The Ubuntu One developers have an interesting technical conundrum that would benefit greatly from all of your thoughts. They've started collecting ideas, and would like to collect more, and hopefully settle down on a plan for the next cycle in a UDS session.
The basic problem is in keeping a networked client in sync with a networked service. In the wider world this is generally handled by releasing an update for the client whenever the service changes. Ubuntu One has been tying the development cycle for their service to Ubuntu's six month cycle, so client feature updates only happen in new distro releases. But, even that doesn't quite work, because once you change the service then clients on older distro releases (especially LTSs) still need the feature updates to connect to the updated service. Sometimes these feature updates depend on newer versions of libraries than exist on the older distro releases. The category of lightweight client apps for a remote service is becoming more and more common, so ideally a solution for Ubuntu One will be one we can recommend to all app developers. Here's a grab bag of brainstorming so far: - Only ship a very small shim for the client on the CD (advantage of small footprint), and do the rest of the install the first time someone uses Ubuntu One. - Ship Ubuntu One client in extras, backports, commercial, or partner repository. (Better if it's on by default than requiring a manual step to enable the repository.) - Ship Ubuntu One client (only) in a PPA. - Implement "self updating" within the client, similar to Firefox/Thunderbird (on non-packaged installs). This is the most complex technically, so not the most appealing. - Pull some update dependencies into /opt/.../UbuntuOne/lib, to keep them completely isolated from the rest of the system, but available to the Ubuntu One client. Do you all have more ideas or suggestions? Allison -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss