[Ubuntu] Fwd: [Live-demo] Packaging and project re-organization

[Johan Van de Wauw]

On Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 10:37 AM, Andreas Tille <andreas at an3as.eu> wrote:

>
>> The third and "difficult" part is the deb packaging itself. Here we have
>> several possible paths:
>>
>> 1. Use all the standard tools in Debian packaging and create/update
>> packages on UbuntuGIS ppa.
>
> I personally would welcome if the packaging itself would happen in Debian
> GIS repository[1]

I agree.

>
>> A VERY simple example to create a deb package is shown here:
>> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=910717
>> but usually more complex things are required so the complete guides can
>> be found here:
>> https://wiki.debian.org/IntroDebianPackaging
>> http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/
>> http://packaging.ubuntu.com/html/
>
> I would like to repeat my offer of sponsering GIS related packages I
> have offered in my "Sponsering of Blends"[2] effort which surely also
> involves giving hints to relevant packaging documentation in case of
> trouble.
>
>> 2. Use helper programs to produce deb packages.
>> Recently I used this excellent tool for packaging/deployment:
>> https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm
>> https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm/wiki
>> http://goo.gl/sWs3Z
>
> I admit I'm quite reluctant about tools like this.  Without having ever
> tried I have serious doubt that you can create lintian clean packages
> once packaging might become non-trivial.  Creating trivial packages is
> easy with plain Debian tools and thus we end up with complex packaging
> which will most probably fail with fpm anyway.
>
>> ...
>> and we have a geoserver_2.4.3_all.deb file ready for us.
>
> Did you checked the changes file with lintian?  May be my suspiscion is
> wrong and I need to change my mind about this.

These will have lintian errors and probably a whole load of other
errors. We are looking for an easy way to convert current scripts
(like eg [1]) to debian packages so we can at least uninstall the
things they create, which also makes updates possible.

Creating proper debian packages of many of these programs or even just
their dependencies is a hefty task - just look at the number of
actively maintained java GIS packages in debian. I simply know no one
who has both good knowledge of debian packaging and the java GIS stack
and sufficient interest/time to actually do the job. And then I've not
yet mentioned JAI and other problems in the upstream packages that may
even make packaging for debian impossible.

This being said: we (osgeo live) have a meeting on IRC tonight at
20:30 UTC time. Feel free to join if you have some time:
irc://irc.freenode.net#osgeolive

[1] https://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/livedvd/gisvm/trunk/bin/install_geoserver.sh