Ubuntu AppUpdate

[Ryan Oram]

On Fri Jul 9 23:08:14 BST 2010, Joshua Timberman wrote:
> Actually, the difference is that sbuild uses schroot with LVM snapshots for the chroot environments. It's quite a nice, elegant system and I prefer it to pbuilder for developing packages.

Ya, I can definitely see why sbuild would be used for an automated
build environment. It's quite a bit more customizable and better
designed for industrial use.

These differences aren't really all that relevant to individual
developers though. sbuild and pbuilder both build in a chroot
environment and if a package will build on one, it will very likely be
able to build on the other.

I'm probably going to use pbuilder for locally checking if the packages
build in a chroot. The commands for pbuilder are very similar
to those of debuild and it's quite a bit easier to use. It's more than
enough for testing to see if the packages will build when uploaded to
Launchpad, which is really all I would use it for. sbuild would be
overkill for my individual use.

-----

Anyways, looking over both the projects of GetDeb and AppUpdate, they
compliment each other more than they duplicate. GetDeb seems to build
most of their own packages, while AppUpdate pulls them directly from
the developer PPAs. This allows GetDeb to have more packages than
AppUpdate, but this also allows for AppDate to have more up to date
packages. Comparing the packages present on both GetDeb and AppUpdate,
the packages on AppUpdate are a bit newer.

My service will build very little on its own, as I feel that building
the packages should be the responsibility of the developer. The goal
of AppUpdate is to aggregrate the ~20 PPAs many Ubuntu users have in
their sources, while giving the packages some extra testing to prevent
the breakages that arise when a developer pushes a broken package to
their PPA. Its main focus is to be a one stop place for Ubuntu users
to get the latest applications for their install, without the risks of
broken packages.

Links to the AppUpdate PPAs:

Stable: https://launchpad.net/~infinity-team/+archive/appupdate-stable
Testing: https://launchpad.net/~infinity-team/+archive/appupdate-testing

Thanks,
Ryan