[Hamara-devel] how are we going to solve the debian/watch conundrum or some other way ?

[shirish]

Hi all,
This has been something that has been bothering me from day 1. In debian 
the /debian/watch file is used extensively. I had been working on the 
blog post from last 2-3 days whenever I got some free time, see 
https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2015/05/15/the-debianwatch-file/

Now what I have not shared there is the fact (which is obvious if you 
have seen the internals) is that the watch file actually downloads the 
new source in the DM's/DD's team workspace so that the new version can 
be hacked upon (packaged) by any of the team members of that team. One 
can look at the Debian Libreoffice team members Debian LibreOffice 
Maintainers <debian-openoffice at lists.debian.org> or the Maintainers of 
Mozilla-related packages 
<pkg-mozilla-maintainers at lists.alioth.debian.org> who are responsible 
for maintenance of the respective softwares, Both the teams follow.

I didn't use either because the binaries of each are huge, then source 
archives would probably be bigger, even if it's at a diff. of 10% that's 
huge as per my current network scenario.

I do hope some serious thought can be put on that as unlike debian we do 
not have the luxury of 1000 odd developers as they have so having as 
many semi or fully-automated tools would be better.

I have no clue about the network expenditure techblue has or what having 
such a change will entail.

One somewhat cheaper/manageable way would be to clone/mirror upstream's 
repo. and make the clone trigger some sort of notice when a tag of new 
release happens. While cron could be used to run a git pull update every 
few hours or days depending on upstream, this will entail a bit of 
micro-management. The only part to configure would be if there is a way 
to trigger a notice if upstream makes any new tags. Haven't seen this if 
it's doable or not but in theory/logically it should be doable.

If there are better/superior ways to accomplish the same, would be 
waiting to hear those as well.

Look forward to feedback.
-- 
Regards,
Shirish Agarwal,
Community Lead,
Hamaralinux.org