Hi there, being a long time Debian (and derivatives) user, I am thinking about starting to package for Debian. First, I'd like to try my luck on phpMyID, a very simple single-user OpenID identity provider. This isn't available as a Debian package yet, and there is no intent that I am aware of.
I have read through the guides and FAQs available for new maintainers, but there are some questions I could not answer: 1) Is is actually needed to do the packaging work on a Debian system, or would a derivative like Ubuntu also do? I would always test my package on a "real" Debian before putting it up for sponsoring or uploading, but having to do actual development on Debian would mean a parallel installation of a Debian Desktop. Those of you packaging for both Debian and Ubuntu, do you switch systems all the time? 2) phpMyID is implemented in PHP, which is not the language I am most familiar with - but it should be easy to learn. My primary language is Java, but I couldn't find any simple Java packages to start with that I actually miss. How important is the implementation language for package maintainers? Should I still try for my first package? 3) The guides suggest to start with adopting an existing package rather than creating a new one. A package that I could imaging adopting would be "jabber" (jabberd, an XMPP server), simply because there is a new upstream version for quite some time now that I'd really like to have packaged. However, I feel that jabberd is a project way too big for my first package, even if I could base my work on an existing package. phpMyId is only 1800 lines of code. How would you decide? Best regards, Andreas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
