Renaming the Packaging Guide

[Daniel Holbach]

Hello everybody,

Am 30.11.2011 12:42, schrieb Stefano Rivera:
> Hi Daniel (2011.11.25_12:23:48_+0200)
>> I think it might be helpful to rename the Packaging Guide to something a
>> bit more clear, like Ubuntu Platform Development Guide or Ubuntu
>> Platform Guide or something along those lines.
> 
> My get response to this is that I don't like the word "Platform". It
> makes it sound really big and dull, and says nothing about what to
> expect in it. An Ubuntu Platform guide could be about Administering
> Ubuntu. Or it could be a big diagram showing how userspace sits on top
> of the kernel (oh, we have one of those :) ).
> 
> But that's not what it is. This is a guide about how to package things,
> work on packaging, work with our packaging branches, and understand some
> of our processes. Those are all necessary components for fixing bugs and
> making changes in Ubuntu.
> 
> So, to me it's an Ubuntu Development Guide.
> 
> If I understand correctly, one of the concerns here is that new
> developers, wanting to ship their apps with/on Ubuntu aren't realising
> that they can help improve Ubuntu itself. I think the solution there is
> to have a smaller gap between the "Ubuntu Development" documentation and
> whatever "stuff on top of Ubuntu" docs we are preparing for them.

I'm not tied to the name of platform guide, if there's any better terms
for it, I'm all ears.

Matt Zimmerman laid it out quite clearly in his blog post from a year ago:

 http://mdzlog.alcor.net/2010/11/15/ubuntu-project-platform-products/

To re-use Matt's words we all are "on the inside" and when we reached
out to new areas to explain what we are doing the confusion about app
development and platform/os/distro development is real.

In addition to that I think it's worth making use of this as a selling
point: not only can you write applications for Ubuntu, but you can
change the platform/os/distro as well if you need. This will be less
clear to new groups of people we might interest in Ubuntu and we should
try to do our best to invite them in.

Just because we were there first and are all used to "Ubuntu
Development" or the ~ubuntu-dev team, we can still try to make a bit
clearer what the opportunities are and what we talk about. :-)


> On the developer.u.c website right now, the packaging guide is hiding
> under Tools, which is the last place I'd expect to find it. From the 6
> categories on the left, I'd probably most expect to find it under
> the Platform section. But I still don't consider a Platform Guide to be
> a particularly good name for it. I think it exudes boredom and says
> little.

The guide should be much better advertised and be linked from other
places as well, not only developer.u.c, but in this thread I just wanted
to find the new project name, not necessarily how we describe the links
later on, the title and so on - although this discussion will obviously
have an impact on that as well. :-)

Have a great day,
 Daniel

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