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.
3 comments
fer says:
June 18, 2010 at 12:15 am
Congratulations!
I’m a Ubuntu user and started using pyRoom, later TextRoom and finally ended up with FocusWriter. This one was the only one that full fill my needs: working autosave, background and font customization (I don’t use images, just plain black background and big green 18pt fonts), a good statistics system. The “Daily Goal” feature is a very nice extra also (a configurable “timer” for the Pomodoro technique http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/ implementation, or any other “work, rest, work” timer would be fantastic!).
Installation was easy, but a bit unusual, most Ubuntu users are used to official repositories or those from Launchpad.net where is easy to follow and collaborate.
Any way, great, great job.
Elsa says:
November 15, 2010 at 12:04 am
Hi, I not an expert and I have Ubuntu Jaunty. Can I get focuswriter?
Graeme says:
November 15, 2010 at 3:54 pm
Unfortunately, Jaunty doesn’t have a new enough version of Qt, so FocusWriter will not compile for it.