h1. Debian Packaging

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h2. Artifacts

The following artifacts are generated from the Deb build process and form part of any release:

* foreman, including database and compute resource subpackages

* foreman-installer

* foreman-proxy

* dependencies

h2. Jenkins

Jenkins is used to automate the package builds, using the jobs:

* http://ci.theforeman.org/view/Packaging/job/packaging_build_deb_dependency (for gems)

* http://ci.theforeman.org/view/Packaging/job/packaging_build_deb_coreproject (for core/proxy/installer)

These jobs rely on matching the branching structure of the core projects to the branching in foreman-packaging.

In addition these matrix jobs build regular 'scratch' packages from the develop HEAD

* http://ci.theforeman.org/view/Packaging/job/packaging_build_foreman_matrix

* http://ci.theforeman.org/view/Packaging/job/packaging_build_foreman-proxy_matrix

The matrix jobs only presently build the nightly packages, thus RC/Stable releases will be queued manually using the basic jobs. The configuration depends on the build you want:

h4. Scratch build parameters

Want to test your own branch?

Push your packaging updates to your fork of foreman-packaging:deb/develop

Change repoowner to your GitHub account

Select project (core/proxy/installer)

Select OS ('all', or a specific target)

branch should be 'develop'

leave PR field blank

gitrelease should be ticked

The packages will be on stagingdeb.theforeman.org/<os>/<your github user>

h4. Want to test a PR?

repoowner must be theforeman

Select project (core/proxy/installer)

Select OS ('all', or a specific target)

branch must be x.y (e.g 1.3) - this is both the branch of foreman-packaging _and_ the target component on deb.theforeman.org

set PR field to the number of the PR (e.g 113)

gitrelease must be ticked

Final packages will be pushed to stagingdeb.theforeman.org/<os>/theforeman and marked with the string "pr(#number)"

h4. Release (RC or final) build parameters

This should only be done by the release nanny.

Make necessary merges from theforeman/foreman-packaging:deb/develop to deb/<release> (e.g. '1.3')

repoowner must be theforeman

Select project (core/proxy/installer)

Select OS ('all', or a specific target)

branch must be x.y (e.g 1.3) - this is both the branch of foreman-packaging _and_ the target component on deb.theforeman.org

leave PR field blank

gitrelease must be unticked

Final packages will be pushed to deb.theforeman.org/<os>/<branch>

h4. Nightly build parameters

These are triggered normally by other jobs in Jenkins, e.g. the test_develop job triggers the Deb matrix job with the following parameters.

repoowner will be theforeman

project is determined by the upstream job (eg test_develop will trigger project=foreman)

branch will be develop

pr be blank

gitrelease will be ticked

h2. Tooling

h3. Pbuilder

"Pbuilder":http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/software/pbuilder-doc/pbuilder-doc.html is the system used internally by jenkins to build the packages for each of the architectures. It should just work, but if there are problems, you can look at the pbuilder module in foreman-infra for more detail.

h3. Jenkins

Jenkins is used to prepare the package sources, and the upstream sources, execute the appropriate pbuilder OS environment, and then upload the resulting packages to the appropriate deb repo.

h3. Freight

Freight is used to add individual debs to the overall repo. The following actions are performed:

* Packages are rsync'ed to (staging)deb.theforeman.org from the Jenkins package build

* Freight-add <debs> apt/<os>/<repo> is used to stage the debs for adding

* Freight-cache apt/<os> is used to rebuild the repo and publish it

There are cron jobs which clean out old nightly, and scratch debs after 7 days.

This should all happen automatically, this information is only provided for background. See foreman-infra/puppet/modules/freight for more code.

h2. Project sources

h3. foreman

Foreman{,proxy,installer} is built from the packaging constructs in the foreman-packaging repo:

* https://github.com/theforeman/foreman-packaging/tree/deb/develop (or 1.2/1.3/etc)

This repo is pulled in by Jenkins, thefore build preparation consists of appropriately updating this repo before queueing the Jenkins jobs.

h4. Initial tests

The nightly repo tracks the develop branch. At the point when a release candidate is forked, nightly will most likely be at the same commit, and will already be built (as it is triggered by a commit to develop). Thus, if the nightly packages work, one can conclude the packaging constructs in deb/nightly are probably sane. Minimal testing using a scratch build from your own repo is recommended, as above.

h4. Release candidate

The following steps are used to step up a release candidate build from nightly

* Cherry-pick appropriate commits from deb/develop into deb/<version> (e.g. deb/1.3)

* Update the UPSTREAM variable in <package>/build_vars.sh to point to correct git-tag for the release (e.g. UPSTREAM=1.3.0-RC1) (TODO: make this a jenkins option like the rpms?)

