[xiphos-devel] 4.2.0 tagged and pushed

[Caleb Maclennan]

A couple days ago I updated the Arch Linux AUR package build to 4.2.0 (now
4.2.1) and also posted pre-compiled packages to my user repository, see
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/xiphos. I'm also working on getting
Xiphos included in the default Arch [community] repository, but it looks
like that is probably going to get held up until the issue with GTKHTML is
resolved. Having deprecated that monstrosity from [community] to AUR some
time back nobody wants to see it moving the other way (myself included). If
and when that gets removed as a dependency it's quite likely we'll be able
to get Xiphos into the mainline repository.

There are now just a few distros to go, see
https://repology.org/project/xiphos/versions!

*On the subject of Ubuntu packaging I*'ve been granted access to most of
the Xiphos related shenanigans on Launchpad. I'm sorry for all ya'll Ubuntu
folks because wow is Launchpad a disaster. Through no particular fault even
of the original configuration (which took the shotgun approach of
registering every project and team name variant possible) and really just a
function of how bizarre Launchpad's namespacing is, there doesn't seem to
be what I would consider an ideal way to name an official Xiphos PPA. So
request for comment on the options as I see them...

For background Launchpad has two basic namespaces: projects and users.
Users can, pretty much interchangeably, be individuals or teams. Each has a
different URL namespace (projects are /<project> and users/teams are
/~<user>). So far so good. The trouble is that even though they are
different types and have different namespaces, Launchpad cross checks users
against projects so you cannot register a team name with the same name as a
project. Weird (especially since the error messages don't indicate this is
the issue, it just says another "user" is registered with that name even
when the offending conflict is a project). Even that might have been okay,
but Launchpad does not allow projects to have PPAs, only users/teams can
host PPAs.

1. There is a project called "xiphos". This is logical enough, but it means
we can't host a PPA called "xiphos/ppa", it has to be something else.
2. There is a team registered called "xiphos-devel". This makes (some)
sense as a team name, but less sense as a PPA namespace for official
builds. We could put a PPA under this namespace called "xiphos-devel/ppa"
or "xiphos-devel/xiphos" or something like that (I think the former is more
Ubuntu ideomatic).
3. There is (very unfortunately and completely uselessly) a _project_
called "crosswire". This should have been registered as team not a project,
but I'm not sure we can fix that. Maybe we can ... but it would involve
some renames.
4. Probably born out of the the conflict with 3, there is a team called
"pkgcrosswire" that hosts PPAs. One of these is the default stable channel
PPA called "pkgcrosswire/ppa". This has Xiphos already, albeit in a very
dated form (circa 2012). Everything else in there is dated too.

My personal recommendation is to attempt to ⓐ rename the "crosswire"
project out of the way, ⓑ rename the "pkgcrosswire" team as "crosswire", ⓒ
add a new PPA in this namespace called "crosswire/xiphos", ⓓ include the
bare minimum Xiphos + direct dependencies, and finally ⓔ mark that new PPA
as a dependency for the default "crosswire/ppa" so that Xiphos is included
there too. Code for the Debian packaging rules could logically go under the
existing "xiphos" project, and the "xiphos-devel" team would be used as is
just for permissions management. I think this would be the cleanest outcome
overall, but it is dependent on 3 things. Launchpad has to support these
renames without reserving the old namespaces. Also it means renaming the
possible in-use pkgcrosswire/ppa to crosswire/ppa. I doubt this is a
serious issue considering the newest packages in there are from 2014, with
most being older than that. Lastly I/we need more access to the "crosswire"
project. I am am part of the team that controls it now but not an
admin/owner so I can't rename it.

If that option doesn't sound good to people my next bid would be to
consider renaming the "xiphos-devel" team to something more end-user
friendly (maybe "xiphos-project" or "xiphos-packages" or something like
that) and opening a PPA in there, so the address people would use would be
"ppa:xiphos-project/ppa" or similar. The resulting PPA could still be
marked as included in "pkgcrosswire/ppa" eventually.
Any other suggestions? Am I missing important considerations here?

Caleb
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