Ubuntu PPA, what to do with it

[Z-Man]

Launchpad offers hosting personal package archives for Ubuntu. They're mini-repositories users can add to their system to get updates of software directly from developers via the standard system update mechanisms; no download of .deb files, no manual installation. Launchpad handles the building for the various Ubuntu versions, we'd just upload source. I suggest we make use of ours I already massaged our build files for 0.2.8 so they can prepare the source (frankensteining the official unstable build files with our current sources).

But! We should give people a choice there which versions they install. I suggest a slight rebranding of the packages we upload:
1. short name armagetronad, full name "Armagetron Advanced": Our latest stable version, 0.2.8.3 currently, 0.2.8.3.1 soon
2. short name armagetrontst, full name "Armagetron Testing": Our latest beta/rc version, 0.2.8.3_rc4 currently.
3. short name armagetronex, full name "Armagetron Experimental": Our latest alpha build, 0.2.8_alpha2010<something> currently.
Also, as soon as we fully resume building stuff from trunk, all of the above with -artemis appended to the short name for the 0.2.8 versions. The rebranding makes sure that multiple versions can coexist on the same system in all constellations.

We can put the stable packages into armagetrontst no problem, the version scheme of Ubuntu/Debian (we'll replace _ with ~) ensures that 0.2.8.3_rc4 is considered older than 0.2.8.3 which is older than 0.2.8.3.1_rc1. What we can't do is put betas or full releases into armagetronex, at least not with the current versioning scheme of just taking the base branch name as the version base; the stable builds would be considered newer than later alphas. If we switch from <branch>_alpha<stamp> to <next expected release version>_alpha<stamp>, we could.

Mainly floating this up here so you can chime in on the rebranding names. "Why Testing and Experimental? Why not call it Armagetron Beta and Alpha?" and stuff. I'm not quite happy about armagetrontst, myself, so suggestions welcome.

[rafalcieslak]

I think there is a minor issue with the full names. One may think there are three versions to choose from: "Experimental", "Testing" and "Advanced", so which one is the basic, the normal one? I see two ways of solving it:
a) all full names should include the word "Advanced" (like: "Armagetron Advanced", "Armagetron Advanced Testing" and "Armagetron Advanced Experimental")
b) the stable version should include the "Stable" word.

Just a suggestion.

[Z-Man]

Hmm, good point, though that makes the name too long. It appears on the main menu and several text messages. Perhaps just change the short name and keep the full name always on "Armagetron Advanced"? The versions would still be distinguishable by, well, the version shown in the main menu.

[Lucifer]

I'm not really sure what to do about the names either. What I am sure about is that whatever is our latest stable release needs to be able to upgrade whatever's in Ubuntu (should ours be newer), and the others should sit side by side with it. Does the name matter for that? If not, then I wouldn't worry about it as long as there's a way to tell people what it is easily.

Can it be renamed only in the system and not in-game? So in the application menu and package list, you could use the long descriptive names, and in the game itself it would just say "Armagetron Advanced"?

[Z-Man]

Only the short name matters for the package manager. As long as we keep that as armagetronad for the stable packages and anything else for the testing stuff and do our versions properly (attach ~ppa1), we get what we want there.

Hmm, yeah, the menu name can be different. It's determined in armagetronad.desktop, where we already change it depending on whether it is a server or client build. Wouldn't be too hard to make that more flexible. There's still the problem that if we go for the full name, a server menu entry will be called "Armagetron Advanced Experimental Server".

[Z-Man]

I build 0.2.8.3 and put it up on our PPA. Instructions are here. Please test, my own supply of installed Ubuntu versions is limited

Regarding the rebranding of testing versions, I'm now leaning towards:
- Game name is "Armagetron Advanced", always.
- Menu entry of all but the officially stable version shows the version. So you have "Armagetron Advanced" there and "Armagetron Advanced 0.6_alpha20370417", for example.
- Package names are "armagetronad", "armagetronad-beta" and "armagetronad-alpha". For stable, rc+beta resp. alpha builds. No need to add more confusing terminology, and if the version number is visible in the menu, people can make the connection to the package. Yeah, it assumes people know what alpha and beta mean, but that's the job of the instruction page to explain to them.
- I don't think "special interest" test builds, like the t2o ones, belong into the team PPA. It's not overly spacey, just 1G, and even a single 0.2.8 build takes roughly 10Mb away. Outdated builds get deleted, of course, but not immediately and we don't have good control over it. So I'd say it's best to avoid clutter here.

[rafalcieslak]

I'm on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx.

executing

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sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 98E6A0F3

wasn't successful:

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gpgkeys: key 98E6A0F3 not found on keyserver

Unfortunately ;P

And a minor issue: '0.2.8.3~ppa1' seems to be older than '0.2.8.3~rc4-1', dunno if it is meant to be so.

(and by the way: I see there are 3 packages in Ubuntu repo's concerning armagetronad: 'armagetronad' - it's the client, 'armagetronad-dedicated' - it's server and 'armagetronad-common' - both client and server depend on this package. I'm not sure if our packages won't collide with the Ubuntu ones in this case....)

[Z-Man]

I'm on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx.

That's the current testing config, right?

executing

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sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 98E6A0F3

wasn't successful:

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gpgkeys: key 98E6A0F3 not found on keyserver

Unfortunately ;P

Odd. Anyone else has problems with that step? It worked on both my systems (jaunty and hardy) just fine.

And a minor issue: '0.2.8.3~ppa1' seems to be older than '0.2.8.3~rc4-1', dunno if it is meant to be so.

Unfortunately, yes. Official Ubuntu packages are meant to be considered newer than equivalent ppa packages. That this applies to rc4 as well is the unfortunate consequence of r being later in the alphabet than p. We could only work around that (and still respect that Ubuntu's 0.2.8.3 will overwrite our 0.2.8.3) would be to change ~ppa to ~zappa or similar, and I'm not sure that would be accepted.

The three packages are normal. That has, for some reason, the way the Debian packages have been working the whole time. I didn't come up with it, Ubunut itself handles it the same way, I guess. After all, I'm stealing their build files

[rafalcieslak]

I'm on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx.

That's the current testing config, right?

Yes.

If it worked in hardy and jaunty then I see no reason why I couldn't get that key....
I'll see if it isn't my system's problem (a bug in configuration etc.)

[rafalcieslak]

Hmm, instead adding the repository lines into sources.list and asking the keyserver for the key, Ubuntu users can just execute:

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sudo add-apt-repository ppa:armagetronad-dev

It automagically adds correct lines depending on Ubuntu version one uses and gets the key (and maybe cares about the user in some other, hidden ways). Personally, I think this way of adding armagetron's repo is somehow much easier
Works perfectly, and solved the missing key issue for me;)

[Z-Man]

Ah, nice find!

[newbie]

thx, i was looking for a ppa some time ago