[maemo-developers] Repositories mess: conclusions and actions

[From: Ed Bartosh]

On Sun, 2007-11-11 at 22:21 +0000, ext Graham Cobb wrote:
> On Sunday 11 November 2007 15:11:51 Ed Bartosh wrote:
> > I'd like to discuss possible usage rules of extras-devel.
> > Here is my initial thoughts:
> > - For packages taken from Debian/Ubuntu/whatever package maintainer in
> > debian/control should be changed to uploader's name/e-mail
> 
> I agree
> 
> > - Packages 
> > should be built against latest versions of libraries from correspondent SDK
> > repository and extras-devel 
> 
> I don't think I agree.  I am concerned about what will happen when V4.1 is 
> issued.  For Bora I currently build my packages against 3.0 so that all 
> releases of Bora can be supported.  I would expect that the same thing would 
> happen with Chinook: packages should normally be built against the oldest 
> libraries that will work and which do not conflict with the latest libraries.  
> Otherwise users may experience unexpected (and partial) upgrades of base 
> system components due to installing an application.  Will Nokia test all 
> possible combinations of partial OS upgrades when 4.1 comes out?
> 
When 4.1 is issued new packages in extras-devel will be built against it
by default. If some libraries are required to be updated on the device
they should be put into extras-devel and checked for upgradeability. Old
packages will be left untouched if they work and will be rebuilt if they
don't. 

I don't support your idea about oldest libraries as a strict rule. If
your packages work with old libraries it's up to you to decide if it
makes sence to rebuild them against new libs or not. I don't see any
problems here. I'm still using old scratcbhox and mistral distro to
build openssh packages because they worked on every platform so far. And
I will keep doing that until possible just because it's convenient for
me to have only one build of package for all platforms. But it doesn't
mean that it should become a rule for extras-testing.

> This is a complex issue which also requires some further thought from the 
> point of view of autobuilder requirements.
> 
> > - extras-devel repository should contain all 
> > dependencies for applications except of already installed on the device. It
> > means that users only need to add extras repository to be able to install
> > applications from it. No other repositories should be needed for that, even
> > maemo SDK.
> 
> I agree for packages which are expected to be installed by end users.  
> However, there are packages which are designed for installation in an SDK or 
> build environment which may depend on the SDK.  For example, normally library 
> source packages generate two packages: libfoo and libfoo-dev.  libfoo is 
> designed to be installed on the device and should only depend on other extras 
> packages and repositories shipped by Nokia.  But libfoo-dev (which is used by 
> developers of applications which use libfoo) may depend on packages in the 
> SDK.  Note that the build environment itself has to be able to install 
> libfoo-dev in order to build any applications which depend on libfoo.
> 
Agreed. Actually I was speaking about device packages. May be it's a
good idea to add info about SDK packages here.

> > - It should be possible to upgrade devices and scratchbox targets from
> > extras-devel with apt-get dist-upgrade and with AM. Developers and testers
> > should upgrade their devices from extras-devel and report possible issues
> > to package uploader/project bug tracking system.
> 
> That is a good goal but it requires that Nokia make the same commitment for 
> their repositories: apt-get dist-upgrade should be safe.  Also, until Nokia 
> can support OS upgrades using apt-get I presume we would limit this to the 
> same major version of the OS.
> 
I agree with that, but not 100%. We shouldn't wait for Nokia, we can
start checking packages from extras-devel for upgradeability. If we
manage to do that with our packages only it would help a lot to improve
the whole situation with upgrades.

-- 
Ed Bartosh <eduard.bartosh at nokia.com>
Nokia-M/Helsinki