OpenVox Server (RPM) packaging

[ekohl]

This is to write out my thoughts for the future of OpenVox Server packaging. I'm heavily thinking about RPM here.

I'd love to have equivalents for Debian because then we can get rid of ezbake but I'm less familiar with the options here.

Below I'm listing 3 levels of integration, each building on the previous.

Write a native openvox-server.spec file

Today we use ezbake to wrap FPM, but my intention is to write a real openvox-server.spec file. I think this is easier to maintain and integrate with RPM packaging tooling. It will result in a single SRPM that can be used to build all platforms.

I've started this in OpenVoxProject/openvox-server#61.

Integrate packit for CI and nightly packages

Once there's a native spec file we can use packit to build on every PR and after every merged commit. This means users can try out real RPMs for every PR (if it builds) or run bleeding edge versions.

This relies on coming up with a step that runs something to produce the source tarball and listing the right SRPM build dependencies. https://github.com/theforeman/foremanctl/blob/master/.packit.yml can be used as a starting point.

Packit itself relies on copr to build.

Enable RPM testing using Testing Farm

Packit can also trigger tests in Testing Farm. It relies on tmt. That can probably run beaker on the local machine.

This area I'm the least certain about. It may not provide that much value. Currently Testing Farm doesn't implement multi-machine testing and that may be too limiting for OpenVox Server testing. I still want to mention it though.

[c33s]

as you mentioned fpm i just want to mention nfpm

[ekohl]

I'll mention that I explicitly want to get rid of the fpm model. You can see that ezbake is a layer that's built because there are many differences between deb and RPM. So many that I think it's not worth it.

Native packaging gives you so much more and I want to be able to leverage that.