On 31 May 2024, at 00:05, Kip Warner
On Thu, 2024-05-30 at 23:20 +0100, Bruce Horrocks wrote:
I'd be able to maintain a Context PPA but there already seems to be one: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/context
I think that's just the source used in Ubuntu. This is called a "source package" in the Debian parlance:
Ah yes. I was thinking that launchpad.net was a Debian PPA but I see now that it is Ubuntu only, albeit users of other distros can install from it if they know the 'magic' command line trickery.
But if you click the "Other versions of 'context' in untrusted archives" at the bottom of the page it will show you PPAs. There appears to be three, all of which are ancient.
Of the three, the "ConTeXt daily builds" owned by Adam Reviczky seems to be up-to-date, just not listed in date order so it's not as obvious as it might be. If I understand the odd naming convention correctly, he has updated Ubuntu versions 18.04, 20.04, 22.04, 23.04 and 24.04 with the version of Context current as at 2024-05-29. So presumably Ubuntu users of those versions can get the latest Context by running an 'apt install context' command?
Just so you know, Ubuntu source packages are just Debian source packages, but often with some downstream patches. The Debian source package is what ends up in endless distros.
Probably most lay users who use ConTeXt outside of building from a tarball or putting somewhere outside of the FHS are using some Debian distro derivative's package via:
$ sudo apt install context
Unless the Debian package is updated, usually downstream derivative distros won't update their own. For that reason if you want to affect the most change for the most users it's best to do so here:
According to https://packages.debian.org/experimental/context Debian 'experimental' is up-to-date with ConTeXT as of 2024-04-01. This is for the experimental release of course, but it does mean that the package is being maintained. Just that the release schedule of Debian is so slow. :-( Or put another way, I don't think the issues we're seeing are due to lack of maintainer effort but rather a result of the way Debian does releases.
Over a hundred distros just recycle the above source package and its resulting binaries.
Usually Debian is slow to update their packages, depending on who is assigned as package maintainer. Because of that, this is part of the reason why PPAs are popular because they shorten the time for lay users to try the new version without having to fiddle with paths, tarballs, etc.
Once you have a PPA up, to build binary packages the builder does the same as the ones used by the Debian project. You upload a Debian source package and it will then go and build and test the resulting binary packages. After that it injects them into the APT repository (which is all a PPA is).
I'm not sure there is a need to do any more than Adam Reviczky is already doing. When I find a bit of time I'll install a Ubuntu 24.04 into a VM and see what version of Context is installed, likewise Debian. — Bruce Horrocks Hampshire, UK