Britney is run from /org/release.debian.org/britney. Some notes about
how it works, what to do and what not:

  * the code is in code/b1, which is a git repo. Changes must be
    approved by Release Managers first, and all Changes must be commited
    (i.e. nothing uncommited is allowed there).

    Commit emails will be send to britney@release.debian.org, you can
    subscribe to that if you want them (along with cron mail from
    britney).

  * the main script is code/b1/britney. It accepts a list of "actions"
    to perform. See ~release/etc/crontab.release for the default list,
    and see the "Actions" and "Re-running" sections below.

  * input/ contains FauxPackages, edit if if you need, and an urgencies/
    subdirectory where dinstall places a summary of the uploads of that
    day.

  * Heidi/, ssh/: see the "save" action below.

  * d-i/: udeb handling is done by the release team too. See d-i/README
    for details (when Dato writes it; Dato takes care of udebs until then).


Actions
=======

The main actions (read, the ones that are invoked from cron) are:

  * aptftp: generates all Packages files according to the latest
    dinstall.

  * merge: takes the above Packages files for main, contrib and
    non-free, and merges into a single file per arch/dist.

  * fauxmerge: adds packages defined in input/FauxPackages to the files
    generated by "merge".

  * urgencies: updates var/data/testing/Urgency with the data provided
    by dinstall.

  * bugs: fetches bug counts from bugs.debian.org.

  * updateout: the main action, running the update_out.py script. Takes
    hints, packages files, and tries to migrate stuff. When done, it
    writes a HeidiResult file used by "save" below *and rewrites the
    var/data/testing/Packags_* files*. That is important.

  * save: commits the HeidiResult provided by update_out above. This is
    done by:

      - taking HeidiResult, stripping unwanted stuff (faux packages),
	and concatenating to it d-i/HeidiDI into a file under Heidi/set,
	named after the current timestamp.

      - changing the "current" symlink under Heidi/set to point to this
	new file, gzipping the previous current.

      - signaling ftpmaster scripts to import the new file. This is done
	with a ssh trigger, whose key is in ssh/.

	IF YOU NEED TO UNDO ONE IMPORT: gunzip the previous file, point
	the "current" symlink to it, and:

	  % ssh -2 -i % ~release/britney/ssh/ftp-master_trigger_key dak@ries.debian.org
    
  * stats: copies the resulting update.OUTPUT and update.EXCUSES files
    to www/britney, and checks for uninstallabilities.


Re-running
==========

Re-runs can be incremental or not:

  * incremental means that you run britney against the results of the
    previous run. This is done by just issuing `./britney updateout`.

    WARNING: even if you don't save the results of an incremental
    re-run, following re-runs will start with the state the previous one
    left. This means it's a very very bad idea to use incremental
    re-runs to test force-hint hints; please always use a private
    britney instead.

  * non-incremental means that you start from scratch against the state
    of the previous install. To do this, you need to do "merge" and
    "fauxmerge" prior to updateout.

    IF THERE WERE ANY SUCCESSFUL HINTS IN THE PREVIOUS RUN, YOU MUST
    CHECK WITH THEIR OWNERS WHETHER IT'S OK TO RUN FROM SCRATCH. Or, in
    the worst case, you should check whether they have cleaned up their
    hints already, since in that case their work will be lost.

    (For this reason it's not very wise to clean your hints before your
    stuff is dinstalled.)

If you're satisfied with the result of your re-run, run `./britney save`.


Private britneys
================

It is ok to run private britneys if you nice them, though Ganneff
prefers if you don't do it while dinstall is running.

Do NOT run your britney against britney/var/data directly, rsync it
instead. Dato does:

sync:
        set -e; \
            cd ~release/britney/var/data; \
            find -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -not -name '*_*' -printf '%p\n' | \
                rsync -avrP --files-from=- . $(CURDIR)/data/

If you want to run a britney right after dinstall, but before release's
cron does aptftp, you'll have to run apt-ftparchive yourself. Check
~aba/b/GEN.