Improving the distro packaging and installation experience

[Etienne Goyer]

Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> For APT-based systems, we already have
> http://bazaar-vcs.org/packages/debs/ and I would like to understand if
> this is sufficient for Ubuntu AND Debian, and for multiple releases of
> those distros, or if we need to maintain current packages for the
> current stable versions of each of Ubuntu and Debian. For example, do we
> need a dapper, edgy, feisty, and sarge and etch, versions of the package?

The packages I produce for bazaar-vcs.org are built and tested on dapper
only.  It should be relatively trivial to test them on other
Ubuntu/Debian releases, and this should definitely be done anyway.

However, I believe sarge use python 2.3, and that bzr require 2.4, so I
am not quite sure we could supply a package that work on sarge.  Please
someone correct me if I am wrong here.

Also, it is to be noted that edgy/feisty/etch/sid use python-central
(and/or python-support, in the case of Debian), while dapper does not.
Packages built for dapper would thus work with later release, but the
inverse is not true.  This is why I am building/testing packages for
bazaar-vcs.org on dapper at the moment.

Just FYI, http://bazaar-vcs.org/packages/debs/ contain weekly
development snapshot package.  You can recognize these packages to the
~date suffix appended to the version number.
http://bazaar-vcs.org/releases/debs/ contain actual release packages
(including rc).

> Here's the challenge: come up with a way to build packages every day for
> all of those environments, so we shake out issues during the development
> cycle rather than at release time.

As far as .deb for Ubuntu/Debian are concerned, I think it would be
possible to entirely automate the process.  Here is what I propose :

- Auto-build daily package targeting edgy/feisty/etch/sid, and upload
them to http://bazaar-vcs.org/packages/debs.

- Build release packages (including RC) targeting dapper, and upload
them to http://bazaar-vcs.org/releases/debs.

If that suit everybody, I could start doing that in short order.


Also, should bzrtools be systematically packaged alongside bzr ?  Are
there any other "must-have" plugins that we should consider adding to
this effort ?


-- 
Etienne Goyer
Senior Ubuntu System Support Analyst
Canonical, Ltd

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 252 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/bazaar/attachments/20061207/565764a6/attachment.pgp