[csw-maintainers] Implications of publishing packages to unstable

[Maciej (Matchek) Bliziński]

Dear maintainers,

I'd like to clarify the implications of publishing packages to unstable.

When you call the csw-upload-pkg tool, certain things happen, and it's
important that you understand what these things are.

1. The .pkg files are uploaded to allpkgs
http://mirror.opencsw.org/opencsw/allpkgs/
2. checkpkg is run against the packages; if the check fails, the procedure stops
3. The packages are added to the unstable catalog
http://mirror.opencsw.org/opencsw/unstable/ - unstable is an official,
signed catalog which gets pushed to mirrors all around the world, and
gets installed by users
4. Packages from unstable are installed on the buildfarm during
periodic manual sync

csw-upload-pkg tool should not be taken lightly.  You must not push
packages that you haven't at least smoke-tested.  If you push broken
packages, you cause grief on the buildfarm.  You can also cause grief
by pushing backward-incompatible packages that are part of the
infrastructure, e.g. any of the CSWgar-dev package dependencies.

http://www.opencsw.org/packages/gar_dev/

If you have built packages that you would like to just try out,
unstable is not the right place for that purpose. Use the experimental
catalogs instead, by copying files into /home/experimental/$LOGNAME
and visiting http://buildfarm.opencsw.org/experimental.html

Maciej