[ITP] git-filter-repo 2.34.0

[ITP] git-filter-repo 2.34.0

[James Morris]

Hello,

I'd like to maintain the package for git-filter-repo, a Python script
to quickly edit git history. It's MIT licensed, available in both
Debian and Fedora, and I've also just recently packaged
git-filter-repo up for MSYS2.

Cygport package files can be found here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12RXG0804TmR9ZF2STpV7LXqpJMucYAfx?usp=sharing

Thanks,
James

Re: [ITP] git-filter-repo 2.34.0

[Adam Dinwoodie]

On Mon, Mar 07, 2022 at 07:11:24PM -0500, James Morris wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'd like to maintain the package for git-filter-repo, a Python script
> to quickly edit git history. It's MIT licensed, available in both
> Debian and Fedora, and I've also just recently packaged
> git-filter-repo up for MSYS2.

Oh excellent!  I've been thinking about doing this myself, but I'm very
happy for someone else to do the work!

> Cygport package files can be found here:
> https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12RXG0804TmR9ZF2STpV7LXqpJMucYAfx?usp=sharing

A few thoughts from me before I think this is good to go:

- You've patched the shebang from `/usr/bin/env python3` to
  `/usr/bin/python3`.  To what end?  /usr/bin/env is part of coreutils
  for Cygwin, so there shouldn't be any risk that it won't be installed.
  If someone has their own compiled python3 in /usr/local/bin, they'd
  probably expect that to be used, so I don't think I'd change the
  shebang unless there's some clear and specific reason for doing so.

- You're changing the shebang with both a patch file and with a line in
  src_compile; you don't need to do both!  I suspect this is an artefact
  of how Cygport packages the source files, but AIUI the canonical way
  to do this sort of patching with Cygport is to drop the sed line from
  your .cygport file and just keep the patch file that gets generated.

- You've set the category as both Devel and Python.  IMO (I've not
  checked what the general consensus on this is) this shouldn't be in
  Python: it's a tool that happens to use Python, but I'd expect the
  Python category to be for things that are specifically useful to
  people doing Python dev, so things like libraries that can be usefully
  imported in a Python module, or tools for debugging Python scripts.  I
  think this should only be in the Devel category.

- That said, I think ideally you'd also be packaging git_filter_repo.py,
  which does provide a Python library that users can import.  At that
  point, this would unambiguously belong in both categories.

- You're installing the main script into /usr/bin.  I think the
  executable should probably be installed into /usr/libexec/git-core,
  along with other Git executables.  This is what `git --exec-path`
  returns, and matches what's described in INSTALL.md.  More generally,
  I think you should be emulating one of the installation mechanisms in
  INSTALL.md, either using the provided makefile, or following the
  described steps in the "Manual Installation" section of that doc.

- Currently Cygport can't run the test suite.  Ideally it'd be able to;
  it seems unlikely that there would be Cygwin-specific regressions in
  this code, but it's not out of the question, and given upstream
  provide a test suite, it seems a shame to not use it.

That all said, this is clearly very close to ready to ship, and as I
say, it'll definitely be useful once it's available.  Thank you!

Adam

Re: [ITP] git-filter-repo 2.34.0

[James Morris]

Hi Adam,

Thanks for the feedback!

> - You've patched the shebang from `/usr/bin/env python3` to
>   `/usr/bin/python3`.  To what end?  /usr/bin/env is part of coreutils
>   for Cygwin, so there shouldn't be any risk that it won't be installed.
>   If someone has their own compiled python3 in /usr/local/bin, they'd
>   probably expect that to be used, so I don't think I'd change the
>   shebang unless there's some clear and specific reason for doing so.

I am trying to prevent exactly what you described. git-filter-repo
needs Python >=3.5 to function and we know that `/usr/bin/python3` is
the correct version. Suppose a user installed Python 3.3 at
`/usr/local/bin/python3`, now git-filter-repo will run with the wrong
Python version and most likely break. This is what other distributions
do when they distribute Python scripts and I'm fairly sure Debian
explicitly calls this out in its policy.

