Jamyskis

I went through the whole nightmare of trying to package my games for Ubuntu yesterday after a MOTU approver rejected my original submission. Actually, the deb packages I had worked fine, but the Ubuntu team has very strict requirements on what is in the package and where it’s all installed. It must have a manpage, docs must be installed in /usr/share/doc/packagename and so on, and so forth.

I was on IRC yesterday for four hours liaising with several of the MOTU members trying to get my package sorted out. To all extents and purposes, it worked, but the fact alone that no matter what I do, the docs will not install in /usr/share/doc. Add to that the fact that Debian packaging itself is a nightmare (contrary to popular opinion, using Debhelper is far worse as it fills up your debian directory with all kinds of useless crap, and you spend ages trying to sift through what you need and what you don’t need.

There is absolutely no need for Debian packaging to be as complicated as it is. I may continue maintaining my repository but there seems to be little interest from the outside world in doing so for the effort I put into it. I know I’ll probably get flamed from Debian fanatics now about how I just don’t have a clue etc. etc. etc. but I feel that I have to be honest about this. Ubuntu (and Debian) will never get a bigger following until this mess is sorted out.

For the time, I’ve put the submission of my games to the Ubuntu repos indefinitely on hold.