Packaging TechneNotes [Was: Re: Project proposal for the Debian Med group]

[Andrius Merkys <merkys@debian.org>]

Dear Guido,

On 2021-11-20 13:48, Guido Rovera wrote:
> According to the wiki page that you linked, the only "upstream" tasks
> that I would need to perform are:
> - Create an official tarball
> - Add licence details to the repo

Yes, these are absolutely necessary requirements for the source package.

> - Improve the already-existing list of required dependencies by adding
> minimum version numbers

This is surely nice to have. If well-maintained, such lists greatly help
in case Debian package maintenance is undertaken by people other than
the upstream.

> Note: I've used "Meson" to handle user installation and I've already
> created an "install.sh" script (please refer to the Github README file
> for a quick overview of software installation:
> https://github.com/grovera-md/TechneNotes
> <https://github.com/grovera-md/TechneNotes>).

Great. I have worked on packages using Meson, and debhelper seems to
understand them well.

> I'd like to package the software myself, however I can't find a
> brief/clear overview of the steps required for my specific case (Python
> GTK software).
> As I'm sure you understand, before digging in the wiki/documentation
> (which I've already tried once), I would need a preliminary general
> understanding of the whole process and the steps required to package my
> software. Just like when you start using a new software or programming
> language, you first go through a brief video or cheat-sheet, and only
> then you start selectively reading the in-depth documentation about what
> you need.
> Does anyone have a good suggestion?

You may start from Debian packaging portal [1], but I cannot seem to
find it presenting the modern tools which highly simplify packaging
(git-buildpackage, debhelper, sbuild, ...). I ended up describing the
steps I take myself to package any new source package [2], you may start
from this small tutorial and see where it takes you to.

> Finally, my software (TechneNotes) is substantially different from
> Cherry Tree, with key improvements in terms of:
> - user interface: most note-taking app display a vertical tree in the
> sidebar, which is definitely not suitable for managing large volumes of
> notes; although it required a lot more effort, TechneNotes was
> implemented with a database-table view with treeview functionalities

As I am not using any note-taking software myself, I cannot comment on
the pros and cons of this, however.

> - content management: TechneNotes was built to surpass the limitations
> of standard text-documents, with links to files/folders/web-pages but
> also image/video galleries etc. Moreover, everything is done with
> standard extended-markdown (no custom syntax), so the user will never be
> tied to a specific software. I think that being able to only export
> notes as HTML/PDF/etc is not enough future-proof, while using markdown
> ensures a wider future-compatibility

+1 for using standard formats.

How the notes are stored? Are they added to relational databases
(SQLite) or kept in plain files?

[1] https://wiki.debian.org/Packaging
[2] https://wiki.debian.org/AndriusMerkys/PackagingInSeconds

Best,
Andrius