From: sjr@debian.org 
  
 Hi, 
  
 On 8/15/25 20:23, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: 
  
 >> There is another debate below this: if Debian's workflow is different 
 from a 
 >> standard forge workflow, does Debian need to change, or the forge? 
  
 > Could it be that the standard forge workflow is optimized for 
 > organizations with a few projects, while in many cases, Debian's 
 > organizations (teams) deal with many projects (packages) that require an 
 > additional layer of consistency that is difficult to standardize? 
  
 We're doing quite a few things differently than other software projects: 
  
   - the source tree for each package is an overlay file system 
   - Debian-specific patches are kept in a branch that is continually 
 rebased and seldom fully merged 
   - we archive imported artifacts 
   - packages must be self-contained and may not retrieve artifacts from 
 the network 
  
 None of these are handled well by existing forges, even for those where 
 other software projects could benefit from them. The CI system that 
 comes closest to declarative artifacts is SourceHut's -- the rest of the 
 world just writes a CMakeFile with "FetchContent" and hits the download 
 server every few minutes. 
  
 The overlay and the perpetually-rebased branch are somewhat related. 
 Neither can be inspected through the forge's web interface, and neither 
 has a good and consistent mapping onto git, even though git should be 
 predestined for that, because we are stacking multiple layers of version 
 control here: 
  
   - the imported source tree comes from another VCS, and 
   - the branch of Debian patches is itself version-controlled, because 
 we want to archive it for older versions of packages, we want to track 
 changes on it, and we want to collaborate on it. 
  
 So far, the majority of packages chooses to track changes to the changes 
 in git, and use tools outside of git for rebasing the branch. These 
 tools, again, are not available through forges. 
  
     Simon 
  
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