[Hamara-devel] apt-add-repository

[shirish]

in-line :-

On 04/20/2015 07:46 PM, Vikas Tara wrote:
> Hi,
>
Hi,

> Having just reinstalled my media centre to hamara 1.0.1, I needed to 
> install the latest XBMC.
>
> We're currently shipping quite an old version - whereas I had 
> previously been using the ubuntu XBMC ppa.

Which version of xbmc are you shipping ?
>
>
> Now, editing apt sources to allow the use of that same ppa for me is 
> straightforward - but it did open up some questions:
>
> 1. Should we customise apt-add-respoitory so that you can add ubuntu 
> ppa's directly with that command?
>
> 2. Should we mirror ppa's?

On  Ubuntu-end it's all upto you.

>
> 3. Should we support ppa's at all (Debian don't seem to)?

Umm.. dunno,  but debian has a non-free external repo. called 
deb-multimedia which works for the XBMC scenario.

see http://deb-multimedia.org/

you just need to add to your debian /etc/apt/sources.list  the stanza as 
shared by deb-multimedia,  download the deb-multimedia keyring and you 
can have the latest and the greatest kodi (name change from xbmc)

This is the version in debian atm :-

[$] apt-cache policy xbmc
xbmc:
   Installed: 2:13.2+dfsg1-4
   Candidate: 2:13.2+dfsg1-4
   Version table:
  *** 2:13.2+dfsg1-4 0
         600 http://httpredir.debian.org//debian/ jessie/main amd64 Packages
           1 http://httpredir.debian.org//debian/ unstable/main amd64 
Packages

As can be seen it is installed on my system.

The upstream version is something like 14.2 so there is a vast gap there 
for sure. I have asked the same but am a bit doubtful if they will do 
something or be able to do something. See http://bugs.debian.org/783037

  Previously the app. had an embedded ffmpeg library while Debian has 
libav.  While ffmpeg has again come into the mainline repo. now still 
some issues might be remaining.  If the maintainer gets time I hope to 
get a reply soonish :)

>
> Interested in other people's views.
>
> I personally like the flexibility of supporting ppa's - it gives our 
> user base access to newer packages and greater freedom of choice.

There are lots and lots of third-party apt repositories for Debian as 
well.  What we should probably look for both in medium-term as well as 
long-term to make those packages stay in Debian's repo. so all and any 
headaches with package stability becomes theirs and the delta remains 
small.

I know of many sites which have debian repos, putting that together 
would be a manmoth task though. Just to share, here's one of cairo :-

http://cairo-compmgr.tuxfamily.org/download/debian-packages/

You can also find a few mentioned at 
https://wiki.debian.org/UnofficialRepositories but that listing is far 
from complete and doubt it will ever be as such links need lot of 
maintenance . Once we find few, we would have to get their e-mail 
addresses, put up a script which crawls through all repositories and see 
which are working or not and if after few days they don't respond for 
one reason or other drop those from our web-pages.

  The other part is how to support these third-party sources or 
repositories because at times things will and do go wrong. Do we become 
a sort of gate-keeper of these repositories or just share the links and 
say it's your luck if they work or not.

What happens as and when conflicts happen. Debian follows shared library 
transitions which these third-party repos. will not so conflicts are 
bound to happen.

See https://release.debian.org/transitions/

The only solution would be to constantly monitor the third-party repos. 
the package itself,  Debian Library transitions

While this is possible for say 100-200 packages with some difficulty it 
would probably be close to  impossible if we have those many third-party 
APTs.  being constantly monitored on top of things we already want to do.

BTW this might also be interesting to you.  I will start dumping the 
links on the wiki,  just have no idea how to make it easy/comfortable 
for developers who would want these resources.
https://wiki.debian.org/CreatePackageFromPPA

Side note :-  While researching for the above, I  came across 
http://www.eldy.eu/ it isn't for our target group for education but for 
elderly people as well as kids might be a good UI. Dunno why this hasn't 
been packaged yet :(

Till later.

>
> Regards
>
> Vik
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-- 
Shirish Agarwal,
Community Lead,
Hamaralinux.org

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