[Ubuntu] creating GRASS packages for UbuntuGIS

[Sebastiaan Couwenberg]

On 08-01-16 13:26, Martin Landa wrote:
> first of all, sorry for cross-posting. I would like to contribute to
> UbuntuGIS project and maintain up-to-date GRASS packages. Based on
> discussion with Sebastiaan Couwenberg (thanks), I started with cloning
> alioth.debian.org git repository. Afterwards I created new branch for
> `ubuntugis/wily` [1] (from `experimental` branch).

In general packaging for UbuntuGIS can use the 'ubuntu/' prefix instead
of 'ubuntugis/' as documented in the team policy:

 https://pkg-grass.alioth.debian.org/policy/repositories.html#git-branches

It's quite rare to have Ubuntu specific packaging in the git
repositories so there is not much chance of collision. If the 'ubuntu/'
prefix is already used for Ubuntu specific changes (like the freexl
security updates for example), it's a good idea to use the 'ubuntugis/'
prefix for the PPA packaging to differentiate them.

The grass packaging already has branches with the 'ubuntugis/' prefix,
so it's fine to keep using those.

> At this point I am not sure how to continue (sorry, I have only little
> experience with Launchpad packaging [1]). Thanks for any pointers in
> advance!

Will you only maintain GRASS 7.0 in UbuntuGIS?
Or do you also intend to use this packaging for 7.1?

If your packaging only concerns 7.0, you can start building the package
with git-buildpackage as documented in the Debian GIS Policy:

 https://pkg-grass.alioth.debian.org/policy/packaging.html#git-packaging

You need to have a cowbuilder chroot for the Ubuntu distributions you
intend to build and upload the package for. In these chroots you need to
enable the ubuntugis-unstable PPA for the dependencies. Because
pbuilder/cowbuilder chroots reverts the changes after every run, you
need to use the --save-after-login option together with --login to
preserve the PPA changes.

git-buildpackage uses the configuration in debian/gbp.conf to select the
appropriate branches and tags, you need to update these for the
UbuntuGIS packaging. As long as you use the same upstream tarball (from
the upstream branch) as the Debian package, you only need to change the
debian-branch option to ubuntugis/wily:

 # The default name for the Debian branch is "master".
 # Change it if the name is different (for instance, "debian/unstable").
 debian-branch = ubuntugis/wily

You should also update the Vcs-Git URL in debian/control{,.in} to
document the non-default branch:

 Vcs-Git: git://anonscm.debian.org/pkg-grass/grass.git -b ubuntugis/wily

In the debian/changelog you need to use the correct package revision for
backports in UbuntuGIS as documented in the team policy:

 https://pkg-grass.alioth.debian.org/policy/packaging.html#ubuntugis-ppa

This UbuntuGIS specific package revision needs be used along with the
ubuntugis/ prefix for the release tag:

 https://pkg-grass.alioth.debian.org/policy/packaging.html#git-tag-release

The above procedure should be used instead to what's documented in the
grass wiki.

Kind Regards,

Bas

-- 
 GPG Key ID: 4096R/6750F10AE88D4AF1
Fingerprint: 8182 DE41 7056 408D 6146  50D1 6750 F10A E88D 4AF1