[ubuntu-uk] Packaging (was Re: Eurovision Song contest internet stream)

[Toby Smithe]

On Sun, 2007-05-13 at 13:17 +0100, Mark Harrison wrote:
> How easy is it to make a Linux package? One of the nice things about 
> Windows (as a developer) is that making up an installation package is 
> very straightforward.

Straightforward but also rather inefficient, often leaving multiple
dependencies all over the system and replacing system required versions
with ABI incompatible ones.

Debian packages handle, amongst other things, dependencies,
configuration, upgrade paths, documentation, and common file placement.
As a result, they are more complicated to produce.

http://doc.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/packagingguide/C/index.html describes the
Ubuntu Packaging system. You should also look at the Debian Policy and
Packaging Guide, and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU .

> I've not written any code on Linux for about 5 years, and I'm hopeful 
> the world has moved on, but last time I was coding, there were far 
> better IDEs available on Windows.

I'm sure you could use an IDE, but I don't personally see the need. The
availability of many terminal-based utilities makes the UNIX console a
vastly more powerful development environment than anything Windows-based
I've ever seen, unless you're doing GUI work; where an IDE is useful,
and I'm sure an IDE can also provide access to the console. However,
packages aren't GUI-based, and thus using the console and an editor is
handy; especially since you'll want to learn about pbuilder and
debhelper.