ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Zoltán Balogh <zoltan.balogh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 04/09/2013 06:01 PM, Barry Warsaw wrote:
> On Apr 09, 2013, at 12:37 PM, Ma Xiaojun wrote:
>
> > I guess we should not require painful DEB packaging any more, or we
> > wrapper it nicely.
> It's certainly true that learning how to package for Debian/Ubuntu is a big
> hurdle for developers.  It seemed a big mystery to me when I started to learn
> how to do it.  Now that I know how to package and have helped others get
> started, I'm even more convinced that it's too high of a hurdle to require of
> developers.
>
> Learning how to package the Debian way is worth the investment if you are an
> Ubuntu and/or Debian developer (e.g. a core-dev, PPU, or DD), but IMO it's too
> much if you just want to build apps for the platform.
>
> -Barry


Actually it is not that difficult and we have good tools. The pkgme, 
pbuilder and the dozen of wrapper apps make packaging simple.

But regardless how good wrappers and how well automated toolchain we 
invent to make it even more simple the developer still need to have the 
information for the control file and at least have some idea what 
license is the best for the application.

With 5-6 commands most of the projects can be packaged and cross built.

The real problem is that all these tools and toolchains can be 
configured in each and every development environment differently ... a 
clean installation of the pbuilder/cowbuilder-dist is easy to use and we 
can offer a cross compiler and packaging solution based on these tools. 
Bit what if the developer has already a working pbuilder installed and 
custom configured on the development environment? How to inject our 
tools to that? The same way setting up a chroot is easy, but how to 
maintain and troubleshoot it?

These hiding landmines are a lot. That is why creating wrapper tools and 
hide these packaging and build tools behind a smart IDE is not something 
what just works.


That is why I came to the conclusion that if a developer is working on a 
project what needs C++, native Qt, platform APIs, crosscompilation then 
the developer need to understand the Ubuntu/Debian packaging at least on 
the basic level.

For QML/JS apps we will offer a fully automatic and bullet proof 
packaging solution. But for that the crossbuilder chroot with all the 
debian/control magic is clearly overkill.

bzoltan