* Create a new dir for the new release (e.g. 1.3) and add an "rc" symlink to it (eg staged/apt/<os>/1.3 and staged/apt/<os>/rc -> 1.3)

* Add any new dependencies from nightly to <version> (these will have been built during the previous release cycle for nightly, so at release it's just a matter of importing the debs) (TODO: improve this, server login should not be needed)

** Log in to server2

** su -u freight -

** Use freight-add / freight cache to add new deps to rc repo, e.g:

*** freight add staged/apt/wheezy/nightly/*sinatra* apt/wheezy/rc                    

*** freight cache -v

** Alternatively, just rebuild the deps using the deb_dependency job above

* Update the changelog with a block announcing the release candidate, e.g:

<pre>

foreman (1.3.0~rc1-1) stable; urgency=low

  * Release 1.3.0 RC1

 -- Greg Sutcliffe <greg.sutcliffe@gmail.com>  Fri, 12 Sep 2013 16:31:00 +0100

</pre>

** Note the Debian changelog is _extremely_ sensitive to format and syntax. If in doubt, do this on a debian box and use the "dch -i" tool to add the entry

** Use <release-in-three-parts>~rc<rc-version>-1<packaging-release> as the release to ensure the first stable release can use "-1"

* PR / Commit the git changes to foreman-packaging:deb/<version>

* Queue the Jenkins jobs!

* Test the resulting packages

h4. Stable release

The stable release is almost identical to the rc release, with good reason ;)

* Foreman-packaging/deb/1.3 should already be up-to-date

* Update the UPSTREAM variable in <package>/build_vars.sh to point to correct git-tag for the release (e.g. UPSTREAM=1.3.0)

* Add any new dependencies from rc to stable (most should already be present, as RCs and Stable release share a numbered repo)

** Same process on server2, but also update the symlinks for "stable" to point to the new release, and delete the rc symlinks

* Update the changelog with a block announcing the release, e.g:

<pre>

foreman (1.3.0-1) stable; urgency=low

(as above for the rest)

</pre>

* PR / Commit the git changes to foreman-packaging:deb/1.3

* Queue the Jenkins jobs!

* Test the resulting packages

Foreman-packaging/deb/<version> remains as a branch for point-releases on old versions

h3. foreman-proxy

The exact same process above is used to release the proxy.

h3. foreman-installer

The exact same process above is used to release the proxy.

h3. Dependencies

Gem dependencies can be built from the same foreman-packaging/<version|develop> repo as the core packages, using the 'packaging_build_deb_dependency' job. Currently only gems can be built, using a modified gem2deb command which replaces the auto-generated debian/ dir with the one from our git repo during the build.

TODO(13/9/13): Non-gem dependencies cannot currently be built automatically, this will be fixed at some point.

If you need to manually build

Foreman's Debian dependencies should all be present in the nightly repo in order to make the nightly builds work. Work is underway to store the appropriate packaging constructs in the foreman-packaging repo, such that they can be rebuilt if needed. The packages are built using pbuilder manually. Rough notes on performing this build are:

* Log in to server9 (the debian slave node)

* Clone foreman-packaging:deb/develop

* cd to the appropriate package and prepare the sources

* run pdebuild-<os_arch> (eg. pdebuild-squeeze32) to generate a package for that OS/Arch

* Upload to server2 and use freight to add to the repo

TODO: Document this properly.

h2. Nightly Builds

Nightly builds are fully automated. Next time they break I'll document what I did to fix them. Full automation is possible because of the fact that the Debian packages use gem vendoring to ship a cache of prebuilt gems to the user; thus, they are far less susceptible to changes in the Gemfile (downside: they'll never be accepted upstream)

Work has begun to start building the foreman packages using proper system gems, see http://etherpad-domcleal.rhcloud.com/p/debian-packaging for how it's going. Currently we build the installer (based on kafo) using proper system gems. Foreman itself is targeted for 1.4