Introduction to Debusine
What is Debusine
Debusine manages scheduling and distribution of Debian-related tasks to distributed worker machines.
It is being developed by Freexian with the intention of giving people access to a range of pre-configured tools and workflows running on remote hardware.
Tasks can be very diverse: from package build and QA checks, to
collecting distribution-wide data like .desktop files or source code
statistics.
We want to make it as easy as possible for Debian contributors to use all the QA tools that Debian provides. We want to build the next generation of Debian’s build infrastructure, one that will continue to reliably do what it already does, but that will also enable distribution-wide experiments, custom package repositories and custom workflows with advanced package reviews.
Debusine for Debian development
One of the first milestones of Debusine development will be to give Debian developers an easy way to run tools such as sbuild, autopkgtest, lintian, blhc and piuparts, on the packages they are working on, using existing and well configured worker machines.
This is a low-hanging fruit to give people access to Debusine very early on in its development so that it can have input from Debian developers, and provide resources for Debian development, at all stages.
Since Debusine will be able to build packages and store built artifacts, this can turn out to be a convenient infrastructure to implement PPA/bikesheds for Debian.
Next generation Debian infrastructure
One of the milestones we’re working on is to evolve Debusine into a possible replacement for wanna-build and buildd, both for Freexian’s internal use and for use by Debian.
Debusine will support creating pipelines with build, QA, approval and signature steps that are triggered by package uploads. Pipelines will understand the distinction between official Debian workers and external workers, and only schedule builds targeting official distribution on official workers.
Run distribution-wide QA experiments
The distributed design of Debusine is also intended to give any Debian developer the possibility to run archive-wide QA experiments, like full rebuilds, using cloud resources.
Debian-friendly people and companies will be able to sponsor external computing time, while trusted builds will remain under Debian’s control.
Current development plan
Freexian obtained STF funding for a substantial set of milestones, so development is happening on a clear schedule.
You can see the funded milestones and their progress directly in the Debusine project on Salsa