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Re: PPA documentation



A few points for you to consider.

- There is no good description of how the upload system *really*
works. For example I wasn't aware that if you uploaded to
~XXX/incoming/feisty then the package would build with the feisty
distribution. That is useful when you are doing a 'backport-lite'.
Neither is it made clear that PPA will build with the distribution
mentioned in the changelog, and it is probably worth mentioning which
distributions are supported and when they will expire. I presume I
can't build a package with warty for example :-)

- You should mention that you can't have a package with the same name
in two distributions because of the way pools work. If you are
building for several distribution versions you'll need to consider the
package naming.

- What do you do if you upload an 'orig.tar.gz' for a version and then
find you need a different one.

- The naming convention needs better explaining so that people don't
inadvertently end up blocking a real release. Where does this mystical
~ppa tag go? If I have 'package-x.y' is it 'package~ppa1-x.y',
'package-x~ppa1.y' or 'package-x.y~ppa1' or something else entirely.
What about when you have a 'xubuntuy' sequence, does ~ppa replace it,
or append to it. Is '~ppa10' > '~ppa9' or do I need to consider double
digit 'ppa' numbers if I'm doing a big test sequence. A few concrete
examples would help.

- It might be worth explaining how you would use the ppas in terms of
developing a package and 'neighbourly conduct'. Something along the
lines of
 * package the software (links to how to do that)
 * test the package locally with 'pbuilder' and 'reprepro'
 * only then should you upload to PPA.

- I would also mention the limitations: packages are only picked up
every twenty minutes and then queued to build on the Builder machines,
using PPA is like writing a COBOL program in batch mode on a mainframe
- don't expect instant feedback, no you can't delete anything just yet
and packages 'pending removal' are swept every X days/weeks/months,
etc., etc.

Overall the documentation needs to focus on the particular packaging
requirements of PPA. These archives are going to have a much more
rapid turnover than the standard archives and are going to generate a
bunch of FAQs that you just don't get with the main archive (where
stuff goes through an interminable QA process before it ends up
there). You're going to need a large 'How to handle cock ups' section.

HTH

NeilW




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