Wednesday, February 3, 2016

packaging - When to use separate PPAs?


I'm interested in setting up PPAs for a few projects that I'm working on, and I'm trying to find out how many PPAs I need. Should I create one PPA for each project, effectively having a single package in each? The fact that the name is "personal package archive" and the fact that they're created under my launchpad username make it seem like I should have all of my projects in one PPA - would that cause problems? What if it's multiple similar/related packages, such as unity lenses?


The instructions don't really say anything about how much to put in a single PPA, though they do indicate having more than one is okay.



There is no need to create multiple PPAs, unless it's necessary. For example, daily builds, and stable releases, of the same project (same package) would need to be separate PPAs, since you can't have multiple versions of the same package, in a single archive. However, just making packages of various things you find an interest in, or as a point of staging packages you wish to propose for inclusion in the Ubuntu or Debian archives, does not require multiple PPAs.


The best thing you can do is organize in a way that minimizes any potential damage to users' systems who decide to add your PPA. Packaging of libraries and applications that exist in Ubuntu already, can greatly increase potential for damage, especially if you start adding extra patches and such.


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