simons:
Hi guys,
in my understanding, our current update procedure works like this:
1) We notice that a package was updated (or added) on Hackage by means of RSS.
2) A maintainer runs cabal2arch to generate an updated PKGBUILD.
3) If the generated PKGBUILD looks good, the file is committed to the Git repository and uploaded to AUR.
There are a few things worth noting about that procedure:
- A maintainer must perform 1 manual step per updated package: that is linear complexity O(n).
- There is no mechanism to guarantee that the updated set of PKGBUILD files actually works.
Under my old system, each package was * converted via cabal2arch type check and compile the result: * makepkg -f So anything into AUR has to at least have type checked at one point (even though each upload could have broken downstream packages). It will be a stronger position if you aim for always having a "consistent" package set -- i.e. all packages are guaranteed to be consistent with respect to their version needs. A binary approach will demand this.
Naturally, one wonders how to improve the update process. There are a few possible optimizations:
- The simplest way to verify whether all PKGBUILDs compile is to, well, compile them. Given a set of updated packages, all packages that directly or indirectly depend on any of the updated packages need re-compilation, and the current set of PKGBUILDs is to be considered valid only if all those builds succeed.
3) Run "make all" to re-build all PKGBUILD files that need updating.
4) Run "make check" to perform all necessary re-builds of binary packages. If all builds succeed, proceed with (5). Otherwise, figure out which package broke the build and revert the changes in the corresponding Cabal file. Go back to (3).
5) Run "make upload" and "git commit" the changes.
So we'll always have a consistent set? This would be a valuable list -- no other distro aims for this, other than Debian, which aims only to support a few hundred packages. I think a full rebuild of the dependency tree each time is the only way to be sure -- to force typechecking of the affected parts of the tree. Additionally, once 'cabal check' is more widespread, you may also do functional testing of the tree. -- Don