Hi, Matt

That plan sounds great. Overall, I'm fine with using a launchpad PPA  
if that's simplest; also I think Jared set up one @ OSAF a while back.

I suspect that there is a fair amount of work to do (as you can see by  
running lintian on the deb you produced :o). There are a few areas I  
can think of:

1) Chandler's dependence on patched external libraries, viz wxPython  
and Berkeley DB (package libdbX.Y). So far as those go:

- I have finally gotten a chance to work on creating patches (against  
wx trunk) for the various wx enhancements Chandler needs. The plan is  
to submit those as enhancement requests/bugs that should come out in  
wx 2.9.x. Hopefully that is consistent with your Karmic+1 plan.

- A while back, Jacob Floyd did some work on creating Chandler  
packages for OpenSUSE (IIRC, it could have been another non-Debian  
Linux). He basically created a libchandlerdb package out of Chandler's  
patched Berkeley DB (with the library names changes to avoid file  
conflicts). Possibly this is a route to consider for Ubuntu.

- Otherwise, as I remember it, there's a thread on the Berkeley DB dev  
list somewhere about a patch Andi submitted that somehow appeared in  
their trunk in a form that wasn't thread-safe. I can hunt around for  
the link if we want to try to get them to change their code. Or,  
possibly Andi remembers more.

2) The current Chandler build process uses Python's package management  
system (setuptools/pypi.python.org) to check for dependencies and  
install python packages. (Examples are EggTranslations and zanshin).  
Presumably, we should create .debs for these, and I think Jared Rhine  
started the process of doing that, e.g. 
http://svn.osafoundation.org/sandbox/packaging/deb/zanshin/trunk 
.

3) I suspect that the localization mechanism (plugins and  
EggTranslations) is violating Debian policy in some ways; there might  
have to be changes to the i18n code if this is the case. Or we could  
distribute binary python eggs for all the translatable data (icons and/ 
or gettext files)

4) Possibly lower down on the totem pole is that some of our  
dependencies (e.g. epydoc, docutils, pylint) are really only there to  
run tests and/or create documentation. In a world where I had a lot of  
time I would break chandler up into chandler and chandler-dev  
packages, where the chandler package just had the stuff you need to  
run the app.

--Grant

On 24 Jun, 2009, at 15:11, Matt Schafer wrote:

> Howdy,
>
> After building the current trunk of Chandler Desktop for Ubuntu 9.04
> (Jaunty) [1], I decided to find out what it would take to package this
> into a .deb that would be available on the Ubuntu repositories.  After
> some initial investigation, I found that someone has started a
> packaging effort in Debian [2].  He and I have decided to team up to
> do the Debian packaging.  It will give me a chance to learn from an
> experienced maintainer and give him some manpower to figure out the
> chandler source tree.
>
> As for Ubuntu.  They pick up all packages in Debian unstable prior to
> their DebianImportFreeze date [3].  They generally do not include new
> packages or updates to packages after the Ubuntu release except for
> security fixes and, rarely, major functionality fixes.  For the next
> release of Ubuntu (9.10, codenamed Karmic Koala), DebianImportFreeze
> is tomorrow [4].  Since Ubuntu has a 6-month release cycle, I would
> guess that gives us at most 6 months to get the package incorporated
> into Debian in time for Ubuntu Karmic+1.
>
> In addition to the official Debian and Ubuntu repositories, we can
> create packages and upload them to a custom repository hosted on the
> OSAF web site or using a PPA hosted in Launchpad [5].  This would
> allow us to get the packages out sooner to Chandler users and to
> upload new fixes and releases between the Ubuntu releases.
>
> Hopefully, we can get this package created by Karmic+1.  At any rate,
> I'd be happy to work directly with the Chandler project and devs with
> any fixes and suggestions, if you're interested.
>
> Please let me know if this plan is not desirable.
>
> Matt
>
> PS:  Sorry for the ever-changing email addresses and IRC nicknames.
> (I was [email protected].)  I've finally settled on what I want to
> move forward with.  This is where you'll see me in the future.
>
> References:
> [1]  http://markmail.org/thread/u4zybvu7womnwxmp
> [2]  http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=449031
> [3]  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebianImportFreeze
> [4]  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KarmicReleaseSchedule
> [5]  http://launchpad.net/ is the package maintenance system for  
> Ubuntu.
> _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
>
> Open Source Applications Foundation "chandler-dev" mailing list
> http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/chandler-dev

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