[maemo-community] Extras and Fremantle

[From: David Greaves]

Jeremiah Foster wrote:
> On Mar 3, 2009, at 10:47 PM, Eduardo Lima (Etrunko) wrote:
>> It's proven to work with Debian, why
>> wouldn't it work for us??
> 
> It can work for maemo, but debian is much larger and has grown over  
> the years, so it can take time to work out the kinks.

Which is better than "debian is much smaller" :)

>> What is left for us is a clear definition of
>> the QA policy,
> 
> This is important, and involves a lot of community input. It should  
> most likely have a dedicated mailing list.

This bit worries me.
I've seen the nit-picking over getting the website released.
I feel that agility is under-weighted in the equation at the moment.

(Bear in mind I wouldn't have suggested increasing the 'complexity' of the
release system if I didn't want to improve quality)

> Unfortunately this is not trivial. The simple reason is that debian  
> uses tools that are built for debian and seem to work poorly other  
> places. Debian uses dak (debian archive kit) to manage repos. Ubuntu  
> uses something else. dak is big, poorly documented, and is not  
> currently being used in maemo, this means the current repo system  
> would have to be adapted to dak. Think new repos, new documentation,  
> new policy, etc.
> 
> Adapting debian tools to manage the maemo repositories might be a  
> really good idea, but there are some significant technical hurdles.

OTOH if we can support Debian (for example) in documenting dak and fixing bugs
in  it then we indirectly pull in more resource and provide support to the
community at large.

>> Anyone willing to fight the
>> beast?
> 
> 
> I thought I signed up for this when I became debmaster! :)
> 
> The good news is that there is interest in this and that people want  
> to participate. Niels has done some work in this regard and has looked  
> at dak. Having a policy, a solid repo system, and automated tools  
> should really make the maemo repos significantly better than other  
> repos and make the life of a developer a lot easier.
> 
> So far, I have forked debian's policy checker, lintian, into something  
> called maemian.

I'm not sure this is the best approach :)
(eg thinking about the maemo fork of gtk)

In the short term I recognise that it is easier but I think we should be *VERY*
strong on working with upstream wherever possible - and if it's not possible
then I think we should consider an alternative solution that we can work with.

OTOH it's a positive step - thanks!

> This will inherit all of the debian policy checks, but  
> exlcude those that do not apply to maemo, plus we can add some that do  
> apply to maemo. It is written in perl so anyone interested in writing/ 
> learning perl is welcome to participate.
Can we contact lintian's maintainer and see if they would support pluggable
policies?
(Having never even run lintian I accept I don't know what I'm talking about)

> I think the best thing to do is to hash out policy, codify it in a  
> document. Adapt the policy checking tool to the agreed upon policies,  
> deploy them over the most experimental repos first.
Hmmm - OK, but only because...

> In parallel we  
> might deploy dak and a more debian-like repo structure along the lines  
> that Quim described.
I think this should be pursued (but then I would wouldn't I)

> 
> Now if there were only 30 hours in the day . . .
You don't have coffee?

David

-- 
"Don't worry, you'll be fine; I saw it work in a cartoon once..."