024-05-22 07:20 +0200
  Re: finally end single-person maintainership Wookey <wookey@wookware.org> - 2024-04-07 22:50 +0200
    Re: finally end single-person maintainership Marco d'Itri <md@Linux.IT> - 2024-04-07 23:10 +0200
    Re: finally end single-person maintainership Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues <josch@debian.org> - 2024-04-08 04:00 +0200
      Re: finally end single-person maintainership Undef <debian-devel@undef.tools> - 2024-04-08 08:00 +0200
    Re: finally end single-person maintainership Simon Richter <sjr@debian.org> - 2024-04-08 14:50 +0200
      Re: finally end single-person maintainership Andrey Rakhmatullin <wrar@debian.org> - 2024-04-08 15:00 +0200
      Re: finally end single-person maintainership Julien Puydt <julien.puydt@gmail.com> - 2024-04-08 15:50 +0200
        Re: finally end single-person maintainership Simon Richter <sjr@debian.org> - 2024-04-08 16:10 +0200
        Re: finally end single-person maintainership Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> - 2024-04-09 16:10 +0200
          Re: finally end single-person maintainership gregor herrmann <gregoa@debian.org> - 2024-04-10 22:40 +0200
      Re: finally end single-person maintainership Wookey <wookey@wookware.org> - 2024-04-09 19:00 +0200
        Re: finally end single-person maintainership Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues <josch@debian.org> - 2024-04-09 19:50 +0200
          Re: finally end single-person maintainership Andrey Rakhmatullin <wrar@debian.org> - 2024-04-09 20:10 +0200
        Re: finally end single-person maintainership Andrey Rakhmatullin <wrar@debian.org> - 2024-04-09 20:10 +0200
        Re: finally end single-person maintainership "Jose-Luis Rivas" <ghostbar@debian.org> - 2024-04-09 20:30 +0200
          Re: finally end single-person maintainership Holger Levsen <holger@layer-acht.org> - 2024-04-09 20:40 +0200
            Re: finally end single-person maintainership Scott Kitterman <debian@kitterman.com> - 2024-04-09 21:20 +0200
            Re: finally end single-person maintainership "Jonathan Dowland" <jmtd@debian.org> - 2024-04-12 11:00 +0200
              Re: finally end single-person maintainership Holger Levsen <holger@layer-acht.org> - 2024-04-12 13:20 +0200
            Re: finally end single-person maintainership Mike Gabriel <mike.gabriel@das-netzwerkteam.de> - 2024-04-12 11:30 +0200
              Re: finally end single-person maintainership Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> - 2024-04-12 15:10 +0200
                Re: finally end single-person maintainership Gioele Barabucci <gioele@svario.it> - 2024-04-12 15:20 +0200
              Re: finally end single-person maintainership gregor herrmann <gregoa@debian.org> - 2024-04-14 02:00 +0200
            Re: finally end single-person maintainership Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> - 2024-04-12 15:00 +0200
            Re: finally end single-person maintainership Bastian Blank <waldi@debian.org> - 2024-04-12 22:00 +0200
              Re: finally end single-person maintainership Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> - 2024-04-14 10:50 +0200
        Re: finally end single-person maintainership Gioele Barabucci <gioele@svario.it> - 2024-04-09 21:00 +0200
          Re: finally end single-person maintainership Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> - 2024-04-12 15:10 +0200
          Re: finally end single-person maintainership Simon Richter <sjr@debian.org> - 2024-05-21 03:10 +0200
            Re: finally end single-person maintainership Luca Boccassi <bluca@debian.org> - 2024-05-21 03:50 +0200
              Re: finally end single-person maintainership Simon Richter <sjr@debian.org> - 2024-05-21 04:20 +0200
                Re: finally end single-person maintainership Luca Boccassi <bluca@debian.org> - 2024-05-21 12:20 +0200
              Re: finally end single-person maintainership Otto Kekäläinen <otto@debian.org> - 2024-05-21 04:20 +0200
                Re: finally end single-person maintainership Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> - 2024-05-21 12:20 +0200
            Re: finally end single-person maintainership Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> - 2024-05-21 04:30 +0200
        Re: finally end single-person maintainership Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> - 2024-04-10 22:50 +0200
          Re: finally end single-person maintainership Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues <josch@debian.org> - 2024-04-10 23:20 +0200
            Re: finally end single-person maintainership Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues <josch@debian.org> - 2024-05-22 07:00 +0200
          Re: finally end single-person maintainership Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> - 2024-04-12 17:20 +0200
            Re: finally end single-person maintainership Simon Richter <sjr@debian.org> - 2024-04-12 18:20 +0200
              Re: finally end single-person maintainership Luca Boccassi <bluca@debian.org> - 2024-04-12 19:30 +0200
                Re: finally end single-person maintainership Salvo Tomaselli <tiposchi@tiscali.it> - 2024-04-13 11:20 +0200
                Re: finally end single-person maintainership Luca Boccassi <bluca@debian.org> - 2024-04-13 12:20 +0200
              Re: finally end single-person maintainership Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> - 2024-04-13 10:10 +0200
                Re: finally end single-person maintainership Nilesh Patra <nilesh@debian.org> - 2024-04-13 10:40 +0200
                Re: finally end single-person maintainership Andrey Rakhmatullin <wrar@debian.org> - 2024-04-13 10:40 +0200
        Re: finally end single-person maintainership gregor herrmann <gregoa@debian.org> - 2024-04-10 22:50 +0200
  Re: finally end single-person maintainership Bill Allombert <ballombe@debian.org> - 2024-04-07 23:20 +0200
    Re: finally end single-person maintainership Gioele Barabucci <gioele@svario.it> - 2024-04-07 23:40 +0200
