Ubuntu Packaging Guide

index.rst (+12/-3)
packaging-from-scratch.rst (+199/-0)
traditional-packaging.rst (+5/-0)
udd-getting-the-source.rst (+190/-0)
udd-intro.rst (+117/-189)

To merge this branch:

bzr merge lp://staging/~jr/ubuntu-packaging-guide/03-packaging-from-scratch

Undecided

Fix Released

Link a bug report

Reviewer	Review Type	Date Requested	Status
Barry Warsaw (community)		2011-07-22	Approve on 2011-07-22
Review via email: mp+68817@code.staging.launchpad.net

This proposal supersedes a proposal from 2011-07-15.

Description of the change

Add a packaging from scratch guide

Revision history for this message

Barry Warsaw (barry) wrote on 2011-07-15: Posted in a previous version of this proposal

Question for Daniel: British English or American English?

Revision history for this message

Barry Warsaw (barry) wrote on 2011-07-15: Posted in a previous version of this proposal

s/check it compiles/check that it compiles/

Line 74 "A running programme..." doesn't make sense to me (seems out of place or incomplete).

I personally would like to promote pkgme over `bzr dh-make` as I think the former is a better overall framework for helping people get the packaging basics added. It's also much simpler, and doesn't ask the user to answer difficult questions. Can you check to see if pkgme does the right thing for your example, and if so, switch to that?

(The downside is that pkgme itself isn't in the archives, but it can be installed from a PPA. It's also less mature than dh-make, but that doesn't seem to be too big a negative for UDD, so we might as well be opinionated here too ;).

line 102 doesn't parse for me: +``compat`` tell the ``debhelper`` scripts which build the package what version
103 +to run as. Ensure it says ``7``.

meta data, or metadata?

How about instead of "Even if it builds the .deb binary package, your packaging will not yet be a work
158 +of perfection, nothing is first time."

"Even if the .deb binary package was built correctly, your package may still have bugs."

Should you also recommend uploading the package to a PPA? There are a few things that happen on the LP buildds that normally don't happen on a local build, so the PPA is as close to "reality" as you can get without actually uploading to the archive.

review: Needs Information

Revision history for this message

Jonathan Riddell (jr) wrote on 2011-07-18: Posted in a previous version of this proposal

All done except pkgme. I haven't found any information on how to use pkgme and it just complains about no backend when I run it for this package.

Revision history for this message

Barry Warsaw (barry) wrote on 2011-07-18: Posted in a previous version of this proposal

Currently, you have to run pkgme from its PPA.

Revision history for this message

Barry Warsaw (barry) wrote on 2011-07-18: Posted in a previous version of this proposal

1. The section on fixing a security bug breaks out of the UDD track to use apt-get source. If possible though I think you can use an ubuntu:<series>/<package> url though, right? E.g. ubuntu:lucid/tomboy.

2. Also, s/may will/may/ in packaging-from-scratch.rst

Still setting to Needs Fixing to get your feedback on issue #1.

review: Needs Fixing

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Jonathan Riddell (jr) wrote on 2011-07-19: Posted in a previous version of this proposal

1. There's nothing about security bugs in this merge proposal, there was a chapter added on that recently by others.

2. done

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Barry Warsaw (barry) wrote on 2011-07-22:

* One thing you can suggest, instead of guessing which dependent libraries need to be installed, if the package is already in Ubuntu, just `sudo apt-get build-dep <package>`. It can save a lot of time. If it's a new package of course this doesn't work. ;)

* In Oneiric, there's now a meta-package called `packaging-dev` which should contain dependencies on everything you need to do your packaging work. We should suggest that folks install this.

* How aggressively should we push `pkgme` instead of `dh-make`? I guess not so much right now since pkgme isn't even in the archives yet :( Perhaps you can mention it though? (It can be installed from a PPA).

review: Approve

Revision history for this message

Jonathan Riddell (jr) wrote on 2011-07-25:

"if the package is already in Ubuntu" this is a packaging from scratch guide so that's not the case

packaging-dev is recommended for install in the getting-set-up chapter

pkgme isn't ready yet, it only has a basic backend for cmake and none for autoconf