Getting new packages into Ubuntu

[Sebastien Bacher]

Le lundi 10 octobre 2011 à 20:05 +0200, Stefano Rivera a écrit :

> I'm still sitting on the fence about ARB in general. I think lowering
> the barrier to entry for new apps is probably a good idea. It does come
> with downsides:
> * We need to divert manpower to packaging these apps. On the other hand,
>   that's volunteer time, and volunteers can work on whatever they want
>   to.

What is "packager" is not the solution? What is we made packaging easy
enough that upstream code get their software themself in extras? (you
need higher trust for the main archive but extras lower the barrier wit
no maintainer scripts use for example)

> * Every package needs to be explicitly uploaded to every release.
>   I imagine that it means that we'll start every release with a
>   relatively empty ARB store, and have a rush to get new apps in.
>   Some will then spend a month or two stabilising. Ubuntu's 6 month
>   release cycle may be too short for this to be an efficient process.

We might want to target mainly lts versions then for arb?

> * No obvious approaches to handling security issues or bug reports yet.
>   I got a single report for my ARB app, by a user who found the source
>   and hunted me down. (And I haven't dealt with it yet, eep)

How does android or app stores deal with those? Do we need to deal with
those or can we just treat those as any software you download from the
internet and let users deal with software writes?

> * It doesn't deal very well with libraries that aren't in Ubuntu. (And
>   with the vague proposal of having a tiny Ubuntu core, main, without
>   universe, this becomes a much larger problem). They need to be bundled
>   with every app. This poses security problems, even if it does make the
>   app author's lives easier.

We shouldn't aim at getting libraries in extras, the libraries should be
part of the platform an in the archive itself then.

> > One other way would be perhaps to stop freezing universe at release and
> > to let softwares elvolve in a least strict way...
> 
> I'm sure there'd be people who'd appreciate that (it sounds rather
> ports-ish), but I'm already concerned about the stability of Universe as
> it is (MOTU is rather understaffed right now).

Well, do you think that letting the universe unfrozen under feature
freeze rules would improve its stability or lower it? I think it would
improve it since we could keep fixing bugs.


> Yes, I also got involved in Ubuntu because I wanted to get a
> (particularly minor) app, and all its dependencies in. I had also been a
> Debian user for a decade or so, and had always intended to get more
> involved in the development side of the distributions, so I might have
> been more naturally drawn in than others. But I'm pretty sure that if
> ARB had been available then, I would have used it, rather than sticking
> my nose into #ubuntu-motu and asking where I could help out.

Well you would perhaps have run into some issues where you need upgrades
or fixes to the "platform" side and looked at the "main" archive to get
those solved? Or you would have just contributed to extras and reach
users which is a valid contributions as well...

Cheers,
Sebastien Bacher