Re: Reminder: action required when updating dependencies or build options

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

(I tried to send this to the release-team@ alias/mailing-list, but that
was shuttered last August, so seeing as it would be public on discourse
anyway)

On Tue, 2021-01-12 at 09:31 -0600, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
> Hi developers,
>
> Please remember that action is required when updating your
> dependencies 
> or build options. You need to either make sure gnome-build-meta is OK
> with your changes, or ask release team to investigate on your behalf.
>
> We've had at least four separate breakages from four separate
> projects 
> in the past few days. This is too much. Please be careful. Thanks!

FYI, one of those breakages was a number of smaller API and ABI changes
in libgweather that I tried to bundle up together to minimise breakage.
I tried to my best to document all the API changes in the NEWS file
when doing a release.

And I filed issues against each one of the libgweather users in GNOME:
    https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evolution-data-server/-/issues/288
    https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evolution/-/issues/1320
    https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-settings-daemon/-/issues/584
    https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-weather/-/issues/141
    https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-calendar/-/issues/682
    https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-clocks/-/issues/170
    https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-initial-setup/-/issues/119
    https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/issues/3577
    https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/merge_requests/1565

There were bugs, there usually are, and it broke gnome-build-meta. This
shouldn't have been a problem because:
1) libgweather doesn't have any ABI or API guarantees, even if it tries
to avoid them (GWEATHER_I_KNOW_THIS_IS_UNSTABLE)
2) it was a one-line fix in gnome-build-meta to pin libgweather to an
older version until all the above bugs (or the applicable ones) were
fixed.

Instead we have commits bypassing the CI pipelines _and_ reviews, which
lack any sort of details about the bugs and point to build logs which
will vanish when storage is needed, and don't follow the commit message
style of the individual applications.

Cancelled pipeline runs because you realise too late that it will fail
anyway:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libgweather/-/commits/master/

Commits that weren't even compile-tested locally:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-calendar/-/merge_requests/156

I get that there might be a thrill to being a build sheriff, but if
you're going to commit directly to master without reviews or CI checks,
you need to be absolutely 100% spotless.

This is an example of a perfect commit, which passed the CI, followed
the existing commit style, and was reviewed and merged within 20
minutes:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libgweather/-/merge_requests/93

All that to say that I'm not going to work on libgweather anymore. Make
sure to get those fixed urgently if you want weather to carry on
working in GNOME 40:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libgweather/-/issues/67
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libgweather/-/issues/70

Bye