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: https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-source.html 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. 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: https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/context 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). -- Kip Warner OpenPGP signed/encrypted mail preferred https://www.thevertigo.com