blog/data/2024-07-11-debian-vcs-qa.txt

   1 Title: More than 200 orphaned Debian packages moved to git, 216 to go
   2 Tags: english, debian
   3 Date: 2024-07-11 12:30
   4
   5 <p><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/Time_to_move_orphaned_Debian_packages_to_git.html">In
   6 April</a>, I started migrating orphaned Debian packages without any
   7 version control system listed in debian/control to git.  This morning,
   8 my Debian QA page finally reached 200 QA packages migrated.  In
   9 reality there are a few more, as the packages uploaded by someone else
  10 after my initial upload have disappeared from my QA uploads list.  As
  11 I am running out of steam and will most likely focus on other parts of
  12 Debian moving forward, I hope someone else will find time to continue
  13 the migration to bring the number of orphaned packages without any
  14 version control system down to zero.  Here is the updated recipe if
  15 someone want to help out.</p>
  16
  17 <p>To locate packages to work on, the following one-liner can be used:</p>
  18
  19 <blockquote><pre>
  20 PGPASSWORD="udd-mirror" psql --port=5432 --host=udd-mirror.debian.net \
  21   --username=udd-mirror udd -c "select source from sources \
  22    where release = 'sid' and (vcs_url ilike '%anonscm.debian.org%' \
  23    OR vcs_browser ilike '%anonscm.debian.org%' or vcs_url IS NULL \
  24    OR vcs_browser IS NULL) AND maintainer ilike '%packages@qa.debian.org%' \
  25    order by random() limit 10;"
  26 </pre></blockquote>
  27
  28 <p>Pick a random package from the list and run the latest edition of
  29 the script
  30 <tt><a href="http://www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/images/2024-07-11-debian-snap-to-salsa.sh">debian-snap-to-salsa</a></tt>
  31 with the package name as the argument to prepare a git repository with
  32 the existing packaging.  This will download old Debian packages from
  33 <tt>snapshot.debian.org</tt>.  Note that very recent uploads will not
  34 be included, so check out the package on <tt>tracker.debian.org</tt>.
  35 Next, run <tt>gbp buildpackage --git-ignore-new</tt> to verify that
  36 the package build as it should, and then visit
  37 <a href="https://salsa.debian.org/debian/">https://salsa.debian.org/debian/</a>
  38 and make sure there is not already a git repository for the package
  39 there.  I also did <tt>git log -p debian/control</tt> and look for vcs
  40 entries to check if the package used to have a git repository on
  41 Alioth, and see if it can be a useful starting point moving forward.
  42 If all this check out, I created a new gitlab project below the Debian
  43 group on salsa, push the package source there and upload a new version.
  44 I tend to also ensure build hardening is enabled, if it prove to be
  45 easy, and check if I can easily fix any lintian issues or bug reports.
  46 If the process took more than 20 minutes, I dropped it and moved on to
  47 another package.</p>
  48
  49 <p>If I found patches in debian/patches/ that were not yet passed
  50 upstream, I would send an email to make sure upstream know about them.
  51 This has proved to be a valuable step, and caused several new releases
  52 for software that initially appeared abandoned. :)</p>
  53
  54 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  55 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  56 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>