Have topic branches built using the packages from their base branch's APT repo

Base branch = the one the topic branch is meant to be merged into, e.g. stable or devel.

Currently, all topic branches use the devel APT suite.

The topic branch’s APT suite must be locally merged into their base branch’s one.

Rough ideas: adjust auto/scripts/tails-custom-apt-sources and release process to better detect base branch, extract base branch detection code from tails-custom-apt-sources to be able to use it in vagrant/provision/assets/build-tails, have build-tails locally merge the base branch into the topic one.

Another idea, that could simplify solving this problem, would be to have each branch contain a config file with the list of APT suites that shall be used. This way:

• a topic branch would have stable or devel + the topic APT suite if needed;
• a base branch would have its own suite (e.g. stable or devel) and, before release time, the list of branches that were merged into it;
• at release time, the release manager would merge the topic APT suites into the base branch’s APT suite, and remove all topic APT suites from the aforementioned config file.

Blueprint: https://tails.boum.org/blueprint/encode_APT_suite_in_Git/

Feature Branch: feature/8654-encode-apt-suite-in-git-with-APT-overlays-dot-d

Parent Task: #6196 (closed)

Related issues

• Blocks #8658 (closed)
• Blocks #8164 (closed)

Original created by @intrigeri on 8654 (Redmine)