Are there any plans to provide PPA service for other distributions?

Created by Christian Reis
Keywords:
ppa packages
Last updated by:
Tom Haddon

PPA service is currently for Ubuntu only; it does allow you to build against all current versions of Ubuntu. As for other distributions, we do not at this time support them, and here are three considerations on the matter.

First, Launchpad's package and build system is currently deb-specific, which means that we'd have to write and change infrastructure to support distributions that used anything but debs.

Second, to be able to build PPAs for other deb-based distributions, we would need to have an import of the distributions's archive, and chroots for the build daemons to run in. We do have the infrastructure to do this; it is mostly a matter of putting energy to the problem.

Third, from our viewpoint, the ideal situation would be allowing a single source package to be built and compiled for different distributions. This does impose some constraint on how the package is built, and more thought on this subject is necessary.

We'd be happy to hear from users interested in PPAs for other distributions; your input is valuable and can help us make the best decisions.