[maemo-developers] maemo.org/downloads automatic updates from Extras

[From: Andrew Flegg]

On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 10:09 PM, Tim Teulings <rael at edge.ping.de> wrote:
>
>> One enhancement I would like to add is automatically update the 'Changes
>> in latest version' field for the entry in downloads. I would like comments
>
> That would be nice :-)

Agreed.

> The debian package changelog describes changed to the package made by
> the package maintainer. If maintainer and developer are different a
> changelog entry for a major relase could just contain "New upstream
> version" - which would not be that helpful :-/

Agreed.

> So we can try it with these files and either put preasure on upstream or
> let the package maintainer fix/create these files or we can define a
> special maemo-specific file Maemo.ChangeLog that contains both
> information in a simple to parse, extendable file format (XML?). And to
> make everybody happy we try a fallback for ChangeLog and changelog if
> Maemo.Changelog does not exist - with improving magic over time.

Personally, I'd rather downloads.maemo.org used one fixed system and
it was up to tools like mud to pull out heuristically derived data
from upstream and coalesce it into the simple format.

> Simple XML file could look like:
>
> <maemo-release-changelog>
> <revision release-date="2008-07-07 23:05:00" revision="<package revision>">
>  <description>
>    Packages new upstream version.
>  </description>
> </revision>
>
> <release release-date="2008-07-01 11:55:00" version="<source package
> version>">
>  <description>
>    Now plays funny sound on start.
>  </description>
> </release>
> </maemo-release-changelog>
>
> However many other formats with same or similar content are possible...

Indeed. TBH, I wonder whether another header would be sufficient in
debian/control? We've already got XB-Maemo-Icon, adding
XBS-Version-Changes or something could be sufficient. Is there any
need for anything other than the last modification?

Certainly for downloads.maemo.org; for more detail the
debian/changelog is available and /should/ be the definitive location
so we don't diverge too much from other Debian-based systems. (Your
points about a potential ownership mismatch between an upstream
debian/changelog and the Maemo package's are, of course, entirely
valid and correct).

>> Another option would be to let the developer enter this data while
>> promoting the package to extras. We could add this step to the promotion
>> interface.
>
> IMHO a bad idea. I personally want to have the process as automatic as
> possible (OK testing is still manual :-/). This way I can choose time
> and place and tool and process and I'm not forced to use
> the web page (must switch to dput soon :-)).

Agreed. dput (or, well, scp) *must* be a supported option (well, I
want to streamline it's use through mud[1] so not having it would mean
screen scraping/web robots, which is fairly distasteful ;-))

Perhaps, however, if the package doesn't contain XBS-Version-Changes,
the web form could prompt for it.

Cheers,

Andrew

[1] http://wiki.maemo.org/User:Jaffa/mud_design

-- 
Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew at bleb.org | http://www.bleb.org/