Packaging Help

[Daniel Holbach]

Am Mittwoch, den 23.09.2009, 10:07 -0400 schrieb Jordan Mantha:
> I did spend a lot of time working on it, but now I see a lot of "I
> read the Packaging Guide and it's just too hard" on IRC. I'm starting
> to think that every time you write documentation there will always be
> people who either won't bother to read it, can't understand it, or are
> overwhelmed by it. Hopefully the Packaging Guide did help people out
> but "packaging for Ubuntu" is such a huge body of knowledge that it's
> quite difficult, as you all know, to write good documentation for it.

There's only so much you can do. While it'd be great to have more
contributors for the Packaging Guide, I think it's a good start for
everybody getting involved already.


> My guess is what's needed are primarily 3 things:
> 
> 1) a "so you've got a PPA, now what?" guide that gets lots of
> exposure. It really needs to be as close to the PPA as possible,
> preferably on Launchpad itself if possible.
> 
> 2) an "Ubuntu processes for software developers and PPA users" that is
> a minimalistic, easy to read guide on what Ubuntu does and why it does
> it. Things like "What is the release schedule and what freezes do I
> have to worry about?", "How do I get fixes into -updates and what do I
> need to do to get ready?", "I've got a new bug-fix release, what do I
> do with it?", "When do I use -updates and when do I use -backports?",
> "Should I do <XYZ> in Debian or Ubuntu?", etc.
> 
> 3) an Ubuntu Glossary or Translation guide for this class of people.
> They're not unfamiliar with Linux development as a whole, they're just
> not sure exactly what the Ubuntu jargon means (SRUs, etc.) and aren't
> hooked into the process like a MOTU or consistent contributor would
> be.

That sounds great. I agree.


> What I would find most useful is to be able to use Launchpad to:
> 
> 1) easily indicate that a bug report, bzr branch, PPA upload are
> "good" so I can say "hey, we need to look at this!"
> 
> 2) easily find a list of "good" ones so I can sponsor them

I personally think we should focus on pointing out our processes clearer
and getting PPA people to work within Ubuntu's processes and educate
them about packaging in general.

If Launchpad had that list, that'd obviously be nice too. :-)

Have a great day,
 Daniel