On 21/04/12 00:00, William Tracy wrote:

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 1:47 PM, Sebastian sebsebseb <sebsebseb_mageia@gmx.com> wrote:
As for the PPA's themselves or the something like it, would need a website for it like they have for Ubuntu https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+ppas and they should only be offered on the site from people who have gone through the Mageia packaging process and become trusted packagers I think.


My understanding was that part of the attraction of Ubuntu's PPAs was that any registered user could create one, making it an easy way for developers to distribute their software until Ubuntu proper gets around to creating an official package.

Yes that's correct anyone that knows how can make a PPA for Ubuntu. As for registration I think that has never been needed to make PPA's for Ubuntu.

Users of any PPA have to trust the person or people who made it, that they aren't getting malicious software from the PPA.  So on a official Mageia PPA's or something like PPA's sub site, they could be offered, but I think should only be from people who have gone through the Mageia packaging process and that are trusted, as I suggested in the other message.

With Ubuntu Some PPA's used to be sort of supported by the Ubuntu Community, more recently in general PPA's with Ubuntu are supported more, because the software centre can install them for example.

Before PPA's if I remember correctly Wine used to have a special repo for Ubuntu, but for a rather long time those that want the very latest final version can install the PPA instead. Pidgin also offers a PPA and has done for a rather long time for it's latest final version.

With Ubuntu 11.04 which uses GNOME 2 with their patches as the fall back mode, and Unity on top of GNOME 2 as the default, there was also a PPA made for GNOME 3. I tried the PPA out in both Beta 2 and the final I think, and it didn't work that well for me, and this seems to have been the case for a lot of other people as well, but it was known to be buggy.

So put simply all a PPA tends to be is a way for users to easily install later versions of software without having to use a development version of the distribution that offers a later version of the software that is wanted.  Or without waiting until the next version of the distribution.

PPA's are repo's as a result the software in those repo's will be updated usually at times, and proper updates not just security.

With PPA's it's ok for them to be buggy as mentioned in my previous email, because unlike backports they probably haven't gone through a proper QA process.

Backports from Cauldron to Mageia 2  it seems will probably start being offered soon after Mageia 2 has been released, but I don't know for sure. However I do think that having something like PPA's as well for Mageia would be quite a good thing indeed! As long as users understand that they may be buggy, and shouldn't be relied on to much if wanting loads of later software, than what the current latest stable version of Mageia at the time is offering.  Many Mageia users who would like a lot of later versions of software than what the repo's of a final version of Mageia has, should probably be running Cauldron instead really.

From Sebastian sebsebseb