[arch-dev-public] Important: upcoming dbscripts release

[Pierre Schmitz]

Hi all,

as the new dbscripts are quite done I'll send you a list with the most
important changes. (If you are in a hurry read at least the next
paragraph)

Incompatible changes:
* db-update will now update all packages found in your staging dir from
  all repositories
* db-move has now a different syntax: 
  "<repo-from> <repo-to> <pkgname|pkgbase> ..."
  You can move as many packages as you like at once. There is no need
  to specify an architecture here.
* The wrapper scripts like testing2core have been removed as they are
  no longer needed; use db-move instead
* testing2x now moves both arches at the same time (testing2x64 has
  been removed)
* I have also started a user documentation at
  http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/DeveloperWiki:dbscripts

Important changes:
* implementation of a package pool: all packages are now stored in
  pool/packages or pool/community directories on the ftp server. The
  current repository directories like extra/os/i686 only contain
  symlinks.
  As a results moving pacakges between repositories is now a matter of
  altering symlinks and as such very cheap. This should solve the
  problems with not fully synced mirrors we had in the past when a lot
  of packages were moved from e.g. testing to extra.
* Packages are only switched to this new layout if they are updated or
  moved. This way the migration should be slow but smooth.
* db-move can now handle multiple packages within one "transaction".

General improvements:
* unit tests based on shunit2
* heavy refactoring to share common functions
* Added more integrity checks which are run before the repositories are
  touched.
* rewritten functions for easier and smaller code
* the scripts can handle other db compressions than gz (but there is no
  migration path yet)

Note: even though the result is more or less a rewrite there are still
things that can be improved or new useful features that can be added.
The tests only cover some basic use cases so we should still have a
look at it once the new version is deployed.

I think we should deploy these soon (before Allan's big python rebuild
party) with CLEANUP_DRYRUN enabled during the first days.

Greetings,

Pierre

-- 
Pierre Schmitz, https://users.archlinux.de/~pierre