getdeb-collaboration team mailing list archive

[Joao Pinto <joao.pinto@xxxxxxxxxx>]

 It has been 3 years since getdeb was started. During that time, we
developed our own content management system using PHP+MySQL which has been
sufficient for the hundreds of application that we have provided.

With the increasing maturity of the project though, we have defined a *set
of improvements to be implemented on several areas*:

Organization
- Game packages and related contents will be moved to the PlayDeb project -
the games category has always been a super category and serves a specific
audience.
Security:
- Automatic package updates
- Package authenticity and integrity
Usability:
- Single click installs for multi package software

These changes cannot be accomplished with the current getdeb code and
structure, so we will need to develop a new set of tools and a new web
content management system. Because we are a small spare time working team
these changes, it will take several months - but we have already some work
done.
The new architecture will use components developed in self contained open
source projects with sufficient documentation and generic interfaces so that
they can be used for any open sources projects in general. The distribution
will be done using an APT repository with 2 components, apps and games
(getdeb/playdeb) - along with apt-url for the web integration.

What needs to be done:

*Package building & test repository populating* (
https://launchpad.net/debfactory)
This is a set of scripts required for managing the source packages and
building. Most of the scripts are already developed, however they need to be
improved to support multiple components (apps/games) - *Task 1*
The scripts that are needed:
To be run on the building server:
check_incoming.py: Verifies uploaders authenticity and authority, checks the
source files integrity and moves the files to the pre_build queue
check_pre_build.py: Checks the pre_build_queue for packages that need to be
build, moves them to the post_build queue after a sucesfull build
To be run on the master server:
check_post_build.py: Checks the post_build_queue and moves packages to the
testing reprepro repository
To Be Defined: Promoting a package from testing to final will be done
manually (archive admin) ?

*Package & Applications information importing and user presentation* (
https://launchpad.net/apt-portal)
APT-Portal will provide the web frontend for the repository. It will be a
generic APT repository web content management system, and at the end we will
have 2 apt-portal instances for getdeb and playdeb. The only difference for
those should be configuration, theme and plugins. - *Task 2

*APT-Portal - GetDeb - *Task 3*
Theme & Plugins: To be defined

APT-Portal - PayDeb - *Task 4*
Theme & Plugins: To be defined - The major work here was already done (
https://code.launchpad.net/playdeb), it will need to be ported to APT-Portal
theme/plugins

Current status:
Task 1 - I am working on it
Task 2 - Some initial db import scripts were created, we need task 1 done
and a few packages in the repository to do the real development here
Task 3 - Static HTML/CSS with the expected design could be done before Task
2 is finished, required for the real implementation
Task 4 - Depends on Task 2

If you're familiar with python / php / mysql and would like to help us, get
in touch at #getdeb on irc.freenode.net.

-- 
João Luís Marques Pinto
GetDeb Team Leader
http://www.getdeb.net
http://blog.getdeb.net