inx-devel team mailing list archive

["David Symons" <david.symons@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

I recently uploaded ceni 1.40  to the inx-devel PPA (personal package
archive): https://edge.launchpad.net/~inx-devel/+archive

For the record, here's how it was done:

1. Some prerequisites (not sure if the package list is complete):
    - apt-get install devscripts dpkg-dev lintian dput
    - A Launchpad account with GPG key in place and membership of the
inx-devel team
2. Edit (or create) ~/.dput.cf and add the following lines:

[inx-devel]
fqdn = ppa.launchpad.net
method = ftp
incoming = ~inx-devel/ubuntu/
login = anonymous
allow_unsigned_uploads = 0

3. Make a workspace:
    mkdir ceni; cd ceni
4. Download the source package:
    dget http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/sidux/debian/pool/main/c/ceni/ceni_1.40.dsc
5. Extract the source package
    dpkg-source -x ceni_1.40.dsc
6. cd ceni_1.40
7. Add a new (skeleton) entry to the debian/changelog file and open it
in an editor
    dch -i
8. Edit the skeleton changelog entry.  The skeleton entry looked like this:
--------------
ceni (1.40ubuntu1) hardy; urgency=low

  *

 -- David Symons <dave@daddun.localdomain>  Sun, 21 Sep 2008 17:14:14 +1000
--------------

My new entry looks like this (explained below):
--------------
ceni (1.40-0.1~inx1) hardy; urgency=low

  * NMU to change distroseries to hardy to enable upload to launchpad PPA.

 -- David Symons <david.symons@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>  Sun, 21 Sep
2008 07:00:03 +1000
--------------

9. Build the new source package (includes running the lintian package
checker and asking for your GPG passphrase twice to sign the package
files):
    debuild -S
10. cd ..
11. Upload to the PPA:
    dput inx-devel ceni_1.40-0.1~inx1_source.changes

Notes:
- The new debian/changelog entry is needed because the Launchpad PPA
will reject the distroseries in the unmodified package (unstable).
This is a bone of some contention for PPA users which will hopefully
be fixed sometime soon.  When it is we can simply upload the
downloaded source package to the PPA with no changes.

- Regarding the version numbering, 1.40-0.1~inx1:  the "-0.1" bit
indicates that it's a non-maintainer-upload (NMU); now I think of it I
probably should have tried using ".1".  The "~inx1" is to indicate
that it's our version, then if there are any issues with the packaging
I can increment to ~inx2 etc.

- On Ubuntu Hardy the debian package checker (lintian) actually gives
two messages:

E: ceni_1.40-0.1~inx1_source.changes: bad-distribution-in-changes-file hardy
W: ceni source: newer-standards-version 3.8.0 (current is 3.7.3)

... both are OK.  The first isn't an issue because lintian is designed
to check packages destined for Debian itself, whereas the PPA package
builder knows about Ubuntu release names.  For the second message, in
hindsight I should really have changed the "Standards-Version" entry
in debian/control to 3.7.3 - the interested reader might like to put
together a ~inx2 :-).

Further reading:
    https://help.launchpad.net/Packaging/PPA

I hope this is useful so one of more of you. :-)  Please reply or ping
me in #inx on Freenode (I'm "bimberi") if there are any problems
trying this out or issues with how I've done it.

Cheers, Dave.
-- 
David Symons
Armidale NSW Australia
http://www.liberatedcomputing.net