> - You're changing the shebang with both a patch file and with a line in
>   src_compile; you don't need to do both!  I suspect this is an artefact
>   of how Cygport packages the source files, but AIUI the canonical way
>   to do this sort of patching with Cygport is to drop the sed line from
>   your .cygport file and just keep the patch file that gets generated.

Yeah the patch file was automatically generated when I ran `cygport
all` and I wasn't sure what to do with it. To me it seems silly to
have a patch just to change the shebang line when `sed` works fine.
I'll try removing `sed` to see what happens.

> - You've set the category as both Devel and Python.  IMO (I've not
>   checked what the general consensus on this is) this shouldn't be in
>   Python: it's a tool that happens to use Python, but I'd expect the
>   Python category to be for things that are specifically useful to
>   people doing Python dev, so things like libraries that can be usefully
>   imported in a Python module, or tools for debugging Python scripts.  I
>   think this should only be in the Devel category.

Yeah I initially didn't have it in the Python category, but then I
thought about how other tools like bzr and mercurial are there so it
seemed appropriate. Granted I didn't check if they also provided
Python libraries, but I thought it made sense to put git-filter-repo
in the Python category to maybe warn users that installing it would
pull in Python.

> - That said, I think ideally you'd also be packaging git_filter_repo.py,
>   which does provide a Python library that users can import.  At that
>   point, this would unambiguously belong in both categories.

I wasn't sure how to go about this since I didn't know if that would
mean making a bunch of 'python3*-git-filter-repo' packages.
Do you think I should make it importable, remove it from the Python
category, or just leave it as is?

> - You're installing the main script into /usr/bin.  I think the
>   executable should probably be installed into /usr/libexec/git-core,
>   along with other Git executables.  This is what `git --exec-path`
>   returns, and matches what's described in INSTALL.md.  More generally,
>   I think you should be emulating one of the installation mechanisms in
>   INSTALL.md, either using the provided makefile, or following the
>   described steps in the "Manual Installation" section of that doc.

Since git-filter-repo is a third-party command like git-lfs, I am of
the opinion that it should go in `/usr/bin` rather than git's private
`libexec`. That's also how Debian, Gentoo, Arch, and Homebrew package
it. Also I believe my cygport file does pretty much follow the manual
installation instructions except for the part about installing
git_filter_repo.py (for the reasons I stated above). I would like to
use the Makefile, however it has a number of things that make it
difficult to work with in this context and from what I've seen
basically none of the other packagers use it and instead opt to do the
installation manually like I have.

> - Currently Cygport can't run the test suite.  Ideally it'd be able to;
>   it seems unlikely that there would be Cygwin-specific regressions in
>   this code, but it's not out of the question, and given upstream
>   provide a test suite, it seems a shame to not use it.

I'll add that in. The package does currently report some errors with
git 2.35 and it has been reported upstream (not by me)
https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo/issues/344.

I look forward to getting this in Cygwin!

-James

Re: [ITP] git-filter-repo 2.34.0

[Marco Atzeri]

On 08.03.2022 01:11, James Morris wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'd like to maintain the package for git-filter-repo, a Python script
> to quickly edit git history. It's MIT licensed, available in both
> Debian and Fedora, and I've also just recently packaged
> git-filter-repo up for MSYS2.
> 
> Cygport package files can be found here:
> https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12RXG0804TmR9ZF2STpV7LXqpJMucYAfx?usp=sharing
> 
> Thanks,
> James

added to the package list.
As soon you and Adam are aligned, you can upload.

https://cygwin.com/packaging-contributors-guide.html

Re: [ITP] git-filter-repo 2.34.0

[Jon Turney]

On 10/03/2022 20:52, Marco Atzeri wrote:
> On 08.03.2022 01:11, James Morris wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I'd like to maintain the package for git-filter-repo, a Python script
>> to quickly edit git history. It's MIT licensed, available in both
>> Debian and Fedora, and I've also just recently packaged
>> git-filter-repo up for MSYS2.
>>
>> Cygport package files can be found here:
>> https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12RXG0804TmR9ZF2STpV7LXqpJMucYAfx?usp=sharing 
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>> James
> 
> added to the package list.
> As soon you and Adam are aligned, you can upload.
> 
> https://cygwin.com/packaging-contributors-guide.html

