Things we ought to do to improve our packaging
Steve Borho
steve at borho.org
Wed Aug 7 23:37:30 CDT 2013
On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 5:53 PM, Matt Mackall <mpm at selenic.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2013-08-06 at 15:04 -0500, Steve Borho wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 2:47 PM, Matt Mackall <mpm at selenic.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, 2013-08-06 at 14:15 -0500, Steve Borho wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 2:01 PM, Augie Fackler
> > <raf at durin42.com> wrote:
> > > On Tue, Aug 06, 2013 at 01:53:34PM -0500, Matt
> > Mackall wrote:
> > > > [this discussion needs to be cross-posted]
> > > >
> > > > We've got a few long-standing problems with our
> > current
> > > packaging:
> > > >
> > > > - lag official release
> > > > - not automated
> > > > - not reproduceable by third parties
> > > > - not signed
> > > > - lack nightly builds
> > > > - notable missing platforms (RHEL)
> > > > - not uniform in configuration
> > > >
> > > > Our attitude to date has been "well, we're not
> > really in
> > > charge of that,
> > > > that's done unofficially by volunteers". I think
> > we've
> > > reached a point
> > > > where this needs to start changing.
> > > >
> > > > In an ideal world, a release would work like this:
> > > >
> > > > - I tag the release
> > > > - I push it
> > > > - Automated builders kick off on a bunch of VMs or
> > hosts
> > > > - Builders run stock makefile targets or scripts
> > in tarball
> > > > - Packages get signed
> > > > - Packages get uploaded to one or more locations,
> > including
> > > > mercurial.selenic.com
> > > > - Download links get updated
> > > >
> > > > Importantly, this same process would also be used
> > to produce
> > > automated
> > > > nightly builds for testing and bug reporting and
> > discovering
> > > packaging
> > > > problems before release dates.
> > > >
> > > > The job of packagers would thus shift from
> > "(manually?)
> > > building and
> > > > uploading binaries" to "making sure the committed
> > build
> > > rules are
> > > > correct and up-to-date".
> > > >
> > > > I think this also needs to be inclusive of builds
> > for
> > > packaging systems
> > > > (Debian, Ubuntu, RHEL, Centos, Solaris, Pypi,
> > etc.). These
> > > actually
> > > > suffer from more or less the same problems even
> > though the
> > > distribution
> > > > model is different. So we should be building
> > nightlies and
> > > release
> > > > builds for these systems and be more directly
> > responsible
> > > for quality
> > > > and timeliness here as well.
> > >
> > >
> > > This honestly sounds like a great improvement, given
> > how stale
> > > the
> > > packages for Ubuntu tend to be, and how some
> > packagers took it
> > > upon
> > > themselves in the past to enable all the extensions.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > On the Windows side, everything is automated except for two
> > steps:
> > >
> > > 1 - signing packages requires a passphrase to be entered
> > > 2 - uploading is currently manually done through BB's clunky
> > web
> > > interface
> > >
> > >
> > > If we had an SCP or FTP URL to upload to, and a sane policy
> > for
> > > deleting old nightlies after a short while, it could be
> > automated.
> >
> >
> > Well, you already have SCP access, no?
> >
> >
> > Yep, it's just a question of whether you want nightlies in the same
> > location as releases, or in a different folder that was size-managed.
> >
> > In addition to having a fully automated process that builds
> > releases and
> > nightlies, I think its also important to get to the build
> > script into
> > the tree so that people who need to build their own copies for
> > various
> > reasons (need bugfix, need custom deployment, St. Louis
> > trampled by
> > kaiju) can do so.
> >
> >
> > So.. building windows frozen packages is fairly convoluted (especially
> > for thg but the simple hg MSI is no cakewalk) and has a boatload of
> > prereqs to be installed.
>
> Yep, I'm well aware. And this is actually MORE reason to insist on full
> automation. Let me back up and explain some of my motivation here:
>
> While I think you do a great job with packaging, it's lately become
> clear that package maintainers are a significant single point of
> failure. And we've also not coincidentally discovered that we don't
> actually know how some of our packages are actually built (like OS X)
> because the instructions don't work any more. So when the packager
> disappears, we've got several problems: find someone with the hardware,
> install the OS(es), install the deps, reverse-engineer the build
> process, hit unknown number of gotchas..
>
> The OS X situation is not as complex as Windows, but it's still bad
> enough that the current approach is clearly not good enough.
>
> And that's not the only problem in this area. For instance, we also have
> real uses for continuous builds that are not being met by monthly
> releases. I really want the BTS robot to point people at builds and say
> "try this and report back, please", but can't.
>
> (And it's also a perennial confusion that we announce releases before
> there are any packages built.)
>
> Fortunately, we know how to fix these sorts of things:
>
> - manifest the instructions and dependencies as build scripts
> - version control the build scripts in the canonical repo
> - use the build scripts, continuously and non-interactively
> - get people to use those builds and discover problems before releases
> - fix the problems found via check-in
>
>
> With my 'hackable' Windows builds, I've gone as far as scripting the
> download and install of the right versions of Python and gcc and all the
> other deps if not present to make sure its reproduceable, so I know this
> sort of thing can be done, even on Windows. I've obviously not yet gone
> as far as putting this knowledge in the repo, but I ought to.
>
>
> All that said, let's focus on phase 1: publishing nightly builds,
> somehow, somewhere.
Angel has offered to build nightlies before (using an automated framework
like Jenkins), he just needed a place to upload them. We just need to
circle around and get that closed. The auto-builds might be unsigned at
first.
As far as getting this into the tree and scripted.. I agree this would be
astonishingly useful for the long run (it mostly frees me up as well) but
my hg hacking time is extremely limited these days and I don't know when
I'll get a chance to work on it.
One suggestion I have, if we try to automate this process in the hg/contrib
folder, is that we make an attempt to drop the requirement on Microsoft's C
compilers and try to use recent MinGW GCCs to compile the Explorer
extension and the Mercurial (and other hg extension) Python extensions. We
had problems with GCC some 5-6 years ago but perhaps those are all resolved
now (that said, the Explorer extension hasn't changed in 19 months, we
could probably check in pre-compiled versions in its repo).
--
Steve Borho
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