      Re: finally end single-person maintainership Bill Allombert <ballombe@debian.org> - 2024-04-08 23:50 +0200
        Re: finally end single-person maintainership Luca Boccassi <bluca@debian.org> - 2024-04-09 00:10 +0200
          Re: finally end single-person maintainership Joerg Jaspert <joerg@debian.org> - 2024-04-09 00:30 +0200
            Re: finally end single-person maintainership Luca Boccassi <bluca@debian.org> - 2024-04-09 01:20 +0200
          Re: finally end single-person maintainership Bill Allombert <ballombe@debian.org> - 2024-04-09 20:50 +0200
            Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end  single-person maintainership) Otto Kekäläinen <otto@debian.org> - 2024-05-19 05:30 +0200
              Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end single-person maintainership) Jonas Smedegaard <jonas@jones.dk> - 2024-05-19 09:20 +0200
                Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end  single-person maintainership) Paul Gevers <elbrus@debian.org> - 2024-05-19 10:10 +0200
                Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end  single-person maintainership) Paul Gevers <elbrus@debian.org> - 2024-05-19 10:20 +0200
                Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end single-person maintainership) Jonas Smedegaard <jonas@jones.dk> - 2024-05-19 10:50 +0200
                Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end  single-person maintainership) Mathias Behrle <mbehrle@debian.org> - 2024-05-19 11:30 +0200
                Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end single-person maintainership) Jonas Smedegaard <jonas@jones.dk> - 2024-05-19 11:50 +0200
                Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end  single-person maintainership) Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> - 2024-05-21 13:10 +0200
                Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end  single-person maintainership) Paul Gevers <elbrus@debian.org> - 2024-05-22 22:00 +0200
                Re: dgit view of packages' history Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> - 2024-05-23 12:50 +0200
                Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end  single-person maintainership) Otto Kekäläinen <otto@debian.org> - 2024-05-19 21:40 +0200
                Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end single-person maintainership) Jonas Smedegaard <jonas@jones.dk> - 2024-05-19 23:50 +0200
                Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end  single-person maintainership) Otto Kekäläinen <otto@debian.org> - 2024-05-20 00:40 +0200
                Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end  single-person maintainership) Simon Richter <sjr@debian.org> - 2024-05-20 04:10 +0200
                Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end  single-person maintainership) Sean Whitton <spwhitton@spwhitton.name> - 2024-05-21 13:10 +0200
                Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end  single-person maintainership) Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org> - 2024-05-21 17:20 +0200
                Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end  single-person maintainership) Andrey Rakhmatullin <wrar@debian.org> - 2024-05-21 09:00 +0200
                Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end  single-person maintainership) Simon Richter <sjr@debian.org> - 2024-05-21 13:50 +0200
                Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end  single-person maintainership) Andrey Rakhmatullin <wrar@debian.org> - 2024-05-21 14:00 +0200
                Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end  single-person maintainership) Luca Boccassi <bluca@debian.org> - 2024-05-21 15:30 +0200
                Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end  single-person maintainership) Holger Levsen <holger@layer-acht.org> - 2024-05-21 15:00 +0200
              Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end  single-person maintainership) Bill Allombert <ballombe@debian.org> - 2024-05-19 18:20 +0200
                Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end  single-person maintainership) Don Armstrong <don@debian.org> - 2024-05-20 05:50 +0200
                Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end  single-person maintainership) Otto Kekäläinen <otto@debian.org> - 2024-05-20 09:50 +0200
                Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end  single-person maintainership) Bill Allombert <ballombe@debian.org> - 2024-05-20 12:20 +0200
                Re: Salsa - best thing in Debian in recent years? (Re: finally end  single-person maintainership) Otto Kekäläinen <otto@debian.org> - 2024-05-21 22:10 +0200
        Re: finally end single-person maintainership Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues <josch@debian.org> - 2024-04-09 00:20 +0200
          Re: finally end single-person maintainership Bill Allombert <ballombe@debian.org> - 2024-04-12 01:00 +0200
            Re: finally end single-person maintainership Matthias Urlichs <matthias@urlichs.de> - 2024-04-14 15:50 +0200
            Re: finally end single-person maintainership Bill Allombert <ballombe@debian.org> - 2024-05-22 13:40 +0200
              Re: finally end single-person maintainership Simon Richter <sjr@debian.org> - 2024-05-22 14:30 +0200
                Re: finally end single-person maintainership Andrey Rakhmatullin <wrar@debian.org> - 2024-05-22 21:40 +0200
                Re: finally end single-person maintainership Simon Richter <sjr@debian.org> - 2024-05-23 04:10 +0200
                Re: finally end single-person maintainership Luca Boccassi <bluca@debian.org> - 2024-05-23 13:10 +0200
              Re: finally end single-person maintainership Luca Boccassi <bluca@debian.org> - 2024-05-22 14:30 +0200
    Re: finally end single-person maintainership Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com> - 2024-04-08 12:30 +0200

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