Re: [PATCH cygport] Add a command to make a test release

[Jon Turney <jon.turney@dronecode.org.uk>]

On 03/10/2017 21:01, Andrew Schulman wrote:
>> This patch (originally by Achim Gratz) adds a mechanism for generating
>> packages marked as 'test' as described in [1].
>>
>> I'm not committed to any of the details, but I would like to get
>> something with this functionality in, so tell me how you'd like it
>> implemented and I'll do it...
>>
>> [1] https://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-apps/2016-12/msg00005.html
> 
> Cygport needs a way to specify which versions are prev, curr, and test in
> cygport files. David Rothenberger and I each proposed a method [1,2]. It
> doesn't matter much to me which method is picked, but it's definitely a
> missing feature.

I'm not keen on the idea of including this transient information into 
the cygport, and thus baking it into the source package.

However, I also want to make package maintainers lives easier.  So, I'm 
all for automation to make things less tedious and error-prone, which 
this patch attempts to do.

A few points to consider:

* I'm going to remove the restriction that you can only have 3 versions. 
(I keep on putting this off only because it will break parsing setup.ini 
for setup prior to 2.877)

* (This also means that more than one test: version may be available)

* Changing curr: doesn't cause setup to downgrade (since 2.864) (unless 
--force-current is used, since 2.874)

* prev: isn't a very significant label, since the only way to install 
that version is by manually selecting it, i.e. all it means is "keep 
this version around"

Taking a step back, as a package maintainer, what do you need to 
control?  What features do we need here?