Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] mismatching licenses in list on Savannah (hashes.txt)

[Assaf Gordon]

Hello Bob,

> On Sep 10, 2016, at 14:10, Bob Proulx <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> Assaf Gordon wrote:
>> 
>> The file that is used is definitely this:
>>  frontend:/etc/savane/content/gnu-content/hashes.txt
> 
> Perhaps almost but not quite.  The production working copy isn't clean
> and it seems to be this issue.


>  frontend:/usr/src/savane# git status
> [...]
>  #       modified:   etc/site-specific-content/hashes.txt
> 
Good catch!


My understanding is this:

The file used in the real website is
     frontend:/etc/savane/content/gnu-content/hashes.txt
That is, if that file changes, the list of license shown on the website will 
change.


The file above which 'git status' complained about is:
  frontend:/usr/src/savane/etc/site-specific-content/hashes.txt
This file is not used directly in the website, i.e. changing it won't affect 
the licenses shown.
This file is only used as a baseline for new savane installation, and it is 
installed with this (more or less):

    $ cat /usr/srv/savane/Makefile.in.savane 
    [...]
    # install site specific content (with backward compat symlink)
        mkdir -p $(debetc)/savane-frontend-content
        cp -rf etc/site-specific-content/* $(debetc)/savane-frontend-content


> It looks like the hashes got fixed but never checked into version
> control.  Is that right? 

To fix the incorrect licenses shown on the website, the file in '/etc/savane' 
was changed.
This is not related to savane's git repository in '/usr/src/savane'.

The file in '/usr/src/savane' was modified few times in our (Karl, mine) 
attempts at figuring out what was going it (kind of "on the job training" for 
me here :) ).
But that is just a side-effect.

> Should these files be reverted to the version control copy?  Or should
> the changes be checked in?

it could go either way:
If we check in the changes (or better yet, copy 
'/etc/savane/content/gnu-content/hashes.txt' to 
'/usr/src/savane/etc/site-specific-content/hashes.txt' and then check-in) - 
then the updated list of licenses will be the new default for future savane 
installations.

If we revert the changes, the list of default licenses stays as it was, without 
'apache2' or other licenses that were added later.

In either case, it won't affect the running website's configuration.

---

But, this raises a related issue:
The files in '/etc/savane/' are supposed to be site-specific customization, on 
top of the regular 'savane' repository.
On 'frontend', I see at there are 'CVS' directories there (e.g. 
/etc/savane/content/CVS).
I thus assume that the site-specific customization on savage were also tracked 
in their on local repository (by Karl?).
Perhaps this CVS repository should be updated as well with the new license list 
(my CVS-fu is too lacking to do it reliably).

Also, perhaps it would be useful to create a repository for '/etc/savane' on 
'frontend0' ?
(I would personally prefer git for that, but of course others are possible as 
well).
This is on-top of etckeeper tracking all of 'frontend0:/etc' , because I could 
imagine legitimate cases when we want to share the site-specific customization 
repository with others, but not all of '/etc'.


Comments welcomed,
 - assaf