rebuilding from old cvs tags

[Paul Howarth]

On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:29:24 -0500
Mike Bonnet <mikeb at redhat.com> wrote:

> 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.

I've used it after I've done a "make tag" whilst forgetting to commit
changes first, so the tag was applied to the wrong version of the spec
file etc. Force tagging is useful for correcting this error.

Paul.