[IPython-dev] message from a launchpad developer

[Fernando Perez]

On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 8:39 AM, Andrew Straw <strawman at astraw.com> wrote:
> Ville M. Vainio wrote:
>> On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 10:36 AM, Andrew Straw <strawman at astraw.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I thought you guys might be interested in this blog post i came across
>>>  -- a launchpad dev is praising the new doctest_mode and suggesting a PPA
>>>  ("Personal Package Archive" -- .deb repository hosted at launchpad) with
>>>  the latest IPython: http://elliotmurphy.com/2008/04/23/ipython-and-doctests/
>>>
>>
>> Anyone know what benefits PPA brings over just uploading the releases
>> to launchpad download folder? It would seem easier to just download
>> and install the release than it is to edit your apt sources list...
>>
> The main benefits I can think of:
>
>  * PPAs integrate with the Ubuntu Update Manager -- a new release will
> be just like any other update from the user's perspective. According to
> their preferences, it will be a single click to install or will be
> automatically installed.
>
>  * The .debs will be built by their buildbots for all the architectures
> they support, which also ensures that your debian package at least
> builds from source.
>
> Of course, .debs should only be installed for the specific version of
> debian (derivative) they were compiled for. Thus, it's not a replacement
> for a source tarball (although a debian source package, by definition,
> comes with an unmodified source tarball), but something in addition to that.

With the new development plans, I think we should do this a bit later
in the summer.   It will provide users on the various ubuntu
derivatives a clean way of getting the new parallel goodies with
little pain.  Thanks for the idea!

Cheers,

f