There are several packages in Debian without a associated git
repository with the packaging history. This is unfortunate and it
would be nice if more of these would do so. Quote a lot of these are
without a maintainer, ie listed as maintained by the
'Debian
QA Group' place holder. In fact, 438 packages have this property
according to UDD (SELECT source FROM sources WHERE release = 'sid'
AND (vcs_url ilike '%anonscm.debian.org%' OR vcs_browser ilike
'%anonscm.debian.org%' or vcs_url IS NULL OR vcs_browser IS NULL) AND
maintainer ilike '%packages@qa.debian.org%';). Such packages can
be updated without much coordination by any Debian developer, as they
are considered orphaned.
To try to improve the situation and reduce the number of packages
without associated git repository, I started a few days ago to search
out candiates and provide them with a git repository under the
'debian' collaborative Salsa project. I started with the packages
pointing to obsolete Alioth git repositories, and am now working my
way across the ones completely without git references. In addition to
updating the Vcs-* debian/control fields, I try to update
Standards-Version, debhelper compat level, simplify d/rules, switch to
Rules-Requires-Root: no and fix lintian issues reported. I only
implement those that are trivial to fix, to avoid spending too much
time on each orphaned package. So far my experience is that it take
aproximately 20 minutes to convert a package without any git
references, and a lot more for packages with existing git repositories
incompatible with git-buildpackages.
So far I have converted 10 packages, and I will keep going until I
run out of steam. As should be clear from the numbers, there is
enough packages remaining for more people to do the same without
stepping on each others toes. I find it useful to start by searching
for a git repo already on salsa, as I find that some times a git repo
has already been created, but no new version is uploaded to Debian
yet. In those cases I start with the existing git repository. I
convert to the git-buildpackage+pristine-tar workflow, and ensure a
debian/gbp.conf file with "pristine-tar=True" is added early, to avoid
uploading a orig.tar.gz with the wrong checksum by mistake. Did that
three times in the begin before I remembered my mistake.
So, if you are a Debian Developer and got some spare time, perhaps
considering migrating some orphaned packages to git?
As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.
