Re: [MiNT] Ubuntu PPA

[Vincent Rivière <vincent.riviere@freesbee.fr>]

Adam Kłobukowski wrote:
> Why not use PPA for Ubuntu packages? You'll get 64bit packages 'for free'.

https://help.launchpad.net/Packaging/PPA

Interesting. Thanks, I didn't know that.

Actually, I'm not an Ubuntu user. My main Linux OS is Debian Testing. I 
almost always use it remotely through SSH. Then I install the various Ubuntu 
versions with debootstrap and I use a chroot for building and testing the 
packages.

If I understand well, with PPA I have to upload my source packages to 
Launchpad, then all the binary packages for all the supported Ubuntu 
versions are automatically built and available for the end users. This is 
very good for everyone, the binaries are always automatically available, 
even for new OS versions.

I see 2 problems for me:

1) My GCC source package is not clean (unlike the others which are OK), 
because of circular dependencies it requires an old MiNTLib to be installed. 
This is not a big problem when building manually, but this should be solved 
for a fully automatic build system such as PPA.

2) I also maintain an unofficial repository for Debian Testing, for my 
personal use. It is the same technology, but since this is Debian stuff that 
will not be supported by Ubuntu's PPA. Anyway, I mainly use that Debian 
Testing repository to test the compatibility of my Ubuntu source packages 
with other OS versions.

Also, I'm happy to have my personal repository. But there are some 
drawbacks. The server has free hosting, but it has a slow download speed. 
And the binary packages have to be manually built.

Another important aspect is what I consent to do. I agree to maintain the 
binutils and GCC patches for MiNT because I want up to date cross-tools for 
TOS. I provide the Cygwin binaries because those are the ones I personally 
use. I have been providing the binaries for Ubuntu 32-bit for some time, 
mainly because I like Debian systems and I wanted to familiarize myself to 
the build and packaging system. I chose Ubuntu because it is the most widely 
used Debian-like system, so it may be useful for some people.

This is all what I'm ready to do myself. It is important that people 
understand they will have to make efforts themselves to get anything else. 
The patches are the most critical part, other people can use them to build 
the binaries for other operating systems.
Keith and MiKRO provide native binaries for MiNT, this is a huge work mainly 
because of the slowness of Atari systems (or emulators) and the potential 
bugs inside the MiNTLib and other libraries. Same for Alan and Gentoo.
I know 2 people potentially interested in Ubuntu 64-bit binaries. This is a 
piece of cake to build the binaries for any Debian-like distribution from 
the Ubuntu source packages. I told these people how to do, and when they 
need the packages, they build them, then I put them into my repository. This 
is their contribution to the cross-tools project.

As a conclusion, PPA looks great, I will look at it deeper when I have some 
time. But I'm happy with my own repository, and the process of involving the 
64-bit users if they want binaries for their OS. Anyway, you are right. 
Since PPA can build everything automatically and without effort, this is a 
good thing.

Sorry for the long post. But you know what I have in mind.

--
Vincent Rivière