Re: Debian and Gambas (long read)

[gbWilly <gbWilly@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wednesday, May 8th, 2024 at 04:10, T Lee Davidson <t.lee.davidson@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On 5/7/24 19:19, Bruce Steers wrote:
> 
> > yes please. i might look into this packagecloud and see if it's possible to set up more Os's.
> 
> 
> IIRC, you can host as many repos as your Plan's space allows.
> 
> > packagecloud do a free option , 2gb storage and 10gb bandwidth. could probably host a few versions there.
> > https://packagecloud.io/pricing/ https://packagecloud.io/pricing/
> > 

See attached image. That is the size of the repo with gambas 3.18.4 packages for debian 11 (both amd64 and i386) and debian12 (both amd64 and i386).
Working on getting arm running with qemu to package armhf and arm64. So, it would double.
Now, do all that again for latest stable and it would double again and still be less that 100 MB.

> > It would be good to see any scripts/code made to create the gambas packages. (how does Benoit do it with launchpad?)
> > 

Once you have a working recipe it is only a matter of running dpkg-buildpackage with the proper options.
If you download source from ppa or debian repo and extract, you will find a folder debian in there, that is the recipe.
All that is in there tells the package software how to compile and package it all, how all depends on each other, where what files will go on install etc.

> > The ultimate solution would be a way to enhance the gitlab-ci to create packages after compiling and post them somewhere.
> 

I made a recipe by hand based of the one on the ppa, but with a rules file specific to debian. I always study the recipes of both debian official and gambas ppa for creating my own.
Every so many years I dive into the matter to make newer longterm packages for in a production environment. That is how I learned packaging gambas. It started quite q while ago, when I packaged gambas 3.5, 3.6 and 3.7 for practice ending with 3.6.2 as the most suited for production at that time.

Next I figured out how to set up a repo (badly documented me thinks...), how to configure apache2 to host it, how to sigh the damned stuff, how to keep repo up to date with packages from my signing system and so on and so on. I started documenting the process myself, so some online server running apache2, with access for me to sync repo to when updated should do the trick.

And, I always hated debian being behind in gambas3, but that is how it works. I know that there are some popular applications who host their own repo's to provided more up to date packages. It wouldn't be a bad idea to have something like that for Gambas, mainly aimed at distro's who run behind in gambas3 releases. So a repo as a part of the whole package.

Is there a server where all official gambas stuff (like page, wiki, bugtracker etc) is hosted, or is it spread over different places?
Is it worth considering, what would it cost, would people be willing to contribute to finance that stuff? Just some things to think about.

> 
> This refers to something else I also mentioned before: PackageCloud integrates with GitLab. As I understand it, one just needs
> to set up a GitLab pipeline with a "recipe" to automatically integrate/deploy to PackageCloud.
>  
> 
> And, gbWilly, I'm not sure why you mention not being up for hosting your own. As Bruce noted, PackageCloud has a Free Plan.
> 

I didn't see they had a free plan Lee. I'll see if I have time to look at it and their manner of doing stuff.
It's just that I'm done with a working recipe, packaging, testing and I know how to get it on a server running apache2.
A matter of less that an hour to have it up and running, all I miss is the server.
I don't know the Packagecloud manner of doing stuff, I would have to invest time (or maybe not) to see how they do stuff.
I guess a lot will be automated.

So, maybe Bruce can have a look at it and we keep in contact on the matter and see what Packagecloud brings.
If it is a solid solution, I would happily help with the packaging stuff for debian.
And maybe some people who know how to package other distro's might wanna add to that.
I don't mind the idea of a central host for latest gambas3 for multiple repositories.

BTW
Meanwhile, I have setup a file repo on my system (so in sources.list I have "deb file:///willy/share/gbwilly.gambas3.long/gambas3-long bookworm main") and it works.
So, I made a tarball and some how to. I will see if I can replicate my how to in a vm and adapt instructions where needed.
If I get it working I'll provide a link to download the tarball, extract on your system and read setup and you should have a filerepo on your system.
That could be another option to get more recent gambas3 to debian and provide a download link in de debian install instruction on the wiki.

Just my 2 cent.

gbWilly