I've noticed that our fellow Laney (Cc:-ed) has kick-started work on the
Ubuntu packaging guide; see forwarded message below.
I was then wondering how we could better contribute to the work so that
the guide is not only useful for Ubuntu, but also for Debian and, more
generally, for all derivative distributions.
Clearly enough, the guide as it is will already be good enough to be
used in any Debian-based distro for most parts by applying the
s/Ubuntu/$DISTRO/ substitution by reading. Nonetheless, it is the kind
of work that derivatives my want to "brand" somehow, especially to avoid
confusing newcomers that might not get the exact differences among
sister distros.
As far as I can tell, there are three kinds of customization that
developers from the various distros might enjoy:
- branding: i.e. applying the name of your own distro
- selectively disabling distro-specific parts (e.g. for most derivatives
other than Ubuntu parts about Launchpad won't be useful)
- selectively including distro-specific parts, dual of the above, to
describe stuff which is not relevant for Ubuntu
Of course, the above is completely orthogonal to credits that should be
given to the Ubuntu folks and anyone else working on the guide; those
should obviously remain in every flavor of the guide.
So, Iain, would you and other "upstream authors" of the guide be
interested in this kind of development? To enable it some sort of
support would be needed in the build system of the guide, so it's better
to check if you're interested and design it together.
Similar questions to the debian-doc folks, do you think it would be
worth to work a bit in that direction and consolidating a packaging
guide for several distros?
Thanks for your attention,
Cheers.
----- Forwarded message from Iain Lane <laney@ubuntu.com> -----
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2011 17:50:26 +0000
From: Iain Lane <laney@ubuntu.com>
To: ubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com, ubuntu-doc@lists.ubuntu.com
Subject: Kicking off the ubuntu-packaging-guide project
Hello everybody,
We are ready to start the new Ubuntu Packaging Guide project. After long
discussions we finally figured out a workflow for how we'll run the project.
* The code lives in lp:ubuntu-packaging-guide.
* Bugs (problems, typos, requests for new guides, etc.) can be filed
at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-packaging-guide/+filebug
* Please claim bugs by setting as "In Progress" and assigning to
yourself when you begin work on a new section, to prevent overlap.
* Every substantive change by every member (and every new guide) will
have to be reviewed by a member of ~ubuntu-packaging-guide-team
(right now that's ~ubuntu-dev and ~ubuntu-core-doc) member. We'll
use merge proposals for that.
* We will merge existing content of
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PackagingGuide into the guide. The
following wiki categories will help us figure out what still needs
doing.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CategoryPackagingGuideNeedsPolicyReference
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CategoryPackagingGuideNeedsUpdate
* For now we settled on using sphinx (http://sphinx.pocoo.org/) using
ReStructured text -
http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/rst/quickstart.html). The
decision was not taken lightly. Almost every third contribution to
the discussion was "Hey, why don't you guys use <some other
toolkit>?". In the end the quality of the output, the different
output methods, the ease of use and a high number of "+1" from
people who already agreed to write guides made the decision a bit
easier. (If this does not pan out, there are a number of
rst2* tools that should help us move to something else.)
* Packaging for the new guide already exists, so we can hopefully
include it in the archive.
* We will set up a daily build and publish the guides online. Place
has still to be decided.
* Once we're sufficiently happy with the guides, we'll set up
redirects from the wiki.
We are delighted to kick this off; there are a number of people
willing to help. Please chip in with new guides and fixes to existing
ones, this is one of the most important efforts to get new developers
started and the existing wiki guide has long lacked maintenance.
As a license we will use CC-BY-SA v3.0+ (this is considered DFSG free).
Thanks a lot in advance.
-- the Ubuntu Packaging Guide hackers
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----- End forwarded message -----
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Quando anche i santi ti voltano le spalle, | . |. I've fans everywhere
ti resta John Fante -- V. Capossela .......| ..: |.......... -- C. Adams
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