[arch-dev-public] Todos for language specific rebuilds

[Eli Schwartz]

On 1/10/20 4:42 PM, Christian Rebischke via arch-dev-public wrote:
> Hi everybody,
> 
> I would like to propose that we create todos for rebuilds of language
> specific packages.
> 
> We had two major rebuilds in the last months: python3.8 and ruby2.7.
> 
> Can we agree that we create a todo before such rebuilds?
> The advantages outweigh the disadvantages. We would gain:
> 
> * More people help rebuilding the packages.'

What help is needed? If this is just about having more people sed the
pkgrel variable with "$pkgrel + 1", then try to build it, more people
doesn't actually help. We have automated rebuilders which are very
capable in this regard.

> * Every maintainer gets informed about the rebuild.

I agree with you that this is indeed a problem, and I would like to
propose a pretty simple solution. Let's post on arch-dev-public to give
people a heads-up.

This means even if your package failed to be detected for rebuilding and
would never appear on any TODO, you as a maintainer know that it
happened and can manually rebuild your package.

> * Maintainers have the possibility to test the packages.

At least for the python rebuilds, the process of rebuilding the
ecosystem is long and painfully drawn out, *because* packages with
failing testsuites cannot be rebuilt automatically and go onto a TODO
list of broken packages.

Given this thread started because we just rebuilt ruby, can I assume
that PKGBUILDs for ruby packages are in the general habit of not
containing check() functions for running unittests? Either because
upstream does not have unittests or because they are not being run?

If packages have upstream unittests but don't run them, then the
maintainer of the package has been derelict in his or her duty.

If packages do NOT have upstream unittests, then this is unfortunate,
and I don't currently have an answer for what we should do. :(

> If tools exist for creating todos, I would like to ask the persons with
> such tools to make them available for everybody (if not already
> happened).

It's a website submission form that expects you to write some
explanatory message, then fill in a newline-separated list of pkgnames.
Any rebuilder must by definition have the latter, even if that rebuilder
is "I scrolled through archweb and did it all manually by flipping back
and forth between my terminal and my browser".

No "tool for creating todos" need exist. Ask instead about tools for
enumerating language dependencies.

...

For python, it's pretty simple.

pkgfile -d '/usr/lib/python3.8/'

For ruby, it's also pretty simple:

pkgfile -d '/usr/lib/ruby/'

Also sogrep to see if any packages link to the shared library
libpython3.8 or libruby, but hey, that's what we already do for rebuilds
of only 3 or 4 packages.

-- 
Eli Schwartz
Bug Wrangler and Trusted User

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 1601 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/attachments/20200111/0107863a/attachment-0001.sig>