Using BuildStream as a module maintainer

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

I finally manage to build Yelp with BuildStream. Thanks to Michael
Catanzaro for some help on IRC. I have some questions about what I
should be doing these days as a module maintainer with respect to
development and making releases. Maybe some of this has already been
answered, but I'm guessing I'm not the only developer first working my
way through new hotness.

This is what I do to build to a state where I can make a release:

$ bst build --track-all --track-save core/yelp.bst
# For some reason I have to do this too? Not sure.
$ bst build core/yelp.bst
$ bst shell --build core/yelp.bst bash

That drops me in a shell in a yelp clone. I can do the autogen.sh,
make, make distcheck dance. (I'll catch on to meson soon, promise.) But
I don't know what to do next. I can't seem to scp. The only editor I
have for writing NEWS entries and commit messages is vi. I don't have
my ssh keys, pgp keys, git configs, etc. I'm kind of thinking this
sandbox isn't the place for me to be doing things.

And what about doing general development work? I can't really do much
inside BuildStream's shell. And even running yelp leaves it pretty
crippled, because it doesn't have access to /usr/share or D-Bus.

I need some sort of build environment to keep up with dependencies, but
I feel like I'm not fully grokking how people do stuff these days.
Could somebody shed more light on how they do things?

Sorry for being the old man yelling at a cloud.

--
Shaun