So you’re interested in helping out? Making Ubuntu better? Learn something new? Fix problems in Ubuntu for millions of users?
Let me know what kind of training sessions you would like to see, what kind of videos, what kind of recipes.
Thanks in advance for your comments.
“How to get started without spending a week or so reading everything in the wiki”
“How to find something that needs to be done”
“How to not get discouraged when it seems like bugs are ignored/procrastinated/triaged until the version they were filed against is no longer supported”
“How to be a team player without bringing productivity to a screeching halt”
Just a quick second to probono’s request at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU/Videos
The path from hello.py to hello.deb isn’t exactly obvious to a beginning python dev
“How to distribute my brand-new little app to lots of Ubuntu users, targeting Hardy, Intrepid, and Jaunty”.
I second (third) furicle’s (probono’s) apparent request for packaging python apps. I never did figure it out myself.
@oliver: I think you need to target $CURRENT_VERSION++. It’s far too late to distribute anything to Jaunty, much less Hardy or Intrepid. Focus on Karmic and beyond.
Wolfger: no, that’s exactly my point. I have a working application _now_, and I want to offer it to users so they can use it _now_ (not in three months when Karmic is out). Which means that of course the official main/universe/multiverse repos are not an option, and some PPA seems more appropriate.
To be more specific: I don’t want a talk about “using the Ubuntu repo system for distributing software” – I want a talk about “make it easy for Ubuntu users to install my software today”. If that talk involves repos and whatnot, that’s ok. But let’s keep the focus on the _goal_, not on the _way_.
Re: Python packaging
Check out: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PackagingGuide/Python
Or here for really in depth: http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/python-policy/ch-python.html
@ oliver
If you’re goal is to make it easy for users to get you app, getting it into the official repos really is your best bet. I’ve seen a few surveys (sorry no links) that show most desktop users update to the latest version of Ubuntu. So most of you’re users are going to be running Karmic in a couple months. Getting your app into the official repos will make it much easier for them. They won’t have to hunt down files anywhere or add anything to their sources, just a simple “apt-get install” Once it’s in the repo for Karmic, you could always get it into jaunty-backports.
But you don’t necessarily need to package it yourself. Get it out there with a normal setup.py, and if it’s compelling chances are someone will package it for you.
I’m interested in packaging kde4 apps/plasmoids, as there are many of them lying around in kde’s svn;)
@oliver: Sorry, I misunderstood what you were looking for. I’d suggest a LaunchPad PPA and talk up your app on Identica. That seemed to work really well for Gwibber (though, Gwibber’s audience was microbloggers, so their success at that approach may far exceed typical results).
@oliver: you might be interested in a project that’s started recently… from:
https://edge.launchpad.net/quickly
“Quickly enables for prospective programmer a way to build easily new apps for Ubuntu as well as templates and other systems for helping them right their code in a guided manner. This also includes packaging and deploying code.”
It’s very young, but looking promising…
UBUNTU IS JUST A PERFECT SOLUTION TO CLONE COMPUTERS.
If it’s not too late, may I suggest “Packaging DocBook help for use with PyGTK Gnome apps”? The Python packaging article on the Ubuntu wiki is excellent, and I’ve packaged my own applications using it. However, it doesn’t mention what you should do to package the Docbook files.
Creating offline help for a PyGTK Gnome application that appears in Yelp is currently a real mystery – and how to package it is even more so.