On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 1:01 PM, Ludovic Brenta <[email protected]>wrote:
> > Alejandro R. Mosteo wrote on [email protected]: > > Hello everybody, > > > > I'm long due to contribute my robotic code to Debian, which is one of the > > goals of my PhD thesis. I talked about this long ago with Ludovic; he > > sent to me very useful pointers on how to get started. > > Could you please post these pointers to this list for posterity? Otherwise > I'll do it but I have to dig through my old mail :) > Behold, future generations: As a prerequisite, you need a GPG or PGP key[1] signed by at least one > Debian developer[2]. I suggest this as your first step, as setting up > a physical meeting with a DD might take some time. In the mean time, > of course, don't let that stop you from starting your packaging. > > [1] GPG mini-HOWTO: > http://www.dewinter.com/gnupg_howto/english/GPGMiniHowto.html > [2] Debian Key Signing Coordination page: https://nm.debian.org/gpg.php > > Then dive into the technicalities: > > [3] Debian New Maintainer's Guide: http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/ > [4] Work-Needing and Prospective Packages: > http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/ > [5] Debian Policy for Ada: > http://www.ada-france.org/debian/debian-ada-policy.html > [6] Packaging scripts for all of my packages: > http://www.ada-france.org/article131.html > > OpenToken and TextTools are very simple packages you may want to look > at for inspiration. > > > > I have two questions, though: > > > > 1) I understand that if I want to eventually become an official > > maintainer, > > By that I suppose you mean "if I want to have my packages in the official > Debian distribution", not "if I want to have voting an upload rights"; > these are different things. > Yep, you're right. > > I should package for the "unstable" version? That would > > be "sid"? > > Correct. However you can also provide a so-called "backport", i.e. > a package that you build and install on a stable version of Debian. > Reto has done that for polyorb; maybe he can explain how that's done. > Backports are not in the official Debian distribution; they are in > separate repositories such as http://www.backports.org. > > > 2) Is there some "usefulness" rule about the things included in the > > official Debian? I ask this because some of the things I want to > > contribute (e.g. the Ada binding to the already packaged robot-player > > C library) are quite obviously of interest for the robotic community, > > while some others (e.g. some parts that are very specific to my thesis, > > or my wide-scope "general purpose tools" library) are not. If that's not > > a good candidate for Debian addition, I could start right away improving > > the separation between these parts. > > I am not aware of a hard rule but let's use common sense, which dictates > the following: > > - if your software requires specialized hardware that is not available to > the public, do not include it in Debian. Instead, create a separate > repository where you place your .deb packages. This gives you the > option to provide packages for some stable version(s) of Debian instead > of, or in addition to, unstable. > > - split the software in packages according to the intended audience. > For example, we split shared libraries into execution-time packages for > users and compile-time packages for developers. You can similarly > split the software into generally useful and more specialized packages. > > I think Xavier can tell you about his situation which is similar to yours > (when he comes back from vacation). He is packaging his specialized > NARVAL system for Debian to ease deployment across several sites, so he > started by packaging the libraries that NARVAL uses (liblog4ada, > libxmlezout and polyorb) and including them in the official Debian > distribution. Then, I understand he will place NARVAL itself in a private > repository in his lab because it requires bespoke hardware. > Ok, I see, and it makes sense for me too. I also planned to start with smallish libraries. > Of course, licenses may prevent inclusion of your software in Debian; I > mention this for completeness since I believe you are only talking about > Free software. In case some of your software is non-Free, you can include > the Free parts in Debian and place the non-Free parts in a private > repository. > While my code is indeed GPLd, there's a point which you can clarify for me (although I imagine the answer). There's indeed a 3rd party library [1] I use which license, as far as I could find, is: "available for academic research use; for other uses, contact William Cook<[email protected]?subject=concorde%20non%20academic%20use>for licensing options." I guess this would require obtaining a more precise statement from the author. More troublesome is that this library furthermore requires another one which is supplied as a .a plus .h file, so no source. I guess this precludes any attempt at officially packaging it. Alex. [1] http://www.tsp.gatech.edu/concorde/downloads/downloads.htm > > HTH > > -- > Ludovic Brenta. >
