Ubuntu-app-devel Digest, Vol 3, Issue 5

[Jonathan Lange]

On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 12:20 PM, Jesse Smith <jessefrgsmith at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> On 11-11-10 08:00 AM, ubuntu-app-devel-request at lists.ubuntu.com wrote:
>>
...
>> Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2011 11:22:01 +0000
>> From: Jonathan Lange<jml at canonical.com>
>> Subject: Automated packaging work
...
>> We're doing some work to automatically package the things that
>> application developers submit to<http://developer.ubuntu.com>, and we
>> thought you might be interested in following along.
>>
>> In a nutshell, we're going to put a service behind MyApps that
>> harnesses pkgme[1] to automatically generate packaging for binary
>> applications. We hope to extend it to automatically package other
>> types of applications (e.g. ./configure; make; make install) some day
>> soon.
>>
...
>
> jml,
>
> That sounds great. I would love to see a process put in place that makes
> packaging binary and source projects easier. If I understand your notes
> correctly this would mean developers could submit their binaries or source
> tarballs via the developer portal and the packager you're working on would
> automatically create .deb files and a PPA?
>

Yes, but just binaries for the moment. Although pkgme works for some
kinds of source tarballs, there are some technical barriers preventing
us supporting those on the server. (e.g. the Python one runs code
straight from the tarball). We are keen to support more source
tarballs, as that has the potential to make the ARB's lives easier.

jml