brainstorming for UDS-N - Ubuntu the Project
Allison Randal
allison at canonical.com
Thu Oct 14 01:16:51 BST 2010
In the "Ubuntu the Project" category, the App Review Board would like to
collect input from people who can't attend a session at UDS on the
PostReleaseApps process
(https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PostReleaseApps/Process). I've summarized some
of the discussion on the ARB mailing list from various different members.
* Should installing in /opt be a hard requirement? can we delay the
requirement until natty?
- The tools (CDBS, etc) don't make installing in /opt easy (and
NewApps specifically targets newer/less-experienced developers, not
packaging experts)
- Insufficient developer documentation on how to change manually
generated packages to install in /opt
- Some parts of the wider system where PostReleaseApps should
integrate don't look in /opt (menu doesn't look for .desktop files,
panel doesn't look for applets)
- An existing, successful PPA app has to reupdate/fork to comply with
/opt requirement.
* Can or should we waive some ordinary restrictions of Debian packaging
for PostReleaseApps? (There was some tension here between wanting to
make the packaging easy for developers, but also wanting to respect
community standards, and protect the overall install of Ubuntu.)
- Should we require manpages for every binary? Are manpages likely to
be read for lightweight apps?
- How stringent should we be about FHS? For example, are images
installed in /usr/lib an automatic rejection?
- Copyright, require only PPA Terms of Use
(https://help.launchpad.net/PPATermsofUse)? Allow more relaxed rules on
copyright, possibly even skipping debian/copyright file?
* How complex is too complex for PostReleaseApps, and how to gauge it?
- Is 10k lines of code too great? How about >1k? Is lines of code
even a reasonable measure of complexity?
- Is bundling libraries from other projects (that haven't been
packaged on Ubuntu yet) acceptable? What happens when the library is
packaged later?
- Is complexity of features a reasonable consideration? (i.e. a
simple doc viewer might be fine, but OpenOffice.org should go through
the full REVU, etc.)
Thanks for any thoughts, comments, or suggestions,
Allison
More information about the ubuntu-devel
mailing list