Distributed Development in Lucid

Work items:
[jml] contact IS about getting new machines for code imports. There are 2 things we need to do to make better use of our existing machines. See bug 236973 and bug 487357: DONE
[cjwatson] make moderation of ubuntu-reviews easier by asking IS to accept headers from LP (RT#36703): DONE
[james-w] Discuss with LP developers need to import non-master branches from git: DONE
[jelmer] Able to import non-master branches in LP (bug 380871): INPROGRESS
[james-w] Communicate to LP developers that there will be maybe 5000 new vcs-imports coming and discuss whether they are ready or whether we need to do some work first: DONE
[james-w] Discuss with LP developers need to have an API for creation of code imports and need for lack of approval of these: DONE
[james-w] LP API to register code imports (bug 366102): INPROGRESS
Removal of requirement of approval of new code imports, at least for these: TODO
[james-w] Write a script to request imports of all supported Vcs-* branches and keep the list of imports up to date (with possible heurstics for git branches): TODO
[james-w] Discuss with LP developers need for an API to request a vcs-import happen ASAP: DONE
[james-w] LP API to request a vcs-import happen ASAP (bug 416363): INPROGRESS
[james-w] Investigate how to determine last time an import happened via the API: DONE
[james-w] Investigate bzr-rebase, and how much it can help with both the heurstics and migration: DONE
[james-w] Write heuristic to detect whether a branch is full source or ./debian/ only: TODO
[james-w] Write heuristic to guess which revision corresponds to a particular upload: TODO
[james-w] Write code to include Debian maintainer's branches when doing an import: TODO
[james-w] Test some imports with Debian maintainer's history: TODO
[james-w] Write code for using bzr-rewrite to rewrite the revision ids in a branch for the migration: TODO
[james-w] Write code for rewriting the file ids in a branch for the migration: TODO
[james-w] Extract the maps from the old and new branches and publish them so the above can be used: TODO
[james-w] Write a migration guide for rewriting: TODO
[james-w] Publicise widely that rewriting will be needed and how to do it: TODO
[james-w] Re-import all packages we have a vcs-import for: TODO
[james-w] Discuss with LP developers desire to have Vcs-* automatically overriden to XS-Vcs-* and replace with a Vcs-Bzr to the offical branch: TODO
Vcs-* automatically overriden to XS-Vcs-* and replace with a Vcs-Bzr to the offical branch: TODO
[jameinel] Make merging of changelogs more pleasant by adding special handling in merge-package: DONE
[james-w] Run some training sessions on sponsoring changes from bzr: TODO
[james-w] Decide which team should be the default reviewer for merge proposals (~ubuntu-reviews ~ubuntu-dev?): INPROGRESS
[james-w] Discuss with LP how to make Ubuntu merge proposals to set that team as the default reviewer: DONE
[james-w] Ubuntu merge proposals use that team as the default reviewer: TODO
[james-w] Improve error message for 'merge-package blew up with "unable to merge upstream"': TODO
[james-w] Investigate why mathiaz got this on libdbd-mysql-perl and whether this is a bug: TODO
[james-w] Request the "Current Development series" of Debian be changed to sid on LP after Lucid: TODO
[james-w] Request "symlinks" from lp:debian/testing/foo to lp:debian/squeeze/foo (bug 523303): DONE
[james-w] Discuss with LP developers showing a different diff when a new upstream version is merged: TODO

* Importing non-master branches from git has a plan, but no code yet.
* The import API tasks on LP that would allow us to import the Debian branches in batch have not been started.

Gobby notes from UDS-L:

Make debian trees mergeable before upstream? Not necessarily highest value, but easier (don't have to resync both sides) and will serve as a useful trial run.

Can't know which git branch is the one we want, and then we can't import non-master
branches in to LP. The latter can be fixed.

Probably 5000 new vcs-imports.
  - LP can handle this given more hardware.
  - Registering them will be a pain.
    - LP should expose them in the API so that we can do it ourselves.
    - Also removing the approval requirement.

Need an API to say "import now"; there is a button in the web interface.

How to find when an upstream has changed its repository URL? Vcs-* for upstreams
might help us out. Heuristics to notice sudden drop of commit rate to zero?

Can poll to find out when a code import has been tried, but this is suboptimal for Launchpad; asynchronous notification not expected very soon, though.

To merge a ./debian/ only branch in to a full source one, just force the file-ids
to match.

Heuristics to detect which revision is the one that corresponds to the upload that
we are processing. bzr-rebase probably has some stuff to help with this.

Override Vcs-* to XS-Vcs-* and put in the official source package branches?

Colin isn't using the "official" branches as he has richer history already.
"Migration from a previous bzr world is still rather painful".

We will make merging of changelogs more pleasant. This won't apply where you
don't use merge-package until bzr has the infrastructure for this.

Merge requests from contributors are not always welcome. Maco suggests a session
to teach people.

Merge proposals default to a wrong team. We should set this to the ubuntu-reviews team.

Would be cool to have (automatic?) progress tracking.

New ubuntu-distributed-devel mailing list - Discussion of the Ubuntu Distributed Development initiative

When filing bugs on this in LP use the "package-branches" tag