It took me much longer than I expected to make the most recent Whisker Menu release, all because the RPMs would not build. I forgot to include the new manpage in the %files section of the RPM spec file at first, and then every attempt I made to add it did not work. I tried listing the manpage path with %{_mandir}, then just hardcoding the full path, and finally telling it to grab all of the files installed by my package under %{_mandir}.

None of those approaches worked, which left me both baffled and a bit frustrated. And then I noticed I had been forgetting to increase the “Release” number in the spec file. Oops! Such a simple mistake. Once I fixed that they built fine. Long story short, always double check that you increased the “Release” number when you make a change to a RPM spec file!

After struggling with making Ubuntu packages in the OBS I have come to conclusion that I was wrong when I decided to remove my personal package archive. Yes, it is a hassle to create packages for both as I already create Debian packages for the OBS. However, it is more of a headache to use the OBS for Ubuntu packages because the OBS does not enable the universe repository.

I have decided to add back a PPA for my packages, and I will be updating my website shortly. I’m very sorry for the inconvenience to Ubuntu users caused by my switching to the OBS from a PPA, and now by my switching back to a PPA from the OBS. Please accept my sincerest apologies, and these new packages. 🙂

It has been too much of a hassle to build packages and maintain my Ubuntu package repository, but I still want to supply binaries for users of different Linux distros. To that end I have replaced apt.gottcode.org with a personal package archive for Ubuntu packages as well as using the openSUSE build service to create packages for Fedora, Mandriva, and openSUSE.

I’m sorry for the inconvenience this will cause those who had used apt.gottcode.org, but I think that this will be a better solution in the long run.

Around a week and a half ago I took a small break from programming and put on my packaging hat for a while: I am once again making binaries for Linux. The last time I did this I merely compiled my programs for Ubuntu and released them as tarballs. This time I have decided that if I am making binaries for Ubuntu, I should package them properly and not just label tarballs as “Linux” binaries.

It didn’t take me more than a couple of days to learn how to make my simple programs into Debian packages. I first looked at a couple of not very helpful online manuals, then a decent guide on the Ubuntu wiki, and then I examined the contents of a couple source packages. After a few different approaches I settled on using CDBS and the 3.0 (quilt) format.

What took most of the time was the fact that I had a cold. 😛 I also took the time to set up automated build scripts for cowbuilder environments of the most recent releases of Ubuntu. Also, it took a day to figure out how to easily manage an APT repository.

In the end, of all my programs are packaged for Ubuntu 9.04, 9.10, and 10.04. I intend to maintain these, but if somebody wants to get them into Debian or Ubuntu they are more than welcome. I am also maintaining packages of the programs that are already in Ubuntu so that users will always be able to get the latest and greatest versions of my software, but I may change my mind about that later to reduce my packaging load.

You can visit my repository to learn how to use it, if you are interested. If you have issues adding my repository or installing my programs, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

When I made the release of my newest project, I decided to stop making Linux binaries. The whole concept of making a binary for “Linux” is silly, as every distro has different and sometimes incompatible versions of the C library, of X.org, of Qt, etc. And then there are the many different supported processor architectures. Linux distros are source compatible, not binary compatible. What I was really making was an Ubuntu binary and passing it off as a Linux binary. I don’t even use Ubuntu, I use Arch Linux!

If you are using Linux, I assume that you have enough knowledge about your system to compile my programs, or that you can learn it. The README file documents the few steps required (beyond the obvious step of installing the Qt development packages). I don’t think I should continue to cater to newbies, because eventually a newbie will learn enough to no longer be a newbie. And after all, isn’t that half the fun?