Adopting tag2upload and modernising your Debian packaging

Introduction

tag2upload allows authorised Debian contributors to upload to Debian simply by pushing a signed git tag to Debian’s gitlab instance, Salsa.

We have recently announced that tag2upload is, in our opinion, now very stable, and ready for general use by all Debian uploaders.

tag2upload, as part of Debian’s git transition programme, is very flexible - it needs to support a large variety of maintainer practices. And it’s relatively unopinionated, wherever that’s possible. But, during the open beta, various contributors emailed us asking for Debian packaging git workflow advice and recommendations.

This post is an attempt to give some more opinionated answers, and guide you through modernising your workflow.

(This article is aimed squarely at Debian contributors. Much of it will make little sense to Debian outsiders.)

• Why
  • Ease of development
  • Don’t fear a learning burden; instead, start forgetting all that nonsense
  • Properly publishing the source code
• Adopting tag2upload - the minimal change
• Overhauling your workflow, using advanced git-first tooling
  • Assumptions
  • Topics and tooling
  • Choosing the git branch format
  • Determine upstream git and stop using upstream tarballs
  • Convert the git branch
  • Change the source format
  • Sort out the documentation and metadata
  • Configure Salsa Merge Requests
  • Set up Salsa CI, and use it to block merges of bad changes
• Day-to-day work
  • Making changes to the package
  • Test build
  • Uploading to Debian
  • Uploading a NEW package to Debian
  • New upstream version
  • Sponsorship
  • Incorporating an NMU
  • DFSG filtering (handling non-free files)
• Common issues
• Further reading

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