Re: Moving existing ostree users to a new branch - take 2

[Daniel Drake <drake endlessm com>]

On Mon, May 15, 2017 at 2:45 AM, Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com> wrote:
> So, here is a strawman proposal:
>
> * Add new per-commit metadata "ostree.origin-ref", and set it
>   whenever we commit.
>
> * Add a new operation to ostree that makes it easy to copy a commit
>   from one ref to another, changing only the origin-ref.
>
> * Add a new security mode in the repo config where GPG signatures
>   are required for commits *and* the commits are required to have
>   an ostree.origin-ref that matches the ref that was pulled.
>
> * Add a new magic ref name, "ostree/config", where the commit contains
>   metadata that is global configuration for the remote. There is
>   a corresponding [config] group in the config file for the repo
>   and an ostree operation that takes all the configuration data in
>   the config group (plus the gpg key) and commits a new version
>   of the ostree/config ref.
>   (For flatpak I would also want to store our extra global metadata
>    here with custom keys, currently xa.title and xa.default-branch.)
>
> * Add a client side operation that update the remote configuration
>   based on a ostree/config commit object. (i.e. update url, add new
>   gpg keys, revoke old gpg keys, etc).

I can see how you would use this to rewrite a remote config so that it
points at a new URL/key.

How about redirecting refs within the remote though? I guess we could
do it by adding configuration data that includes the ref redirects,
also to be included in the ostree/config commits?

It seems like the discussion has progressed beyond the original
suggestion of just using commit metadata to redirect to a new branch,
but in case it is of interest, here is a rough implementation of that:
https://github.com/endlessm/ostree/commits/commit-eol-redirect

Daniel