[git-buildpackage] What is the optimal workflow for git-buildpackage with dfsg-repacking

[Otto Kekäläinen]

Hi!

We discussed this a little over a week ago:

> > > > > > > Ref:
> > > > > > > https://salsa.debian.org/otto/box64/-/blob/debian/latest/debian/gbp.conf
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I'm not using `ignore-branch` to prevent errors like uploading from the
> > > > > > wrong branch.
> > > > >
> > > > > How does your contributors send you Merge Requests? What branch names
> > > > > do they use?
> > > >
> > > > Usually they use a topic branch name. It doesn't usually matter though.
> > >
> > > What packages are those about? Are they running Salsa CI? If you have
> >
> > salsa-ci yes.
> >
> > > a hard-coded branch in gbp.conf, the Salsa CI would always run on the
> > > debian-branch and never actually test the change the submitter did,
> > > right?
> >
> > I don't understand what you mean by "hardcoded branch" in gbp.conf and
> > how that would affect salsa-ci.
>
> So locally obviously all contributors would have to start passing
> manually --ignore-branch to get past the initial gbp error:
>
> ± gbp buildpackage
> gbp:error: You are not on branch 'debian/latest' but on 'test-ignore-branch'
> gbp:error: Use --git-ignore-branch to ignore or --git-debian-branch to
> set the branch name.

..and as a result I stopped using 'ignore-branch = True' in new
packages as I thought it is not needed anymore. However today I came
across a contributor that ended up doing a completely new MR just to
rename the branch they were using to `debian/latest` to be able to
build it: https://salsa.debian.org/debian/godot/-/merge_requests/6#note_558493

So I switched back my opinion to this:  'ignore-branch = True' should
be default to make it easier for contributors to send Merge Requests.
Forcing them to discover and pass manual workarounds on every build
invocation is unnecessary friction on a path that is anyway full of
all kinds of Debian quirks. The "protection" is provides for the
occasional source-only upload-build is much more rare than the amount
of friction it creates for 99% of normal builds while working on
packaging.