MOTU documentation for beginners

[Rami Eid]

Dear Sirs,

I hope you are doing fine in the new year.

I would like to share my concerns about the documentation material available
for packaging software for ubuntu.

I am an ubuntu user since June, 2007. As I am as computer  engineering
student, I deal with packages of programming languages libraries frequently.
Unfortunately, most of the packages available in ubuntu repositories are
outdated. I know that I am using unpopular libraries and projects, and the
repositories contains most of the time stable releases. I am not blaming
MOTU, as this is not the place as I can file bugs against the packages I
want to be updated in launchpad.

As I am obessesed with ubuntu and its community efforts, I would like to
participate in. I remember that there is no 3 months go without trying to
package some software and add it to my personal PPA. Every time I try to do
so, I face a problem reading long detailed documents and it is always
failing when it comes to signing the packages. Even with the support
available in the MOTU IRC channel I could not manage it correctly for once
!.

My problem that the documentation available for the packaging procedure is
long and detailed and it is more like guideleines and policies to do MOTU
standard packaging. Even with the help of the videos, there are still a lot
of details addressing licensing and manauals and packaging quality topics.
As a beginner, I am more concerned with doing packaging correctly first,
then getting the advantage of distributing the packages I make with my other
machines or friends secondly. I believe that after knowing how to package,
packaging professionaly would be a matter of following the guidelines.

I would like to see the MOTU tutorials more friendly and contains a section
for getting it done even in poor quality for the beginners and separate
documents for the people who are planning to participate in MOTU efforts.
Increasing the size of the people who know how to package and use launchpad
for distributing their software personally will defintely increase the size
of the MOTU team on the long run.

Kindest Regards.

-- 
Rami Eid
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