Improve Ninja's release packaging (once more)

[Harald Sitter]

On Dienstag 13 Januar 2009 21:01:07 Richard Birnie wrote:
> Some instructions on setting up and maintaining multiple pbuilders for
> different releases would be nice. As would similar info on how to use
> pbuilder- hooks and how to edit pbuilderrc accordingly :)

There is plenty of the former and the latter comes with a README ;-) I'll 
write some quick'n dirty guides once I have time.

> Maybe it's just me (entirely likely) but this was and is a pretty big
> barrier to contribution. Personally I think this is a pretty complicated
> thing to do. The time I can spend on Kubuntu is fairly limited at the
> moment so I'd rather spend it on something useful instead of spending an
> entire evening trying to make the build environment behave properly as I
> did for the last two KDE releases. I'm all in favour of automating this
> process as much as possible but I'd second Scott's point that this is
> pretty complicated.

Maybe adding a general section "How do I get a build enviornment" would help? 
It's really just having all the stuff installed for the batscripts (which is 
done via k-d-t's deps) and getting a pbuilder setup with hooks.
I guess it would be even possible to deploy k-d-t with the hooks (which is my 
longterm plan anyway).
Also a batpbuildersetup script could help to do a setup. If we can streamline 
the process itself we can also streamline the requirements I guess ;-)

> Another thought that crossed my mind is that we are now another step
> further removed from anything that is in the packaging documentation for
> either (k)ubuntu or debian. From the point of view of anybody new to
> packaging that wants to get involved in KDE releases (and I'd include me in
> that group) it's pretty hard to relate what the ninjas do to any other form
> of packaging in ubuntu. If that isn't considered important the fair enough.
> I don't claim to be any expert in the field but I thought I'd throw it out
> there as an idea.

Well, the concern is certainly valid, the level of abstraction really takes 
away most of the experience, but that is also what it is supposed to. The 
ultimate scenario is that you run the scritps and only get exposed to the 
underlying steps when necessary... like they don't _currently_ try to bump the 
buid-deps, because $ninja can still do that way more reliably than any of the 
currently available libraries could. So, in my opinion it is necessary to know 
a fair bit about packaging before getting involved with release packaging (of 
major packages).
Personally I think most packages can cause way too much pain, even for 
experienced devs, that I wouldn't want to expose a real beginner to.
My opinion at least :)

regards,
Harald