bzr for packaging

[Alexandre Vassalotti]

On 3/8/07, Matt Zimmerman <mdz at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Martin and I are interested in feedback about bzr-builddeb, similar tools,
> and any other practices around using bzr for packaging.
>
> What are you doing?  What works well?  What is painful?

I tried to use bzr-builddeb for helping me maintaining my packages,
but unfortunately it didn't support legacy debian/changelog format,
when I tested it. Also, I had a hard time building some packages with
it (notably Emacs).

I ended up using bzr only to version control the debian/ directory of
my packages and build the package with some scripts of my own. It
works, but I am doubtful of the usefulness of this method.

I think bzr need to be better integrated with our packaging tools. For
example, it would really useful to be able pull and build older
packages versions using bzr. This would clean up a lot my package's
directories. A way to avoid writing two time my changelogs (the bzr
and debian one) would be useful too. It would certainly be possible to
generate a debian changelog template using bzr's commits log.

This would probably require to create a new specialized utility, using
bzrlib, instead of a plugin. I think cramming a full packaging tool
into a plugin is not the best way to approch the problem. It certainly
make the tool, in a way, less user-friendly.

Here a few commands, I quickly thought about:

    bd source <package>   # fetch a package source code, from a bzr/apt-repo
    bd source --distro <distro> --version <version-number> --revison
<bzr-revision>
    bd fastbuild  # build without using a chroot
    bd build      # pbuilder-style build
    bd build --distro <distro> --version <version-number> --revison
<bzr-revision>
    bd new        # create a new package template
    bd release    # make a release (eg. create debian changelog, run
tests, build, etc)
    bd upload     # update to the archives, or REVU
    bd log        # pretty-print bzr/debian changelog
    bd merge      # a merge helper?
    bd import     # import a non-bzr enabled package
    bd bugs       # show open bugs from launchpad for this package
    bd install    # install a package for testing

Cheers,
-- Alexandre