[mythtv] Fwd: Ubuntu Feisty - Weekly builds (and packaging) of trunk

[Tom Metro]

Peter Schachte wrote:
> I suspect a weekly build of SVN trunk would not be terribly useful.  A user who
> closely follows development and sees a new feature they want will probably not
> wait for up to a week for it to show up in a new build; they'll just build from
> source. It also doesn't help try out features/fixes that only show up in
> patches in trac or in a branch.

This thread caught my eye with the first thought being that this might 
be a convenient way to get packages that are closer to the HEAD for 
doing the occasional bit of development work or verifying a bug still 
exists, while still maintaining the convenience of packages.

But the last sentence above illustrates the problem with that. While I 
can wait to try out features and fixes, there's no getting around having 
the source if you are planning to modify the code with hopes of 
submitting a patch.

Where this kind of packaging would pay off is for someone working on 
plug-ins. My understanding is that plug-ins like mythweb are closely 
tied to the protocol changes in the back-end. So in order to run the 
latest version of mythweb so you can make modification to it, you also 
have to go through the pain of building the back-end from the repository.


> I do think it would be useful to have an up-to-date *source* package for SVN
> trunk with all the dependencies, build dependencies, init scripts, install
> scripts, etc.  This would make it easier to build and install the latest SVN
> trunk version in an ubuntu-friendly way, and make it easier to upgrade to trunk
> from installed 0.20 packages.  Ideally, this would actually leave out the
> pristine source part of the source package, expecting you to download it
> through SVN.

This would be ideal. Then 'svn up' is all that is needed to keep the 
working directory in sync, and running some automated script builds a 
package. One more command and it is installed. Another packaging command 
to uninstall and revert to a release version.

I would assume the package maintainers already have scripts for doing 
this. Are they not already included in the project repository?


> I don't know if you can actually build a debian source package that
> leaves out the pristine source code, though.

If what you're really doing is automating the building of the package 
from the working directory, then in actuality you're just building a 
traditional binary package.

  -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/