Re: Octave-Forge: requirement for a maintainer Makefile for release

[Philip Nienhuis]

Carnë Draug wrote
> Hi everyone
> 
> As you will know, there is a requirement that Octave Forge packages to
> have a clone of their repository in our project at sourceforge with,
> at the very least, the state for the package releases.  However, this
> sometimes doesn't happen and releases are requested with files that
> are missing in the repository.
> 
> Many of the packages now have a Makefile at the root of the package
> for maintainer tasks such as making a release.  I would propose to
> make this a requirement to solve this issue --- since hg and git export
> would not export files and changes not commited --- and to reduce the
> work required for pushing a release --- since I would not have to check
> this myself.
> 
> The plan would be that package maintainers would provide a revision
> hash (or maybe a revision tag), and whoever is pushing the release
> would build the actual release tarball.  The package maintainer would
> still
> be responsible to upload the html documentation.
> 
> The only issue I see is with packages that may require a special tool
> or a specific version of the tool.  Even different versions of autoconf
> could generate slightly different configure scripts.  However, I am
> guessing that in practice this will not happen and can be handled at
> the time if they do.
> 
> Anyone has any more thoughts on this? Anyone opposes?

If I interpret your motive correctly, the things you're after is better
quality control (QC) and shifting the burden of QC from you to the package
maintainers. 
The QC aspects solved by your suggestion comprise missing files, outdated
files (not updated in the repo), autoconf & configure having been run and I
might overlook a few things. In summary, the more "administrative" parts.
 
OK I agree that QC shouldn't be a primary task of the Octave-Forge admin;
maybe a responsibility but if so a responsibility that can at least be
delegated.

I doubt if effective QC can be done by the same person as the one who
created the code & package in the first place (=package maintainer).
Yet automating boring parts of it, if only by requiring a Makefile with
predescribed contents, may help catch the basic errors.
Can makefiles be used to check if an on-line repo is up-to-date?

As to separating the release tarball from the html tarball: my experience is
that distributed responsibilities just don't work reliably.
Can a makefile be used to create (and upload) package html (by invoking
Octave)? (I'd guess yes)

One of the things with the current Makefile setup is that it also generates
a release tag.
I usually wait with a release tag until the release is finally on
Octave-Forge as it sometimes happens that additional bugs are discovered and
fixes are needed while the release waits on the release tracker; to avoid
"gaps" in the release numbers. But maybe release version gaps isn't such a
big deal.

Philip




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