Please also provide a SSH key as explained here:

    https://cygwin.com/packaging/key.html

Re: [ITP] git-filter-repo 2.34.0

[Adam Dinwoodie]

On Tue, Mar 08, 2022 at 03:42:13PM -0500, James Morris wrote:
> Hi Adam,
> 
> Thanks for the feedback!
> 
> > - You've patched the shebang from `/usr/bin/env python3` to
> >   `/usr/bin/python3`.  To what end?  /usr/bin/env is part of coreutils
> >   for Cygwin, so there shouldn't be any risk that it won't be installed.
> >   If someone has their own compiled python3 in /usr/local/bin, they'd
> >   probably expect that to be used, so I don't think I'd change the
> >   shebang unless there's some clear and specific reason for doing so.
> 
> I am trying to prevent exactly what you described. git-filter-repo
> needs Python >=3.5 to function and we know that `/usr/bin/python3` is
> the correct version. Suppose a user installed Python 3.3 at
> `/usr/local/bin/python3`, now git-filter-repo will run with the wrong
> Python version and most likely break. This is what other distributions
> do when they distribute Python scripts and I'm fairly sure Debian
> explicitly calls this out in its policy.

I just went and did an entirely unscientific check of the scripts I have
installed in my Cygwin /bin/ directory.  It looks like there's no great
consistency, but the majority of scripts there (20 to 9) are calling the
relevant Python interpreter directly rather than relying on env.

Personally, I'd probably not bother changing things from the upstream
package, but if you'd rather do things this way I'm not going to argue
:)

> > - You're changing the shebang with both a patch file and with a line in
> >   src_compile; you don't need to do both!  I suspect this is an artefact
> >   of how Cygport packages the source files, but AIUI the canonical way
> >   to do this sort of patching with Cygport is to drop the sed line from
> >   your .cygport file and just keep the patch file that gets generated.
> 
> Yeah the patch file was automatically generated when I ran `cygport
> all` and I wasn't sure what to do with it. To me it seems silly to
> have a patch just to change the shebang line when `sed` works fine.
> I'll try removing `sed` to see what happens.

Cygport automatically generates patches when it detects a difference
between the "src" and "origsrc" directories.  You're changing something
in "src", so the patch gets generated.  The idea is that you can adjust
things in the src directory by hand, then when you run cygport it'll
automatically store the diffs so you never need to make the same changes
again.

I suspect the best solution here would be to either (a) drop the sed
line and just use a patch file, or (b) make the change in the inst
directory as part of the `src_install` function in the .cygport file,
i.e. fixing it up as part of doing the "installation" step rather than
the "compilation" step.  But the sed command is idempotent, so while
having both is redundant and a bit odd, I don't think it does any harm.

> > - You've set the category as both Devel and Python.  IMO (I've not
> >   checked what the general consensus on this is) this shouldn't be in
> >   Python: it's a tool that happens to use Python, but I'd expect the
> >   Python category to be for things that are specifically useful to
> >   people doing Python dev, so things like libraries that can be usefully
> >   imported in a Python module, or tools for debugging Python scripts.  I
> >   think this should only be in the Devel category.
> 
> Yeah I initially didn't have it in the Python category, but then I
> thought about how other tools like bzr and mercurial are there so it
> seemed appropriate. Granted I didn't check if they also provided
> Python libraries, but I thought it made sense to put git-filter-repo
> in the Python category to maybe warn users that installing it would
> pull in Python.

I've just checked both bzr and mercurial, and they definitely do provide
Python packages.  I don't think it's necessary to warn users about
dependencies by using categories; setup provides those warnings already
when it does dependency resolution.

> > - That said, I think ideally you'd also be packaging git_filter_repo.py,
> >   which does provide a Python library that users can import.  At that
> >   point, this would unambiguously belong in both categories.
> 
> I wasn't sure how to go about this since I didn't know if that would
> mean making a bunch of 'python3*-git-filter-repo' packages.
> Do you think I should make it importable, remove it from the Python
> category, or just leave it as is?

