[Gnu-arch-users] Re: New .debs of tla utilities uploaded

[John Goerzen]

On Fri, Feb 27, 2004 at 01:27:35PM +0100, Andreas Rottmann wrote:
> > Both are also managed with my tla-buildpackage framework.
> >
> I've just had a look at tla-buildpackage. It looks very convinient,
> but from looking at the manual, it seems only suited for "traditional
> upstream", i.e. upstream not using Arch. A quick look at your --debian
> archive seems to suggest it is possible, however. Could you point out
> how this is supposed to work?

You are correct on both counts.  I am doing it, but it is not really
well-documented at this point.  I intend to fix that, and make it a
supported feature of the system, before long.

First, let's look at the basic procedure for packaging up some
never-before-packaged program with tla-buildpackage:

1. Untar the upstream source
2. Rename its directory to package-version format (Debian tools require
   this)
3. Add at least a skeleton debian/ dir (dh_make does this very quickly)
4. Build a preliminary source package (dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc -S does
   that)   
5. tbp-importdsc on the source package.

Then you would go and tla buildcfg debian/package/latest and start
working from there.

If your upstream is using Arch already, here's what I do:

1. tla tag the upstream into package--head--1.0 in my archive (this
   is the naming convention used by tla-buildpackage).  I usually
   tla cacherev the base-0 as well.

2. Check out this into a temporary area, observing the
   packagename-version convention on this dir.

3. rm -rf \{arch\} `find . -name .arch-ids`

4. Add the skeleton debian/ dir
5. Build the preliminary source package
6. tla-importdsc on the source package.
7. Proceed as normal.

Now, tla-importdsc is smart enough to realize that the source is
already in the archive.  It will still run a tla commit over the
upstream source, but the effect will be essentially committing a null
changeset.  It will then tag it over to the debian branch, and commit
the debian/ changes like usual.

For new upstream versions, one would merge it into the head branch like
usual, then create a config for it in configs/upstream/packagename.
tla-buildpackage requires a config be present for each upstream version
number you use (so it can build the orig.tar.gz on demand).  Then of
course, you'd merge it over to the debian side like usual too.

-- John