build-from-branch into the primary archive

[Scott Kitterman]

On Monday, February 21, 2011 09:36:50 pm Martin Pool wrote:
> On 18 February 2011 08:25, Andy Whitcroft <apw at canonical.com> wrote:
> > Push to upload implies that it is practicle to move all packages into
> > bzr.  For large packages such as the kernel, libreoffice, X etc, where
> > those are not in python that would imply we have to extract the intended
> > state out of that and then commit it into another VCS just to trigger
> > the upload?  I would tend more to think of dput as the 'assembler' way
> > of uploading, with pushing to a build branch being the 'best' way to do
> > things.
> > 
> > Generally you should not need to force a new way on people.  If the new
> > way is better people will switch and use it.  Removing the old way
> > should not be needed to achieve your goals should it?
> 
> Right, we're not intending to force this on people.  We want to offer
> it as an option for people that want to try it out.  If there are
> reasons why people find it either doesn't work or isn't a good
> tradeoff for some packages, we'd like to work out why and then address
> that.
> 
> Divergence between branches and uploads is a a problem that crops up
> in various places, including the documentation and keeping the package
> importer in sync.  Ultimately we hope that developer groups will
> choose to say that particular packages must only be uploaded in
> branches to avoid people accidentally making things inconsistent, and
> we will give them a policy knob to express that.

We don't have exclusive maintainers in Ubuntu, so I don't see how enforcing 
this on a per package basis is compatible with the Ubuntu maintainer 
philsophy.  It also sounds very much like forcing it on people.

The alternative of adding a specialized field in debian/control for packages 
that should generally only be uploaded from branch so that anyone who tries to 
dput the package gets some kind of warning (as discussed elsewhere in the 
thread) would, I think, deal with this case adequately while preserving the 
option to upload via dput should it REALLY be necessary in some case.

Scott K