On 24 April 2014 14:50, Peter Smout <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > As a complete novice following this thread wit interest, I am put off > compiling my small (but hopefully) useful prog to a .deb and will continue > to call it from a script ;( > > This is a shame as I was hoping to expand my programme and and add a GUI, > more as a project for me than anything, and maybe if all went well add it to > the repo's but the world will just have to wait!!
It's certainly a learning curve. I have nothing but respect and admiration for the people who diligently maintain packages in Debian and Ubuntu on a day-to-day basis. When you stop to think about what these massive projects accomplish - reliable repeatable builds for tens of thousands of pieces of software across numerous architectures, automatically resolving dependencies, conflicts, and managing versions and safely rolling out security updates... it's quite amazing (at least to me). Every part of a Debian package is there for a reason, to help with this making this process, this "machine", run as smoothly as possible. It can be overwhelming at first, when all you want to do is deploy a simple script or two, but it's a very useful skill to have under your belt if you're doing development. If your software is of general interest and you think it ought to be in the Debian/Ubuntu archives, you may find someone already skilled with packaging is willing to do this for you. Most software in Debian/Ubuntu is not packaged by its authors, but by a dedicated Debian/Ubuntu developer (the package 'maintainer') who already has the necessary skills. You can read more about getting your software into Debian and Ubuntu here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment/NewPackages If you do want to learn to package yourself (which gives you a lot more flexibility, as you are not relying on other peoples' free time), there are guides such as: - https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/ - http://packaging.ubuntu.com/html/ And if you haven't tried it already, dh_make is a great tool to use when you're starting out, as it will do 90% of the package creation work for you. Regards, Matthew -- [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
