How big should this page be?
The git-pbuilder page was converted to a stub with the message Reduce this to a stub - it's all in `pbuilder` now, then reverted with the message git-pbuilder != pbuilder, It's fine to link to the pbuilder page, but basically removing the whole page isn't helpful for beginners! The two pages can coexist with no problems!. The links show two proposals for the size of the page, and this section discusses the best way forward.
Long explanation for why it was converted to a stub:
When I was a beginner, I was baffled by the array of pages that each explained one corner of the package-building problem, seemingly contradicting each other about details, when I just wanted a single page to tell me the whole story. The pbuilder page, as currently written, covers the whole stack from debootstrap to git-pbuilder, in the most cohesive manner I've been able to muster so far. It's still far from perfect, and I do appreciate feedback, but providing different answers to the same questions on two different pages makes things worse for beginners IMHO.
The beginner-friendly alternative isn't to keep the page exactly as-is, it's to deduplicate content, remove inconsistencies, and remove out-of-date information. For example, if git-pbuilder things should be here because pbuilder is distinct from git-pbuilder, then ccache things should be in ccache for the same reason. During that process, I came to the conclusion this page is the second-best place for information that's better covered in the (now expanded) pbuilder, PbuilderTricks and ccache pages, but has just drawn the short straw in each case.
-- ?AndrewSayers 2025-05-14 19:44:28
Having got no response for a few weeks, I plan to start removing redundant parts of the page one at a time. If you object to a removal, please explain why that part is distinct from the equivalent text elsewhere.
-- ?AndrewSayers 2025-06-04 09:06:09
Well sometimes people don't have time for multiple days in a row to work for Debian...
I still don't see why you want to remove the wiki page? Now you again "moved" some parts but dropped some details in your targeted page. Why? Isn't the information how to fix issues in case users see errors while using ccache important enough? Please re-add/revert the part that you have simply dropped. Until now I strongly disagree to trim this page further.
It's totally fine linking to a page that is going more into the deep on technical details, but I still don't see why this wiki page is getting stripped into something that is even more complicated to read and to understand because of links, links and more links to other pages. I've created that page in the past as it was a pain to find information that was widely distributed on other wiki and web pages. And I use this still very often to find some specific details that I don't remember in detail at time.
This page is about git-pbuilder and not about pbuilder, cache or any other build helper tool. So this page isn't really about duplicate content, with this logic we could delete half of this wiki. This page is about how git-pbuilder can be used in quick way mostly without to study the details and corner cases of pbuilder, I simply want to see and have a short step 1, step 2, step 3 ... to get a working setup based on pbuilder. I'm not interested in ONE big page that tries to explain everything, that will fail. Takes far to long to find the relevant stuff there.
I'm working with new contributors since some years and the feedback about this page was always positive because of the some kind structure of a quick manual, and that's how it should seen. So it can't be that wrong as you might think.
CarstenSchoenert 2025-06-18 17:50:26
Here are the parts I dropped without a replacement:
- "Beware to not use a NFS or CIFS share!"
ccache.dev says it "Supports remote caching over ... NFS"
- I can't find any other references suggesting this would be a problem
- if this is no longer relevant, it should be deleted
if this is broken for all ccache users, it should be documented in ccache so everyone knows about the problem
- if this is only broken with git-pbuilder, there should be a link to the relevant bug report
- "The following one-liners should do the trick"
- modern versions of ccache create these if they don't exist
- if this is still needed, it needs to be explained in greater detail
"the user pbuilder (who the ccache will be run by)"
- the specified solution is a security issue on multi-user systems
- people who only use ccache with pbuilder can just let ccache create the directories itself with the permissions it needs
- people who use ccache some other way will get a meaningful error message and figure out a solution that works for them
- this is relevant to everyone who uses pbuilder, not just people who use git-pbuilder
I made a mistake while checking this previously, and have edited the pbuilder page based on the above
- the specified solution is a security issue on multi-user systems
- Error while configure script is running
- this should go away if we just let pbuilder create its own directories?
The first issue is perhaps the most instructive. Assuming that issue still applies to all modern ccache users, our choices are:
- only document it in git-pbuilder, where most people who need to know will never find it
- only document it in ccache, where people who only care about git-pbuilder will complain about having to read a long document
- document it in both places, which will go out-of-sync and confuse people
I accept the second one isn't ideal, but it seems better than the alternatives.
-- ?AndrewSayers 2025-06-04 17:26:06
Having thought about it overnight, I've made a couple of changes that should help:
It seems like sharing a ccache directory between (git-)pbuilder and your ordinary account is a bad plan. ccache will either allow for the possibility of private data leaking into a public build, or will enforce separation well enough for there to be no benefit in reusing the same directory. So I've changed the pbuilder page to recommend using a different directory. That should implicitly solve the problems discussed previously.
We can display the same content on multiple pages with Include(). That gives you a page of quick reminders without forking the codebase. I've updated the "using ccache" section based on that concept.
The above strikes me as a good compromise, so I plan to convert more sections to Include()s next week. Please let me know before then.
-- ?AndrewSayers 2025-06-05 09:16:10
I've now changed Updating to use the same text as pbuilder's equivalent section. The section previously gave instructions for how to update, while the new section instructs people to recreate instead. That copies sbuild's advice - please reply if that advice doesn't apply to (git-)pbuilder for some reason.
-- ?AndrewSayers 2025-06-13 08:10:16