Guake: Create Official PPA for guake on Launchpad.net

[mcrowson]

Guake seems to have a pretty old version on the package manager mentioned in the docs for Debian/Ubuntu 3.0.4 (Jan of 2018).

Expected behavior

Releases should be distributed through the package managers mentioned in the docs.

[mlouielu]

IMO this depends on each Linux distribution & its package maintainer.

For example, Ubuntu have several LTS version with different version of guake, rolling release distribution such as Arch Linux have always up to date version of guake, thanks to @eli-schwartz.

I think we should update the document and recommand our user to install via source code to get update-to-date guake, also automate the install script more aggressively (e.g. ./srcripts/install-from-source.sh, auto detect distribution & bootstrap), and update guake by pip, but this depend on user using which interpreter, maybe guake --upgrade will be useful, still, it will need to handle brackage changed (e.g. scheme path change).

At the end, if user can not / don't want to install via source, then mention to install via package manager, but mention that they may not get the latest version of guake.

[lonix1]

Or the obvious option is to have an official PPA.

[eli-schwartz]

An official PPA puts responsibility on the guake developers to ensure that dependencies are available anywhere the PPA is used. It also requires a member of the guake development team to have special knowledge of how Debian packaging works.

Speaking with my distribution developer hat on, I think this balance between upstream developers developing, and downstream distro packagers packaging, is a very healthy way to approach things. It lets each group focus on their strengths, and, people who have experience in both are probably already participating in both -- but not because they have to as an official responsibility of being a project developer.
Apropos to which, there are often cases where software developers tried to provide distribution packages and got it horribly wrong. Especially in distributions where the packaging process is more complicated.

...

Meanwhile, people who use Debian and Ubuntu, which are distributions that are explicitly designed and marketed as distributions that provide "stability", would not be using those distributions if they wanted to unexpectedly get new versions of software, like guake, which change how they work and add new features while dropping old features and modifying the look and feel from version to version (especially for major new versions).

LTS distros and the users that use LTS distros do not want that, and are probably unlikely to use a PPA even if there were one. And rolling-release distros like Arch will not need a PPA equivalent, since we follow the latest stable release.

Given all this, the userbase of "my distro doesn't have the latest version of guake but I want it anyway" seems like it would be sufficiently small that providing specific solutions like a PPA would be too much effort for too few people being helped, and therefore I'd encourage the guake developers to do as they proposed, and ensure that there is easy-to-use documentation to streamline the process of helping users install the new versions themselves.

[lonix1]

So TLDR is that you don't believe it's a good idea. And propose that others contributing to this repo follow your advice.

Maybe leave the door open for a contributor who does know, and also uses ubuntu, to create a PPA if he wants to. I hope there's at least one.

[eli-schwartz]

Are you volunteering?

[lonix1]

No I'm not. I'm saying that if you don't want to do it (or dislike the idea), fine, but don't tell others not to do it.

[mlouielu]

As I saw the comments, I don't think @eli-schwartz is saying that we should
only consider what I proposed (update the readme), and not to use the PPA.

The comments it saying that we should update the readme first, and for PPA,
someone should stand out if they really need this.

Anywat, I don't think I'm qualified on this, I use Arch in my daily, in my
experience of using Ubuntu, I seldom add a PPA for a package, if needed,
I'll first try install from source code, then look if there have some PPA.

I'm currently working on branch doc-install-update(
https://github.com/Guake/guake/blob/doc-install-update/README.rst), it
should also update in the docs, too.

lonix1 [e-mail] 於 2019年6月2日 週日 18:33 寫道：

No I'm not. I'm saying that if you don't want to do it (or dislike the
idea), fine, but don't tell others not to do it.

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[gsemet]

I would love to have a PPA for Guake, for a while there was one.

Now I see there is this one (ppa:linuxuprising ) that may provide a recent Guake. But that unofficial.

If a volunteer appears to work on the PPA I would be glad to work with him/her "officially".

I would like to have Guake installable from scratch through pip install, unfortunately there are a bunch of manual steps to do and doc to read.... any help would be welconed !

[mcrowson]

Seems to be the top feature request ATM: https://feathub.com/Guake/guake/+23

Is is necessary to track this here as a GH issue if it is duplicative of that feature request? Not sure how you guys handle issues/feature requests/etc.

[himankpathak]

Hey @gsemet, is this issue still open?

[eli-schwartz]

AFAIK, yes -- there is still no one who has volunteered to be in charge of operating a Debian/Ubuntu PPA.

Are you interested in volunteering for this? :)

[himankpathak]

I would like help, as this would make latest versions of guake more accessible to a larger audience.
The initial setup will have to be done by project maintainers. Creating official launchpad account and registering the project.