My preference here would be to make it importable.  That's not going to
be something many people are interested in, but there's no reason not
to.  It can still be a single package -- as bzr and mercurial are --
providing both the main executable and the Python libraries.

There's obviously a balance here: monolith packages that add a bunch of
dependencies or eat a bunch of disk space / bandwidth, to provide
functions many users won't care about, are clearly a bad idea.  But the
cost of having both the Python module and the executable in this
package is going to be a few hundred bytes and no extra dependencies, so
I think just providing the lot in one bundle is the way to go.

> > - You're installing the main script into /usr/bin.  I think the
> >   executable should probably be installed into /usr/libexec/git-core,
> >   along with other Git executables.  This is what `git --exec-path`
> >   returns, and matches what's described in INSTALL.md.  More generally,
> >   I think you should be emulating one of the installation mechanisms in
> >   INSTALL.md, either using the provided makefile, or following the
> >   described steps in the "Manual Installation" section of that doc.
> 
> Since git-filter-repo is a third-party command like git-lfs, I am of
> the opinion that it should go in `/usr/bin` rather than git's private
> `libexec`. That's also how Debian, Gentoo, Arch, and Homebrew package
> it. Also I believe my cygport file does pretty much follow the manual
> installation instructions except for the part about installing
> git_filter_repo.py (for the reasons I stated above). I would like to
> use the Makefile, however it has a number of things that make it
> difficult to work with in this context and from what I've seen
> basically none of the other packagers use it and instead opt to do the
> installation manually like I have.

You're quite right.  I'd expected most other packagers to put it in the
git-core path, but that's clearly not the norm, and I think it makes
sense to follow the lead of other distros here.

> > - Currently Cygport can't run the test suite.  Ideally it'd be able to;
> >   it seems unlikely that there would be Cygwin-specific regressions in
> >   this code, but it's not out of the question, and given upstream
> >   provide a test suite, it seems a shame to not use it.
> 
> I'll add that in. The package does currently report some errors with
> git 2.35 and it has been reported upstream (not by me)
> https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo/issues/344.

Magic, thank you!

Adam

Re: [ITP] git-filter-repo 2.34.0

[Jon Turney]

On 11/03/2022 21:54, Adam Dinwoodie wrote:
> 
>>> - You're changing the shebang with both a patch file and with a line in
>>>    src_compile; you don't need to do both!  I suspect this is an artefact
>>>    of how Cygport packages the source files, but AIUI the canonical way
>>>    to do this sort of patching with Cygport is to drop the sed line from
>>>    your .cygport file and just keep the patch file that gets generated.
>>
>> Yeah the patch file was automatically generated when I ran `cygport
>> all` and I wasn't sure what to do with it. To me it seems silly to
>> have a patch just to change the shebang line when `sed` works fine.
>> I'll try removing `sed` to see what happens.
> 
> Cygport automatically generates patches when it detects a difference
> between the "src" and "origsrc" directories.  You're changing something
> in "src", so the patch gets generated.  The idea is that you can adjust
> things in the src directory by hand, then when you run cygport it'll
> automatically store the diffs so you never need to make the same changes
> again.

You can use DIFF_EXCLUDES to ignore that file for patch generation, if 
it's being modified in the src_compile(), like this.

(which seems to be now present in the cygport when I looked it over)

Re: [ITP] git-filter-repo 2.34.0

[Jon Turney]

On 11/03/2022 13:37, Jon Turney wrote:
> On 10/03/2022 20:52, Marco Atzeri wrote:
>> On 08.03.2022 01:11, James Morris wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I'd like to maintain the package for git-filter-repo, a Python script
>>> to quickly edit git history. It's MIT licensed, available in both
>>> Debian and Fedora, and I've also just recently packaged
>>> git-filter-repo up for MSYS2.
>>>
>>> Cygport package files can be found here:
>>> https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12RXG0804TmR9ZF2STpV7LXqpJMucYAfx?usp=sharing 
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> James
>>
>> added to the package list.
>> As soon you and Adam are aligned, you can upload.
>>
>> https://cygwin.com/packaging-contributors-guide.html
> 
> Please also provide a SSH key as explained here:
> 
>     https://cygwin.com/packaging/key.html

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