code packaging

[Paul Rubin]

jjl at pobox.com (John J. Lee) writes:
> You can go further: in addition to developing a Debian package (or a
> few of them) for your own project, build your OS image using
> debootstrap (you'll probably want your own local repository(ies), for
> reproducibility).  Then you do your development in a virtual machine
> or chroot environment.  That way you develop in the same (or very
> similar) environment to the one in which your code will eventually be
> deployed (one difference being the use of an version control checkout
> rather a .deb install for the code you're actually working on, unless
> troubleshooting problems that are somehow tied up with that particular
> aspect of deployment).  I've seen this working in a real-world
> project.

Thanks for these suggestions.  Buildbot (per Ben Finney) looks
interesting as does the above, and Ryan's notes about experience with
Windows installers is also appreciated.  Whether lot of build
automation would have been worth it at the beginning of the thing I'm
working on or not, we probably need to move towards it now that more
of the system is running.