rebuilding from old cvs tags

[Mike Bonnet]

On Thu, 2008-02-28 at 11:58 -0500, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> Mike Bonnet (mikeb at redhat.com) said: 
> > If a transient build error (build system hiccup) prevented the build
> > from completing, you should be able to rebuild from the same tag.
> > 
> > Yes, I know there are some failure modes where this does not work, but
> > we're working on addressing those, and they should be the minority of
> > cases.
> 
> True, but if it's something like 'a build dependent package is broken',
> you're unlikely to remember to just re-push the task two days later
> when it's fixed.

I don't see how disabling force-tagging has any effect on this.
Remember you can rebuild with the same tag if the build fails.

> In any case, turning off force tag would lead to
> either:
> 
> - needless release & changelog inflation

Do we require people to add a changelog entry for *every* increment of
the release number?  If you're just bumping the release for a rebuild,
it seems reasonable to not bother with the changelog entry.

> or
> 
> - usage of scratch builds just to test that it builds everywhere
> 

If the build fails because of a problem with a dependent package, you
can rebuild from the same tag once the dependent package is fixed.

If the build fails because of a problem with the spec file or source,
you need to change something to make it build successfully.  Bumping the
release and adding a changelog entry seems appropriate in this case.
I'd argue that even *now* we should be discouraging force-tag in this
case.

> Actually, do we even know if disabling force tag can be worked around?

Not sure what you're asking here.  There's no reason force-tag is
required for any part of the package maintenance workflow.