Packages updated by git

[flatcap]

This is just a blue-sky idea that occurred to me...

In the future, I imagine three or four NeoMutt packages:

• neomutt (binary, runtime)
• neomutt-doc
• neomutt-contrib
• neomutt-colorschemes

The latter three are just data.
I imagine them being updated by the NeoMutt community (I can live in hope :-)

How would you feel about a neomutt-doc-git package?

It would install the docs in a git repo and add a [cron|systemd] script to git pull once a week.

We'd still package all the non-git versions too.

Do you know of any other packages that do this?
It is allowed on your distro?

[lbschenkel]

neomutt-doc-git in the way described would be an unorthodox package in MacPorts land. I believe that it would be frowned upon (but to be sure I would need to ask in the mailing list). What I've seen being done, in similar circumstances, is to have a neomutt-doc-dev port (-dev is the convention for ports tracking a development snapshot instead of the latest release) which would be periodically updated by the maintainer to package a recent git commit.

But to be honest I'm not sure how useful it is to be shipping the docs more often than the releases. Wouldn't be the docs documenting behaviour that is not shipped yet?

[flatcap]

an unorthodox package

That's very polite :-)

how useful it is to be shipping the docs more often than the releases

If we added a new feature, then obviously we wouldn't update the docs until the release.
The main guide wouldn't change often, but that's not all of the docs.

I'd like to create some "HowTos".
We could create a template and get the users to suggest updates.
The quicker the turnaround, the easier it would be to keep their interest.

The same would apply to contrib and colorschemes.

[lbschenkel]

Considering that there's already a release every month, is a faster turnaround really necessary or warranted, cost/benefit-wise? As a maintainer, I wouldn't be so keen on updating a -dev package more frequently than once a month; as an user, I wouldn't be so keen on having yet another cron job or daemon running on my machine — in the unlikely event I need to revisit the docs (if the other users are like me, you set up NeoMutt once and do not tweak it very often afterwards), having documentation that is a month old (less on average) isn't that a big deal.

Maybe you want to ship a contrib script, so if the user really wants it, you can run it and update your docs from the latest Git commit? Something like update-smart-drivedb from smartmontools (which actually ended up being removed from distros since it ended up introducing security problems). But note that in case the update introduces new files, they will become leftovers and won't be removed when the package is uninstalled. AFAIK there's no way in MacPorts to run a script during uninstallation: only the files belonging to the package will be removed, and nothing else.

I do think I understand what you're suggesting and why, but I'm not convinced it's worth the hassle. Especially since I saw no evidence that potential contributors would be dissuaded by the fact that their contributions would take up to 30 days to show up on the next release (it's way worse for most other projects). I hope you don't mind my honest feedback. :-)

[gahr]

+1 to @lbschenkel . We can't have live ports in FreeBSD, because we store and compare the hashes of the distribution tarballs. We also use -dev ports for development stuff, but the maintainer needs to update them manually.

[flatcap]

Considering that there's already a release every month

Yeah, there used to be. The last release was 6 months ago.
When these large changes are done, the future releases won't be so frequent.

I'm very conscious of the effort involved in making a release.
I was just wondering if there were a way to make a 'magic' rolling release
(for the non-binary packages, at least).

I wouldn't be so keen on having yet another cron job

Fair enough

in the unlikely event I need to revisit the docs

You may be in the minority there :-)

there's no way in MacPorts to run a script during uninstallation

Hmm... that makes things trickier.

I hope you don't mind my honest feedback. :-)

I welcome it. Thanks.

[lbschenkel]

Yeah, there used to be. The last release was 6 months ago.

I even checked the GitHub releases before posting and I could swear I saw a December date there for the last release. What the hell, I must change my glasses... :-/

[Vaelatern]

Void Linux does not like the insecurity and effort to have a -git package up to date, and we disallow them.
But if upstream were to package the docs every week on a cron job (assuming there are changes, please!), and declare that they are the docs as of that point, we would have no objection and would package it without issues.