Otto Kekäläinen <otto@seravo.fi> writes:
2014-01-31 Kristian Nielsen <knielsen@knielsen-hq.org>:
Wouldn't it be better to discard the existing debian/ stuff in the upstream sources, and work from the native Debian packaging as the base?
The existing stuff has _so_ much legacy and crap, and little of value. It has
Yes, in upstream bzr repo debian/* has a lot of legacy and cruf, but still it has been updated to some extent by upstream MariaDB and there are even changes in debian/* between 5.5.32...35, so while packaging for Debian I still need to consider what upstream debian/* contains and do rather complex manual merge work that every time needs multiple build iterations to see that the build result stays the same for the two different debian/rules etc.
Complexity is an enemy of quality so therefore I suggest that MariaDB upstream would update the upstream debian/* with the contents from https://github.com/ottok/mariadb-5.5.
Even though the end result will be simpler and better quality, the move to it isn't trivial, as we need to consider the upgrade and install scenarios of current MariaDB.org repository users. It is not a problem, just work. i'll write about those in another e-mail.
Yes, I agree. Both with this being a good solution, and with that it will need a lot of work. I suppose the most important thing is to get the Debian native packages updated with new features from 5.5.32...35, I suppose it's mostly new storage engines? If the work turns out bigger than available resources, and I had to choose, I would choose to break upgrades from the legacy 3rd-party packages. If we can get good native Debian packages, and new 3rd-party packages based closely on that, then I think it is worth it to break upgrades once (users will have to eg. apt-get remove the old stuff and apt-get install the new, once). Of course, if we can make everything work, then so much the better. My point is merely that I would put priority on getting everything right moving forward, and only solve the remaining single upgrade once the prio stuff is done.
As a first step I suggest that MariaDB would create a new BuildBot instance 'kvm-deb-trusty-amd64' which builds for every commit it pulls from https://github.com/ottok/mariadb-5.5.git
I can try to find time to setup this, but I will need an exact list of the commands that should be run. Basically, you need to provide a script that can be run in a clean VM and does what you want the buildbot to do. It doesn't have to be fancy, but it needs to be complete so that it is clear what needs to be done.
And while you are at it, please also consider setting up an instance 'kvm-deb-sid-pbuilder-amd64' that provides a Debian unstable
Daniel, can you prepare new sets of VMs for Ubuntu trusty and Debian sid? Then I can try to setup Buildbot to do these builds.
Does this sound like a good plan?
I think so. It is not clear to me who can do what, but the plan is good. - Kristian.