Preperation of orig.tar.gz with --git-overlay enabled

[andrewharle]

Hi, I receive an error gbp:error: Overlay must be used with --git-export-dir.

I have a repository with debian/gbp.conf as follows:

[DEFAULT]
upstream-tag = v%(version)s

[buildpackage]
overlay = True
export-dir = ../build-area

In the generate-git-snapshot script, --git-export-dir is unset. I was able to continue successfully with the build by overriding GBP_OPTS and explicitly setting --git-export-dir=../. I'm concerned however that this might break something else?

https://github.com/mika/jenkins-debian-glue/blob/ab257812d542d3c779abcb3a235fd82bc9e05f4a/scripts/generate-git-snapshot#L63

For an example of this behaviour, try to build the https://packages.debian.org/source/buster/skalibs package.

Thanks,

[mika]

The export-dir = ../build-area configuration would cause the files ending up in an unexpected directory (from jenkins-debian-glue's point of view), that's why we have an explicit --git-export-dir= call in our default $GBP_OPTS.

@andrewharle: AFAIK I don't use overlay = True anywhere though, are you managing only the debian/ directory within git, or what's the rational for this? Your change regarding --git-export-dir=../ makes sense to me, maybe we should even use and set this as a default in jenkins-debian-glue then?

@agx might I ask you - with your gbp hat on :) - about your opinion on that matter? Is there any reason coming to your mind, why we shouldn't explicitly set and force --git-export-dir to an explicit directory? (BTW: for me the gbp:error: Overlay must be used with --git-export-dir was confusing at first, as we set the option but to an empty value. Is the error message something we should maybe clarify in the wording?)

[agx]

@agx might I ask you - with your gbp hat on :) - about your opinion on that matter? Is there any reason coming to your mind, why we shouldn't explicitly set and force --git-export-dir to an explicit directory?

it could say gbp:error: Overlay must be used with non-empty --git-export-dir (since from gbp's view "" is the same as unset).

Regarding overlay builds. To support these export-dir needs to be set so gbp knows where to overlay to so a possible solution might be to check gbp config buildpackage.overlay and only set build-area in that case to non-empty value.

[mika]

Thank you @agx for your valuable feedback! I implemented what you suggested at https://github.com/mika/jenkins-debian-glue/pull/231 - as noted in its commit message, it seems to make a different whether the option is set to --git-export-dir=/.. or if its unset (--git-export-dir=). Does this make sense for you?

@andrewharle can you confirm that with https://github.com/mika/jenkins-debian-glue/pull/231 it works for you as expected?

[agx]

@mika you mean --export-dir=../ ? That should make a difference since unset means don't export anything while expoting to ../ would export to a random dir in .. and then rename (which will likely fail since the dir already exists)

[andrewharle]

@mika Thanks for the comments. I've tested the pull request #231 and posted my observations.