incorporate backport-source script

[Colin Watson]

At the distro sprint in Wiesbaden, with the help of Scott and Mark, I ported James' "mia.py" backport generation script to run on Soyuz, calling it "backport-source". It has some resemblance to sync-source, except that instead of retrieving an external source package and generating a .changes file for it (or, in the future, creating new publishing records), it takes a source package in a distro and munges its changelog so that it can be "uploaded" to a backports pocket of a different distrorelease with a different version number so that it can be built in the target distrorelease.

As with the other ported-from-dak scripts, it's not in Launchpad style; sorry about that. I hope you can accept it on the same basis as the other ported-from-dak scripts for the time being.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

This probably wants to become scripts/ftpmaster-tools/backport-source.py.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Here's our current version, adjusted to cope with intervening Launchpad changes.

Is there any hope that this will ever be reviewed and incorporated? It's been nearly a year and a half now, and I'm no fonder of having to use long-term local copies of scripts that talk to the Launchpad database than you are.

[Christian Reis (kiko)]

Well, if you must ask... where are the tests for this code, Colin?

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

I have no experience with writing Launchpad tests, but I would be happy to work with somebody to specify them.

[Robert Collins (lifeless)]

@Colin, I think the best way forward here is to file this as a merge proposal.

[Robert Collins (lifeless)]

In terms of our overall workload and impact on users, I don't think this is high itself - sorry.

[Robert Collins (lifeless)]

Putting into the backlog.

[Robert Collins (lifeless)]

...
20:47 < lifeless> cjwatson: client script sounds good
20:48 < lifeless> cjwatson: should we close the bug then ?
20:50 < cjwatson> lifeless: maybe reassign to the ubuntu-archive-tools project so it becomes our problem

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Today I decommissioned the backport-source infrastructure and deprecated the archive admin interface to backports in favour of having backporters run the backportpackage tool themselves. One fewer thing we need to run with elevated privileges on ftpmaster!