User:Walters/Packaging VCS key proposal

Executive Summary

This proposal is to add an informative comment to the Fedora spec files, of the form:

#VCS: <vcstype>:<vcsurl>

Example:

#VCS: git:git://git.gnome.org/metacity

Rationale

Currently spec files have a lot of metadata about the upstream project; however it lacks one of the most important, which is the upstream revision control system.

Adding this data will allow:

• Cherrypicking a patch directly from the upstream VCS
• Correspondence checking between source tarballs and VCS checkouts
• Automated build scripts to update the spec from VCS
• In the more distant future, reworking Fedora's packaging to be more VCS-centric (i.e. having a mirror of upstream VCS instead of series of inefficient tarball snapshots in lookaside cache)

Implementation

Because RPM only allows a well-known set of keys, this proposal introduces the key with a comment prefix, to ensure that older RPM versions do not complain. A patch has been [submitted upstream] however.

The key format has been influenced by the [Maven SCM format], however we drop the redundant "scm:" prefix.

Supported implementation formats:

git

The <vcsurl> part should be in a format which git clone as of Git 1.6.6 will accept, with the additional qualifier that the URL may have a fragment identifer which denotes a branch. Examples:

#VCS: git:http://example/~you/proj.git
#VCS: git:git://git.clutter-project.org/clutter#clutter-1.0

Discussion

Unfortunately, some questions were raised here: https://fedorahosted.org/fesco/ticket/353 Wait until that dies down and then make sure those questions get asked and addressed here.