Google Summer of Code Proposals

Jonathan Yu · External Since: Apr 03, 2009 Posts: 20

Hi:

It's sort of late (the proposals are due today at 1900 UTC), but I was
wondering if any of you on the team had anything in particular you'd
like to see done for packaging. I want to do something to help
automate the process some more, since for me it was sort of difficult
learning the ins and outs of Debian packaging (and I'm still not there
yet).

Something I think might be useful is some sort of automated testing
system for Debian Perl modules, like the CPAN smoke tests. This idea
has been bounced around by Ryan52 but I think more work could be done
there.

So if you have any ideas, please let me know as soon as possible, and
I'll try to submit them as proposals for this summer Smile

Cheers,

Jonathan

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Dominique Dumont · External Since: Feb 01, 2007 Posts: 29

Jonathan Yu <jonathan.i.yu RemoveThis @gmail.com> writes:

> So if you have any ideas, please let me know as soon as possible, and
> I'll try to submit them as proposals for this summer Smile

Here's another idea:

Enhance aptitude so that "aptitude install perl(Foo::Bar)" will:
- check if a debian package is already available
- if not, use dh-make-perl --build -cpan Foo::Bar to create a package
- create a local repository with this package
- install the package from local repository

HTH

--
Dominique Dumont
"Delivering successful solutions requires giving people what they
need, not what they want." Kurt Bittner

irc:
domidumont at irc.freenode.net
ddumont at irc.debian.org

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Dominique Dumont · External Since: Feb 01, 2007 Posts: 29

Jonathan Yu <jonathan.i.yu DeleteThis @gmail.com> writes:

> So if you have any ideas, please let me know as soon as possible, and
> I'll try to submit them as proposals for this summer Smile

One difficulty I had to create package was to understand all the
informations I had to enter in debian files, be it control, changelog,
copyright and so on...

So, this may be a crazy idea, but, to me, this bunch of file is like a
set of configuration files that are used by dpkg-build.

[ some of you are already saying "uh-oh" Wink

]

If there are configuration files, they can be modelized. If they can be
modelized, Config::Model can provide a GUI to help people create
packages ...

This way, instead of editing files with different syntaxes, people would
just need to fill the field in the GUI provided by Config::Model (with
on-line help).

(If you go this way, I'll really have to add the 'wizard' part to
Config::Model GUI)

--
Dominique Dumont
"Delivering successful solutions requires giving people what they
need, not what they want." Kurt Bittner

irc:
domidumont at irc.freenode.net
ddumont at irc.debian.org

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Jonathan Yu · External Since: Apr 03, 2009 Posts: 20

Hi Dominique:

Thanks for your reply!

The first idea sounds brilliant, particularly as it can tie in well
with some other ideas I have for simplifying the build/test process -
by being able to model the Debian files as Config::Model's, then we
can also query the data back out, which can help for testing.

As for automatically running dh-make-perl, I think this would be a
great option to have, especially for people in the pkg-perl team.
However, for the casual user, this can be a daunting task when it
doesn't work as it should. So I think a better idea might be to file a
reportbug report (of course checking that the module doesn't already
exist as a bug) and then offer to install via the normal CPAN shell
(so that users can do 'force install' if necessary)

Lastly, I think another idea might be to separate our package wishlist
tracking from Debian's centralized bug control system, and make a new
web interface to do that sort of thing. But there are probably Very
Good Reasons(tm) that we are using the Debian Bug Tracker, so I guess
we should just stick to that Razz

Cheers,

Jonathan

On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 9:50 AM, Dominique Dumont
<dominique.dumont DeleteThis @hp.com> wrote:
> Jonathan Yu <jonathan.i.yu DeleteThis @gmail.com> writes:
>
>> So if you have any ideas, please let me know as soon as possible, and
>> I'll try to submit them as proposals for this summer Smile

>
> Here's another idea:
>
> Enhance aptitude so that "aptitude install perl(Foo::Bar)" will:
> - check if a debian package is already available
> - if not, use dh-make-perl --build -cpan Foo::Bar to create a package
> - create a local repository with this package
> - install the package from local repository
>
> HTH
>
> --
> Dominique Dumont
> "Delivering successful solutions requires giving people what they
> need, not what they want." Kurt Bittner
>
> irc:
> domidumont at irc.freenode.net
> ddumont at irc.debian.org
>

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