Uploading to multiple distros

[Evan Broder]

On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 6:05 PM, Robert Collins
<robertc at robertcollins.net> wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 2:40 AM, Martin Owens <doctormo at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Why not just make ppa uploading simpler at the same time? (if you can
>> change the changelog file processing):
>>
>> picocom (1.4-1) debian:unstable oneiric natty maverick lucid;
>> urgency=low
>>
>> Instead of pushing 6 different packages, we could push just the one.
>> Have the tools search for a match and build for that archive.
>
> The challenge with ppas here  is that a package can only be built once
> in a given archive: the binary package names are the same for all of
> unstable/oneiric/natty/maverick/lucid : the APT archive which makes up
> a PPA cannot present different binary versions for each series.

Hmm...a lot of this discussion seems to be getting caught up in the
ubuntu-devel moderation queue, but I'll try to guess context as best
as I can...

If you want to upload a package to a PPA for a bunch of versions
simultaneously, I'd recommend my backportpackage script in
ubuntu-dev-tools. You can do something like

  backportpackage --destination natty --destination maverick
--destination lucid --upload ppa:broder/ppa picocom_1.4-1.dsc

Or instead of a .dsc, you can give it a --source release (e.g.
oneiric) and a package name. It handles bumping (well, dropping) the
package version number appropriately (e.g. ~natty1). It can also build
locally (--build/-b) and save the build products (-w WORKDIR)

It will still push 3 different packages, but the generation and upload
process is totally automated, and it avoids issues with version
numbers, toolchains, and upgrades.

- Evan