Copy packages to same PPA, different distro

[Pau Garcia i Quiles]

Quoting Celso Providelo <celso.providelo at gmail.com>:

> On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 7:52 PM, Pau Garcia i Quiles
> <pgquiles at elpauer.org> wrote:
>> Quoting Celso Providelo <celso.providelo at gmail.com>:
>>
>>> On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 6:53 PM, Pau Garcia i Quiles
>>> <pgquiles at elpauer.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Quoting Dan <danmbox at gmail.com>:
>>>>
>>>> It does not work for me, either. I even blogged about that:
>>>> http://www.elpauer.org/index.php?p=253
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Hi all, I am having trouble creating binaries for both Gutsy AND Hardy
>>>>> in the same PPA. Here's what happened:
>>>>>
>>>>> 0) My package was initially made for Debian, so the most recent
>>>>> changelog entry points to "unstable". Therefore,
>>>>>
>>>>> 1) I uploaded the source package to ~myname/ubuntu/hardy
>>>>>
>>>>> 2) The package built fine, and Hardy .deb's showed up in the PPA
>>>>>
>>>>> 3) I requested "Copy Packages" to the same PPA / target distro Gutsy,
>>>>> without checking the "copy binary packages" checkbox
>>>>>
>>>>> 4) The package again built fine (the build logs contained no errors
>>>>> and the PPA front page says my packages are published for Gutsy)
>>>>>
>>>>> But I cannot find the Gutsy binaries. For example,
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> http://ppa.launchpad.net/myname/ubuntu/dists/gutsy/main/binary-i386/Packages
>>>>>
>>>>> is empty (0 bytes in size)
>>>>>
>>>>> Upon further inspection, I don't even see how this could work *in
>>>>> principle*, since the Hardy .deb's in pool/main/m/mypackage have no
>>>>> indication that they are Hardy-specific. That is, even if Gutsy .deb's
>>>>> were built, they would have no place to go (short of over-riding the
>>>>> Hardy .deb's in pool/main/...)
>>>>>
>>>>> What am I doing wrong? What is the right way to create both Hardy and
>>>>> Gutsy .deb's?
>>>
>>> You should either:
>>>
>>> 1. Build the source once in Gutsy and copy source & binaries to Hardy
>>> (the opposite should also work, but it depends on the which features
>>> you used in your package).
>>
>> Copy binaries?
>
> Yes, there is a checkbox in +copy-packages UI saying:
>
> {{{
> | | Copy binaries
>
> Whether or not to copy the binary packages for the selected sources.
> }}}

I know but I'm not sure copying a binary between different  
distributions (for instance, Gutsy and Hardy) makes sense, as the  
binary would probably not work due to linkage issues.

>> What I used to do is build on Gutsy, then copy source to Hardy. Soyuz then
>> built the Hardy version of those packages but they were never made available
>> to users.
>
> Right, but that shouldn't and will not be allowed anymore, see the example:
>
> 1. foo_1.0 source in gutsy builds foo-bin_1.0_all.deb which gets
> published it the archive.
>
> 2. foo_1.0 source copied to hardy will also build the same
> foo-bin_1.0_all.deb but with different contents (at least, with
> different timestamps in the data.tar.gz).
>
> This last binary cannot be published in the archive, otherwise all apt
> clients using the gutsy binary would be in inconsistent state, forced
> to upgrade to the same version with different contents.

I guess that's what the OP and I are suffering

>>> 2. Upload new versions of the source to build to build in Hardy.
>>
>> Yes, that works but then you are not using the "copy packages" feature. BTW,
>> being able to automate package copy would also be nice.
>
> Maybe, but I'm not sure how valuable it would be. Do you have any
> specific use-case in mind ?

I can think of these two use cases:

- Automatically copying packages between two PPAs. For instance, for  
Zumastor we have two PPAs, zumastor-team and zumastor-releases.  
Everytime a svn commit is done to the Zumastor repository, a package  
is built and published to the zumastor-team PPA. On the other hand,  
only the stable releases are published to the zumastor-releases PPA  
(ATM, manually copied from zumastor-team). Automating this would make  
life easier.

- Automatically building a package for more than one release (in the  
same PPA or in a different one). For instance, I may want to build my  
package for Gutsy, Hardy and Intrepid. ATM, either I manually copy the  
package (which does not work) or I upload the source three times  
(which is a PITA)

-- 
Pau Garcia i Quiles
http://www.elpauer.org
(Due to my workload, I may need 10 days to answer)