Zettlr: PPA for Ubuntu

[ploum]

Is there any plan to have a PPA for Ubuntu? That would be awesome

[nathanlesage]

I have never set up such a thing, but according to what I've seen from a quick glance at Google, it seems to mainly consist in a simple directory-structure, right …?

[ploum]

If I remember correctly, it's basically a server where your upload the source of your deb package. The server will then compile it (even for different architecture).

After that, it can be added to any Ubuntu-based system so Zettlr is now available, with all updates, directly to every user.

If you don't have access to a Linux computer, I may have a look (but I was really bad at packaging)

[nathanlesage]

:D That would make sense. If I see this correctly, it all seems to boil down to a certain directory structure (so there's no need with all that overhead hassle). Because what I would like to have is an easy way to automate that so that I only need to re-use my command for updating the API after a release and have everything else done automatically. Anything else I can't manage!

[ploum]

Afaik, once the setup is done, uploading a new version to a PPA is only a matter of running the commande "dput". So easily automatable.

What I'm not sure is if it requires an Ubuntu computer.

(well, it looks like this can be uploaded through sftp : https://help.launchpad.net/Packaging/PPA/Uploading )

[nathanlesage]

Well, my server runs Debian, so what I hope for is that I can simply automatically pull in the *.deb-file and throw it on the server!

[almet]

Heya, anything we can do to help you on this? Thanks!

[nathanlesage]

Certainly, if someone would be able to maintain this, it would ease my workload a lot (that is: keep such a repository updated)

[ScottishJon]

I don't have the know-how for this, but my understanding of Flatpak as an option for Linux distribution is that it automatically pulls releases from Github once an app has been submitted and set up with them, which I imagine would be less work that setting up and maintaining a PPA for only Debian-based distributions. Info here.

[nathanlesage]

Ugh, looks like quite some work to maintain. Especially the "don't download additional data during build" part got me puzzled, b/c without it, the app won't build

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[ploum]

I belive this one would still be a highly welcomed contribution. This contribution should come from someone using Ubuntu and knowledgeable with packaging. (I tried it myself several times, I'm definitlely not a good packager).

Maybe a "contribution welcome" or "patch or it won't happen" tag would do it?

[nathanlesage]

(I tried it myself several times, I'm definitlely not a good packager).

My thought exactly! I'll just label this with "help wanted", I think this might be the easiest thing, right?

[Kangie]

@nathanlesage I've got a bit of experience packaging for .debs so I'll take a look into this after 1.8.0.

I'm going to target Debian, because working packages on Debian, in my experience, install and work just fine on Ubuntu. It should be available to a wider userbase this way!

As far doing things otherwise goes, I'd probably aim at getting things into the official repos, rather than a PPA. Once things hit the Debian repos (as I understand it) they usually make their way into Ubuntu anyway.

If you'd prefer another approach, let me know.

[ploum]

@Kangie > that would clearly be the best approach. But the most time consuming. The disadvantage of this approach is that the version in Ubuntu is "frozen" with each release. Which means disabling the automatic check for a new version.

In a perfect world, there would be a packaged version in Debian and a PPA. (but once you've got the package in Debian, doing the PPA is quite easy and can, afaik, be automated)

[nathanlesage]

As far doing things otherwise goes, I'd probably aim at getting things into the official repos, rather than a PPA.

This sounds preferable, and I would really appreciate it if we could make it! I can help out with server resources and some aid, but as mentioned, not the fundamental coding work. But if there's a server necessity, I'd be happy to help out here!