elementary-dev-community team mailing list archive

[Cassidy James <c@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Сергей,

Thanks for your feedback.

There requirements are... where did you get them anyway? I bet this is
> as bull as the recommendation to use GTK2 and Python2 for apps
> targeting Ubuntu. Don't believe a word at developer.ubuntu.com


I got them from the official documentation that's required reading for
submitting an application to the Ubuntu Software Center. ;)
http://developer.ubuntu.com/publish/my-apps-packages/

Anyway, what we should be concerned about is getting our apps into
> Debian. It would both make our apps available in
> Debian+Ubuntu+derivatives (over 80% of desktop market) and improve
> quality and robustness of the packaging we use in PPAs.
>
> Debian is important for several reasons. First of all, it holds 20% of
> market share, in that it's second only to Ubuntu with 60%. BTW, no
> other distro has surpassed even the 4% bar. Second, by working with
> Debian we get our apps into Ubuntu for free, and I prefer that way of
> getting our apps there over working with MOTU because Ubuntu is kinda
> short on archive maintainers; they're actually trying to move all
> packages present only in Ubuntu archive to Debian repos and quit
> maintaining them separately.
>
> The problem about Debian is that it still uses processes back from
> mid-1990s. ITP (intent to package) is a strictly formatted email sent
> to a special address... the guy who wrote the program without which
> it's virtually impossible to generate the email evidently has never
> heard about UX design... still, at the 8th attempt I got through it
> and was told to expect a confirmation email in an hour, but the
> confirmation never arrived. So we will need somebody familiar with all
> that.
>

Right, this all sounds wonderful. And we should definitely get into Debian
repos. However, I'm investigating getting things directly into Ubuntu for a
handful of reasons:

   1. *It's a good experiment! *Knowing "the competition's" application
   submission process is good.
   2. *It's theoretically simpler than going upstream.* The application can
   be in a PPA and all the artwork, details, etc. are all managed from a nice
   web interface.
   3. *We'll need to know it if we want to sell stuff. *We don't have any
   plans now, but again it's good to know the process for getting things into
   USC.
   4. *It gets it into 12.04 LTS.* 12.10 won't be out for a while still,
   and even then, we're focusing on the LTS for our apps. Submitting directly
   to USC is the only way to get it out to those LTS users without them
   manually adding PPAs.

Either way, let's think of getting our apps into distros AFTER we
> release Luna. I suggest organizing a sprint dedicated to that, me and
> Pim Vullers have kicked off writing relevant docs already. We'll have
> to rewrite them though, e.g. replace dependency lists with instructons
> on extracting them from CMake because this thing is not going to be
> maintainable otherwise.
>

Getting stable apps into 12.04 repos ASAP is a great way for users to
discover elementary apps and for them to want more (i.e. Luna). Plus it's
good press attention. Individual apps aren't dependent on the release of
Luna, and I don't think we need to hold off until our entire operating
system is released to start showing off some of our apps if they're stable.

Anywho, I'm going to continue investigating the USC app submission process,
and it'd be great to have some helpful feedback regarding their
requirements.

Regards,
Cassidy James