Launchpad itself

Binary .deb and Bazaar

Asked by Tal Liron on 2008-03-28

I spent hours trying to figure this out, and I'm still very confused. I have a few related questions:

1) I managed to push my project's code to Launchpad via Bazaar, with the thought that Launchpad would do the .deb packaging. This appears not to be the case, as I had to create my own .deb packages and send the to my PPA. If this is true, then what role does Launchpad's Bazaar have in packaging at all? If my project is mostly a one-man show, then would Bazaar even be useful for me?

2) With that in mind, I managed to create my .deb. It wasn't easy! And then I discovered that Launchpad's PPA seems to only want source packages (.dsc). Thing is, my project is in Ruby, and it doesn't make sense to me that I would have to create a source package (.dsc). Is this true? Is there no way for me to upload my "binary" .deb directly? If this is a case, how do I go about making a .dsc for Ruby code? Can I turn my .deb into a .dsc so that Launchpad is happy?

3) If I'm suppose to upload .dsc packages, then it seems as if Launchpad is doing the building. In which case, why aren't these .dsc packages coming straight from the Bazaar? Doesn't Launchpad somehow package the Bazaar source into a package?

There's obviously something I'm missing in this whole process. I've spent a *lot* of time reading the documentation, but I'm new to this and would appreciate some help!

Question information

Language:: English Edit question

Status:: Answered

For:: Launchpad itself Edit question

Assignee:: No assignee Edit question

Last query:: 2008-03-31

Last reply:: 2008-04-03

Link existing bug

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Kemel Zaidan aka Legendario (kemelzaidan) said on 2008-03-31:

The answer you want will be probably found here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PackagingGuide

That's how it works. You create the .deb through the process described on the page above to see if the automation process works. After that, you upload everything to the ppa and doing this way, you don't have to care about different architectures.

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Tal Liron (emblem-parade) said on 2008-03-31:

Yes, in the meantime I stopped and learned the whole process, and even wrote a more general introduction, which I wish had existed beforehand, in case anyone is interested:

http://emblemparade.wikidot.com/debian-packaging

I get it now, and the logic behind it. Unfortunately, it's quite a long learning curve for someone new to Debian, who simply wants to contribute code.

Launchpad seems to me to be missing an important step. It lets you share source code via Bazaar, and it manages Debian source builds for the PPA, but why can't it also manage Debian .dsc packaging directly from the Bazaar code? It seems strange to me that Launchpad would require developers (actually, more likely one developer designated as a packager) to do this.

I think Launchpad can go a long way toward being a better tool by doing this. I envision Launchpad having a specific place where /debian files (control, rules, dirs, etc.) can be edited and attached to a Bazaar branch. When a version is ready to be packaged, there would be a "package" button, which behind the scenes would run "debuild -S", and send this directly (via "dput"?) to APT.

I'm leaving this question open because I'm still willing to believe that I'm just not getting something important about this process. Please someone let me know if I'm wrong!

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Kemel Zaidan aka Legendario (kemelzaidan) said on 2008-04-03:

I don't know exactly if this is what you're searching for, but take look at those pages:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment/Merging
http://news.launchpad.net/ppa/introducing-autoppa