On Wed, 19 Jun 2024 at 09:51, Simon Richter <s...@debian.org> wrote: > I agree with that, but it effectively changes what we consider a "source > package", and that comes with all the baggage of archival: > > - we need to store the actual contents in the archive, not just a > reference to an online service, or the online service becomes part of > the archive.
Effectively the dgit.debian.org becomes the archive or the snapshot service of the git view of the Debian source packages. People interacting with Debian on the Debian source package level can keep doing that exactly as before. But to access a deeper, git level of source you would, naturally, have to use different tools and access a different service. > - we need to distribute that on CDs and mirrors (which both have size > constraints) Do we? Already Debian source packages are in reality a separate set of DVDs (we don't even provide source on CDs anymore) and only a subset of mirrors. While having an option to have a dgit server mirrored might be nice, it does not really have to be inside the current mirror or archive structure. And it does not have to be a blocker. > - we need to keep and archive also the tools required for processing Which should be trivial as long as they are packaged. > - we still need to be able to comply with removal requests Same as, for example, Salsa git server? > - we need to be able to deal with "epochs" in package development > > For example, the "clinfo" packages that were shipped in jessie and in > stretch and following are completely unrelated, they just have similar > enough output that one could be used as a replacement for the other. > > If those had been git-maintained packages, how would those have been > archived? Is the dgit package namespace separate from Debian source > package names? Well, there are many ways to do that. For example have a merge commit that merges in the new upstream into the old upstream branch where the merge commit itself deletes all old files and replaces them with the new files. The Debian changelog would note the changed upstream and move on as normal.
