ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Albert Astals Cid <albert.astals@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tuesday 09 April 2013 19:57:47 Zoltán Balogh wrote:
> 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.

Well, worked quite well (for me) when doing N9 app development with 
QtCreator.

Can we do something similar?

Cheers,
  Albert

> 
> 
> 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