[backportpackage] detect if orig.tar.gz upload needed

I am against adding a command line option. backportpackage should detect the existence of the source tarball automatically instead.

And how do you know that the upload file is not needed - request to launchpad?

https://launchpad.net/~psi-plus/+archive/ppa

For example here without asking for is impossible to determine that the load is not necessary.
I understand you have gathered to determine the version of debian-changes

We could check if the .orig.tar.* files are available in https://launchpad.net/~<user>/+archive/<ppa-name>/+files/ (in you example: https://launchpad.net/~psi-plus/+archive/ppa/+files/)

https://launchpad.net/~psi-plus/+archive/ppa/+files/ - Error: Page not found

in http://ppa.launchpad.net/psi-plus/ppa/ubuntu/pool/main/p/psi-plus/ ?

there isn't a listing on +files, but we could do a HEAD request on the expecetd file name.

Doing a head request sounds good. Time to implement it. ;)

This bug was fixed in the package ubuntu-dev-tools - 0.142

---------------
ubuntu-dev-tools (0.142) unstable; urgency=low

  [ Stefano Rivera ]
  * mk-sbuild: Support kmod, when checking for overlayfs availability.
  * pbuilder-dist: improve bash_completion for *.dsc files. Thanks Maarten
    Bezemer. (Closes: #670924, LP: #770529)
  * check-mir, check-symbols, grep-merges, pbuilder-dist-simple,
    setup-packaging-environment, submittodebian, ubuntu-iso:
    Do enough argument parsing to handle --help (LP: #988009)
  * dgetlp: Require a UTF-8 locale, or it'll crash when displaying errors
    (LP: #979117)
  * pbuilder-dist: Don't try to enable -updates for Debian testing
    (LP: #993006)
  * pbuilder-dist, pull-debian-source, pull-lp-source, requestsync,
    reverse-depends, submittodebian, syncpackage:
    Handle outdated distro-info data. Fall back to sane defaults where
    possible. (Closes: #673957)
  * backportpackage: Avoid uploading orig tarballs if they are already present
    in the destination PPA (LP: #691897)
  * Allow mk-sbuild to be run by root if a configuration file exists
    (LP: #888736)
  * backportpackage: Allow unsigned backports (LP: #992739)
  * update-maintainer: Add a function to restore the original maintainer.
    - Update sponsor-patch to use the new API resulting from this change
      (LP: #1002999)
  * submittodebian: Revert Ubuntu Maintainer mangling, and re-build the source
    package before diffing. (LP: #902233)

  [ Evan Broder ]
  * backportpackage: Add -c, --close flag to include a changelog closer.
  * backportpackage: Switch to ~ubuntu12.04.1-style version numbers
    instead of ~precise1, to make our version numbers more future-proof.
  * backportpackage: Pass -v to debuild with last published version
    number. This matches the way backports have traditionally been
    generated by archive admins.

 -- Stefano Rivera <email address hidden> Mon, 28 May 2012 23:35:52 +0100