I packaged bzr for openSUSE recently and it was suggested I send some notes on how their build service compares to Launchpad.
One difference that surprised me is packages are built instantly as soon as you commit. This can probably be seen as quite a waste of build daemon time since it will be trying to make packages even if what you are working on isn't complete but it does remove a step from the user (in our case quite a hassle filled step since it requires using different tools to upload to the archive until build from branch appears). Build numbers automatically increment for each build which saves the minor hassle of having to do so yourself in the changelog. One source package is built for many distros and distro versions. This would be nice to have in PPAs, again removing a minor hassle from packagers of having to build and upload source packages multiple times. Packages are stored with packaging only and source in a tar file. This simplifies the problem compared to our UDD process of having full source branches in revision control. Given the hassle full source branches seem to make for UDD (still > 500 import failures, quilt on top to bzr double revision control, notable new workflows for packagers, definitive source RCS is upstream and ours don't generally match) doing packaging only branches would seem to me to have been an easy win but too late to change now. They have OSC, a command line tool for checkout and commit (similar to subversion in its revision control functions so much more limited than bzr there). It also allows for easy searching of packages, checkouts include personal archives, and it submits merge requests which could be done as bzr plugins with support from Launchpad. They have external users, notably the Linux Foundation which means MeeGo is closely aligned to SUSE. Maybe if Launchpad had been easier for external users to set up MeeGo would be aligned to Ubuntu? I found the web interface generally fiddly to find my way around and it doesn't seem to offer much help. Launchpad feels more logical to me and easier to find help but maybe that's because I use it every day. Jonathan _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~launchpad-dev Post to : launchpad-dev@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~launchpad-dev More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
