Ian Jackson

Fediverse Profile link: https://mastodon.me.uk/@Diziet

salsa profile: https://salsa.debian.org/iwj

gitlab profile: https://gitlab.torproject.org/Diziet

github profile: https://github.com/ijackson/

Ian is the original author of many of Debian's foundations, including the source package format, dpkg, the Constitution, and autopkgtest - all of which have been much improved by others since then.

Nowadays Ian's main focus in Debian is to facilitate a principled transition from source packages to git. Ian is the author of dgit and git-debrebase. Ian and Sean Whitton devised and implemented tag2upload.

Ian works for the Tor Project, where he helps with Arti, the Rust rewrite.

Accepted Talks:

tag2upload - upload simply by pushing a signed git tag

Uploading to Debian is a complicated and balky business involving tarballs, patches, and arcane runes.

tag2upload allows DDs and DMs to upload by simply pushing a signed git tag, to salsa. A robot then automatically, reliably, and traceably, builds the source package and uploads it to the Debian archive.

tag2upload is currently in a phased launch. With luck there will be demo - but uploading with git-debpush is very quick and easy, so don’t blink, or you’ll miss it!

I’ll also discuss some speculative future possibilities.

New Directions in Rust packaging - workshop

There is considerable room for improvement in our Rust packaging workflows. In this Bof I hope to understand the constraints and consider options, outside of the usual day-to-day of packaging.

Both the Rust Team tooling, and dh-rust, have important capabilities, but also significant downsides. In this session I hope to get together and explore, how we could do things better.

Specific areas where I think we have opportunities for improvement include:

  • version dependency handling (automating and removing clerical work)
  • git-native approaches (ie, packaging based on upstream git)
  • one source package per upstream workspace
  • abolishing feature virtual packages
  • making sure all the machinery and metadata is within the Debian archive

This BoF may involve vigorous handwaving and/or scrawls on available pieces of paper. We probably won’t come to complete agreement. But, we already have two approaches that coexist relatively well. I’m hoping that we can try to converge somewhat.

The discussion will cover areas of technical disagremeent, but we will expect everyone to be friendly and constructive. We will make space for everyone’s contributions, so that we can make the best use of everyone’s expertise. And, NB: this is not the Rust Team BoF although of course Rust Team members are very welcome.