[Mageia-dev] [Mageia-discuss] A proposal of some kind to get point of views & comments

Sebastian sebsebseb sebsebseb_mageia at gmx.com
Sat Apr 21 02:56:45 CEST 2012


On 21/04/12 00:00, William Tracy wrote:
>
> On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 1:47 PM, Sebastian sebsebseb 
> <sebsebseb_mageia at gmx.com <mailto:sebsebseb_mageia at gmx.com>> wrote:
>
>     As for the PPA's themselves or the something like it, would need a
>     website for it like they have for Ubuntu
>     https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+ppas and they should only be offered
>     on the site from people who have gone through the Mageia packaging
>     process and become trusted packagers I think.
>
>
> My understanding was that part of the attraction of Ubuntu's PPAs was 
> that any registered user could create one, making it an easy way for 
> developers to distribute their software until Ubuntu proper gets 
> around to creating an official package.

Yes that's correct anyone that knows how can make a PPA for Ubuntu. As 
for registration I think that has never been needed to make PPA's for 
Ubuntu.

Users of any PPA have to trust the person or people who made it, that 
they aren't getting malicious software from the PPA.  So on a official 
Mageia PPA's or something like PPA's sub site, they could be offered, 
but I think should only be from people who have gone through the Mageia 
packaging process and that are trusted, as I suggested in the other message.

With Ubuntu Some PPA's used to be sort of supported by the Ubuntu 
Community, more recently in general PPA's with Ubuntu are supported 
more, because the software centre can install them for example.

Before PPA's if I remember correctly Wine used to have a special repo 
for Ubuntu, but for a rather long time those that want the very latest 
final version can install the PPA instead. Pidgin also offers a PPA and 
has done for a rather long time for it's latest final version.

With Ubuntu 11.04 which uses GNOME 2 with their patches as the fall back 
mode, and Unity on top of GNOME 2 as the default, there was also a PPA 
made for GNOME 3. I tried the PPA out in both Beta 2 and the final I 
think, and it didn't work that well for me, and this seems to have been 
the case for a lot of other people as well, but it was known to be buggy.

So put simply all a PPA tends to be is a way for users to easily install 
later versions of software without having to use a development version 
of the distribution that offers a later version of the software that is 
wanted.  Or without waiting until the next version of the distribution.

PPA's are repo's as a result the software in those repo's will be 
updated usually at times, and proper updates not just security.

With PPA's it's ok for them to be buggy as mentioned in my previous 
email, because unlike backports they probably haven't gone through a 
proper QA process.

Backports from Cauldron to Mageia 2  it seems will probably start being 
offered soon after Mageia 2 has been released, but I don't know for 
sure. However I do think that having something like PPA's as well for 
Mageia would be quite a good thing indeed! As long as users understand 
that they may be buggy, and shouldn't be relied on to much if wanting 
loads of later software, than what the current latest stable version of 
Mageia at the time is offering.  Many Mageia users who would like a lot 
of later versions of software than what the repo's of a final version of 
Mageia has, should probably be running Cauldron instead really.

 From Sebastian sebsebseb
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