salsa.debian.org (git.debian.org replacement) going into beta

salsa.debian.org (git.debian.org replacement) going into beta

Posted Jan 3, 2018 2:42 UTC (Wed) by Conan_Kudo (subscriber, #103240)
In reply to: salsa.debian.org (git.debian.org replacement) going into beta by mirabilos
Parent article: salsa.debian.org (git.debian.org replacement) going into beta

The whole process of selecting GitLab after selecting Pagure was really fishy.

I've been sitting in the Pagure communication channels for well over a year, and I've only seen a couple of messages hinting around Debian packaging for Pagure. But obviously that never went anywhere.

I'm friends with a few Debian Developers (who will remain nameless to protect the innocent) and they're frustrated and upset about the "decision" but there's nothing they can do about it. One was particularly angry about the usage of GitLab's omnibus "blob" packages, since they're basically unverifiable goops of bundled software. But, apparently, DSAs can do what they want, for the most part...

But you know what? It's okay, Debian wants GitLab more than it wants to use software that it can offer in its own repositories to its own users. They can use whatever excuse they want to avoid the fact that Pagure was the one voted for because it's fully Free Software and complies with their own ethics (and isn't a pain to package and keep up to date, too!).

Pagure is getting better, and there are even features in Pagure that don't exist in GitLab, like remote pull requests! It has CI hooks for integrating with your CI system of choice. It supports fully email-based workflows (I hear Debian people seem to like that). Most of the actual "data" of Pagure is stored as Git repositories (issues, wiki, docs). Service integration is supported via FedMsg (which Debian has an instance in their infrastructure) or via regular webhooks.

As of today, Pagure supports every desired feature on the feature matrix in the gobby notes from the Alioth Successors 2017 Sprint except mirroring. Pull mirroring could be implemented through a service, and an (admittedly somewhat old) PR implements push mirroring support. You don't get these features with GitLab CE either, so I don't know why they listed it as an available feature.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view), Debian does not mandate a specific way for sources to be managed for Debian packages. You're totally free to host the packaging sources wherever and hook it up to Debian infrastructure. There are even package sources hosted on GitHub pointed to Debian. So, if no one takes up the mantle to get a Pagure-based Alioth service up, there's always space on Pagure.io.

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