Most Ubuntu packaging branches out of date when I try and clone (was: Most Bazaar repo's out of date when I try and clone)

[Joshua Judson Rosen]

On 2015-11-17 13:09, Barry Warsaw wrote:
> On Nov 17, 2015, at 12:28 PM, David Gilhooley wrote:
> 
>> <https://code.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/org-mode>. Running the following
> 
> Note the +source.

Yeah. You'll notice there are some extra things that bzr tells you
when you're branching from an *Ubuntu packaging branch* on Launchpad,
vs. from a normal location, e.g.: any of the upstream project branches
that are also hosted on Launchpad--or even just mirrored there.

"bzr branch lp:org-mode" will give you a bzr branch from Lauchpad's
mirror of the upstream org-mode repository, for example (I believe
the official upstream repository is elsewhere).


>> command
>>
>>  bzr branch lp:ubuntu/wily/org-mode
>>
>> gives me a
>>
>>  Packaging branch status: OUT-OF-DATE
>>
>> and trying to download the version for vivid gives
> 
> This is a problem with the source package importer on Launchpad, not a problem
> with Bazaar in general.

Indeed. There may have been some confusion due to the message _from Launchpad_
(not from bzr) saying "OUT-OF-DATE", but the bzr branch for wily did in fact
succeed.

More details:

> Essentially the UDD importer on Launchpad is completely hosed.

This is described in, briefly, in Section 4.2.3 of the Ubuntu Packaging Guide
<http://packaging.ubuntu.com/html/udd-getting-the-source.html>:

	When you do your bzr branch you will get a message telling you if the packaging
	branch is up to date. For example:

		$ bzr branch ubuntu:tomboy
		Most recent Ubuntu version: 1.8.0-1ubuntu1.2
		Packaging branch status: CURRENT
		Branched 86 revisions.

	Occasionally the importer fails and packaging branches do not match
	what is in the archive. A message saying:

		Packaging branch status: OUT-OF-DATE

	means the importer has failed. You can find out why on
	http://package-import.ubuntu.com/status/ and file a bug on the UDD project
	to get the issue resolved.

At this point, it's kind-of out of scope for bzr discussion per se,
but since Launchpad is such a significant repository for people
looking to get sources with bzr (and the Ubuntu packages are generally
popular)... Here's some info to help get the ball into the right
court :)

Clicking through to <http://package-import.ubuntu.com/status/>, and then
following the further link specifically for org-mode gets me to a page
showing what went wrong when Launchpad tried to update its import
of the upstream package:

	http://package-import.ubuntu.com/status/org-mode.html#2012-07-05%2008:57:29.859137

Sounds like either Launchpad has an internal consistency issue,
or maybe someone moved some tags in an upstream git repository or something.

It looks, at least at the surface, like the org-mode repositories
on Launchpad for Ubuntu branches older than wily (including up to Vivid)
are all broken.

In any case,  you're supposed to file bug-report against UDD
to ask someone to unbreak whatever Ubuntu package is broken;
maybe the fact that the later `wily' branch for org-mode works
means that someone did that....

> Since Xenial opened, I think it's sadly no longer feasible to use for *any*
> source package branches.

Hm. I wonder why that is?

-- 
"Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr))))."