Paul R. Tagliamonte writes ("Re: What is the source code (was: [RFC] General
Resolution to deploy tag2upload)"):
> If we (as a project) truly regard a .dsc/source distribution as an
> unfortunate intermediate build artifact that we wish to offload to a
> source buildd network, I have to wonder why we keep them around.
This is an illuminating question. I have two answers:
Firstly, not everything is maintained in git (upstream, or in Debian),
or is compatible with dgit or tag2upload. So there are packages for
which the tarballs-and-patches really is primary. I think they're not
the usual case, any more, but such packages do exist.
The other is that we have a vast ecosystem of tooling, culture, and
personal learning, surrounding source packages. We can bodge the
not-really-maintained-in-git packages into git by importing tarballs,
but getting rid of source packages completely would be hugely
disruptive - both technically and socially.
One of the nice things that tag2upload does is decouple the form in
which a user consumes a package, from the form in which the maintainer
uploaded it: you upload using git, and the infrastructure generates
*both* the source package and a canonicalised git format.
I'd like to have the same decoupling for packages that aren't natively
in git, too. `dgit clone` sort of does that, but it does it on the
client. Eventually I'd like to see the infrastructure automtically
import every non-git-based .dsc into git. Then, it will be possible
to obtain the source code of *any* package, in a predictable and
buildable form, with a simple git clone.
When we have that, we will support *both* git-based and non-git-based
workflows, end-to-end (from the original upstream through to our
users), through all our workflows and infrastructure. And we'll have a
project-maintained canonical gateway between the two views of the
Debian source code. Everyone can have their favourite breed of pony.
Ian.
--
Ian Jackson <ijack...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> These opinions are my own.
Pronouns: they/he. If I emailed you from @fyvzl.net or @evade.org.uk,
that is a private address which bypasses my fierce spamfilter.
