posted in Technology
I hate packaging my software for Linux (fresh)
getfresh.dev/docs/blog/packaging-for-linux/No automatic updates for .deb / .rpm
The author seems to have completely missed the point that they can just publish their own repositories to allow users on both of these platforms to update. It would also mean they could avoid the problems they’re having building source packages.
Their complaints about supporting instalations with older libc versions are also addressable by just building against the oldest libc they wish to support.
i guess the problem with that is having to maintain the repository setup. they’re basically web servers with signed files.
That does solve one problem at the cost of a bunch of other potential problems.
You can put the repositories on pretty much any static hosting. I haven’t tried it, but I’m pretty sure that, with a bit of fiddling, you could even put them on a github pages site.
Both distros have good tooling for maintaining repositories, and I’d say it’s probably easier than getting your package into the official repos and keeping it updated there, especially on distros like Debian which favour stability over having the latest versions of packages.
No distribution system is going to be entirely friction free for the author, but I’ve not encountered any significant issues hosting deb or rpm repos.
Replying to @notabot@piefed.social
I’m pretty sure that, with a bit of fiddling, you could even put them on a github pages site.
Harbottle does this. It’s very well-done.
Replying to @DevDave@piefed.social
I don’t see the problem. For years I’ve used the public Open Build Service instance at openSUSE to package and publish software for openSUSE and Fedora (never cared for Debian/Ubuntu because I packaged the software only for my own use but it’s possible).