[rkward-devel] R backports on launchpad

[Thomas Friedrichsmeier]

Hi Michael,

Michael Rutter schrieb:
> I looked into using a Launchpad PPA this morning, and the following line 
> from the help pages (https://help.launchpad.net/Packaging/PPA/Uploading) 
> may be an issue for concern:
> 
> Note: We will not accept uploads of packages that are unmodified from 
> their original source in Ubuntu or Debian, only packages that include 
> your own changes.
> 
> Vincent and I do not modify the code from the Debain source packages, 
> just adjust the build rules to fit the current version of Ubuntu. 
> Therefore, a PPA of our R builds would appear to violate the above rule.

I think, "source", here, refers to the package as a whole, i.e. 
including anything in the debian/-directory, not just the "upstream" 
source code. In fact, a number of PPAs already has this sort of 
packages, even for r-base: 
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+ppas?name_filter=r-base . What does not 
appear to exist on launchpad, so far, is a PPA that systematically 
brings the most recent version of R to older Ubuntu releases in the way 
that you do on CRAN.

As far as I understand, the technical background of the "no unmodified 
packages" rule is that each distinct binary package on launchpad must 
have a unique version-string, as explained on 
https://help.launchpad.net/Packaging/PPA/BuildingASourcePackage#Versioning 
. Thus - technically - touching up the version-string in 
debian/changelog would be enough to constitute a modified package. See 
also https://answers.launchpad.net/soyuz/+faq/990 .

Regards
Thomas