Date: Thu, 21 May 2020 15:41:57 +0200
From: Natanael Copa <ncopa@alpinelinux.org>
To: Alpine develmopment <~alpine/devel@lists.alpinelinux.org>
Subject: RFC: tool to scan aports tree
Message-ID: <20200521154157.6df2d118@ncopa-desktop.copa.dup.pw>
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Hi!

I have been thinking of (re)writing or refactor the tool to scan the
aports tree. Currently we have lua-aports which can scan the tree and
list build order of given packages, but the interface is not great.

I would like to have some feedback on how you would like that the
interface should be?


The things that it will need to do that current `ap` can do is:

- list the build order of given packages (ap builddirs)
- recursively print all the dependencies for given packages (ap recursdeps)
- dump all aports to json (ap dump-json)

I am not sure those are needed:

- list the .apk files generated from given aport (ap apk-list)
- give a list of packages that needs to be built (ap build-list. not
  sure if its needed but may be handy)
- print the reverse build time dependencies for a given package (ap
  revdep)

Things that the tools needs to be able to help us to do:

- detect if there are any invalid dependencies (eg. packages in main
  that depends on packages in community or testing)

- detect missing build time dependencies (due to arch being disabled)

- detect circular build time dependencies

- clean source cache (delete downloaded sources older than X that is
  not currently used by any aports)

- implement relgroups (check that all aports with same relgroup has
  same pkgver - this is not in use in aports yet)

- print reverse build deps. If you for example disable/enable a library
  for an architecture, what other packages needs also to be
  disabled/enabled.


Are there other things it needs to be able to do? Maybe parse the
secfixes sections? look for duplicates? verify that upstream sources
are still available? search in makedepends/sources/arch/options? (eg
list all aports that has !check in options, or all aports that has a
given arch explicitly disabled)

This could be implemented either by a single tool similar to current
`ap` or it could be implemented as multiple tools.

How do you think it should work? Any suggestions for what the --help
output should be? Or maybe even a suggestions for a simple manpage.

I'd like to work on this after 3.12 is out, but want to start the
discussion on how it should work.

Thanks!

-nc