Investigate usage of packagecloud.io for Debian/Ubuntu repositories

[untitaker]

Debian has policies that prevent users from using the latest vdirsyncer version. We should make it possible for users to add a repository that contains the latest version while still using their native package manager for updates.

The two options for this are:

• PPAs
• http://packagecloud.io

An ideal solution would automatically generate apt packages from the PyPI releases.

@hobarrera investigated this sometime ago, however it's unclear what the conclusions/results were. We should try this out again and perhaps contact packagecloud's support about our usecase. We should also clearly document what we found out.

[untitaker]

By the way, I would consider it unproblematic to bundle all dependencies of vdirsyncer in the same package, as long as it doesn't conflict with the system-site-packages. In fact we probably should also choose a name for our packages that doesn't conflict with the one packaged by debian (compare with the repositories for mongodb, slack, docker)

[untitaker]

17:23 "blocker". I'd actually done it. :P
17:23 Can you see the packages if you log into packagecloud? https://packagecloud.io/pimutils/todoman

I can see the packages python-atomicwrites and python-pyxdg without logging in.

[WhyNotHugo]

Looks like package generation was the actual issue: pimutils/todoman#84

packagecloud merely provides repositories, not packaging itself.

CI integration seems pretty simple: https://packagecloud.io/hobarrera/todoman/ci#travis

[geier]

I've heard good things about open build service [0], but a) never used it and b) it looks like it's "just" the software and we would need to host it ourselves. Perhaps there is a hosted version of it somewhere. [0] http://openbuildservice.org/ Quoting Hugo Osvaldo Barrera (2017-08-24 17:34:55)

…

Looks like package generation was the actual issue: pimutils/todoman#84 packagecloud merely provides repositories, not packaging itself. -- You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: #663 (comment)

[WhyNotHugo]

The issue I mentioned above has been reported:

jordansissel/fpm#1106

However, there's an extra issue with fpm; ideally, both khal and todoman aren't pure-python, since we provide custom entry point to avoid setuptools' overhead.

@geier There's a public instance here: https://build.opensuse.org/

[geier]

there is one here: https://build.opensuse.org/ Quoting Christian Geier (2017-08-24 17:48:53)

…

I've heard good things about open build service [0], but a) never used it and b) it looks like it's "just" the software and we would need to host it ourselves. Perhaps there is a hosted version of it somewhere. [0] http://openbuildservice.org/ Quoting Hugo Osvaldo Barrera (2017-08-24 17:34:55) > Looks like package generation was the actual issue: > pimutils/todoman#84 > > packagecloud merely provides repositories, not packaging itself. > > -- > You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. > Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: > #663 (comment)

[untitaker]

This also looks very interesting: https://github.com/spotify/dh-virtualenv

[WhyNotHugo]

dh-virtualenv looks promising. I think the idea of having a virtualenv makes sense it that we don't have to deal with outdated dependencies (and I don't want to have to package the whole dependency tree for debian).

[untitaker]

FWIW I have had great success with dh-virtualenv. The initial setup is quite laborious and you have to write your own docker/docker-compose files to build packages for all distros, but once you have that releases are completely automatic (although resource intensive).

[untitaker]

Btw I now replaced dh-virtualenv with fpm. It turns out fpm has a virtualenv source.