The Launchpad PPA (https://launchpad.net/~launchpad/+archive/ppa) contains dependencies for running Launchpad.

launchpad-dependencies

The launchpad-dependencies source is managed in Bazaar branches at https://code.launchpad.net/meta-lp-deps.

Policy/procedure for updates:

1. You will need bzr-builddeb and debhelper packages installed.
2. Edit debian/control to add or change the dependencies. Your name + email address must match an identity in your GPG key exactly.
3. Run 'debchange -i' in the root to increment the version number and add a changelog entry in the correct format. Remember that launchpad-dependencies should not have an ubuntu1 suffix on its version number, so if debchange -i adds that for you, take it out again and increment the unsuffixed version number instead.
4. debcommit or bzr commit
5. Exercise personal judgment on whether your change merits a merge proposal, or is sufficiently trivial to just be committed directly.
6. If preparing a merge proposal, please ensure your branch for review contains a complete debian/changelog entry ready for release.
7. Go to the trunk (or older distro) branch and merge / commit or pull changes ready to build.

8. Test-build your package:

   bzr builddeb

9. Actually build your source upload:

   bzr builddeb -S

10. Tag it, push it, upload it:

    bzr mark-uploaded
    bzr push lp:meta-lp-deps
    debsign -S
    debrelease --dput -S ppa:launchpad/ppa

11. If uploading a version from the trunk branch, after it has built, go to the PPA +copy-packages page copy it to all the other distroseries that the trunk branch is currently serving. Use the copy existing binaries option when copying.

After you've done this, you may need to update EC2Test/Image

geoip-data-city-lite

This package is a single data file, which upstream publishes updates to monthly. Why haven't we updated it since 2008?

• Because we are using it only for tests and updating too frequently may actually break some tests (we've seen it happen). It's no big deal if developers don't get the fully up-to-date geoIP DB. Production uses the proprietary geoIP DB instead. — Danilo (2010-01-21)

Rebuilds to restore older Python support

Most of the PPA is rebuilds of python library packages to re-instate support for the old Python version Launchpad requires, which has since been dropped as a supported version in Ubuntu.

In jaunty/karmic, the need was to re-add Python 2.4 support. Launchpad made it to Python 2.5 for Karmic... and now the need is to re-add Python 2.5 support in lucid packages.

This should generally be done with a no-source-change rebuild where possible.

• Sourceful changes - in bzr branches

  • python-defaults (https://code.edge.launchpad.net/~launchpad-committers/ubuntu/lucid/python-defaults/launchpad-ppa)

  • python-support (https://code.edge.launchpad.net/~launchpad-committers/ubuntu/lucid/python-support/launchpad-ppa)

• No-source-change rebuilds
  • distribute (didn't actually work, was just to facilitate building 2.5 eggs, for which the immediate need passed, so hasn't been fixed.)
  • egenix-mx-base
  • psycopg2
  • pycxx
  • pysvn (no-source-change since lucid; earlier patching in branches)
  • python-apt
  • python-crypto
  • python-geoip
  • python-imaging
  • python-pysqlite2
  • subversion (no-source-change since lucid)
  • tickcount
• In PPA for karmic but not for lucid:
  • python-sqlite: lucid version is still Python 2.5 compatible so far

Other compatibility issues (Lucid)

• postgresql-8.3: was dropped, we need it still, and it needed a no-change rebuild to pick up a ${shlibs:Depends} change.
• python2.5: was dropped, binary-copied last version from the primary archive.
• slony1: build against postgresql 8.3 instead of 8.4. (should put this in a branch)
• xulrunner: The Ubuntu source no longer builds spidermonkey-bin. This is the Debian source, minimally hacked to build only the binary packages which the Ubuntu source no longer provides. (should put this in a branch)

Distro series support

At any given time, we will be supporting multiple Ubuntu series in the PPA:

• The current release (currently: lucid).
• The current LTS (currently: lucid).
• The next older LTS, if it's still in use on production datacentre machines (currently: hardy).
• As many other older releases as it is reasonably practicable to do so, to accomodate developers on older releases (currently: karmic [a little iffy], jaunty [almost certainly bitrotten]),