extensions authors
Forum: myDSL Extensions (deprecated)
Topic: extensions authors
started by: John
Posted by John on June 27 2004,07:10
We need to set up some type of informal testing process for the extensions. I am not in a position to do testing on these programs and work on DSL proper.So I am asking for this:
1) the person who dose the initial release should make it available for others to try. Start a thread about the extension and create a feedback loop.
2) at least one other person should try it and run down any bugs. Two would be better.
3) after that post in the thread that it is tested and ready for the repository.
Package authors should help each other out. If it is all up to me I am going to slip more and more behind, as I have to divide myself up among many aspects of maintaining this distribution and I have a day job
.
Posted by cbagger01 on June 27 2004,17:05
Sounds good to me.However, some people like myself don't have web/download space available for public testing of packages.
Maybe there should be an "incoming" or "testing" folder at the dsl web site, similar to some other distros.
If individual ftp user accounts are created on request by yourself, then the post-account creation testing process becomes completely automatic with little administrator intervention.
Just a thought.
Posted by John on June 28 2004,01:35
Okay let's do like this, lets use ibiblio to manage our extensions.Ibiblio already has anonymous FTP access available. Authors can upload their extensions and they will eventually end up at ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/damnsmall/.
The challenge is that the package authors will have to use strict formatting of lsm files according to ibiblio's guidelines. They use an auto-selecting robot which uses the lsm file to determine where the files should go.
For the package to end up in the right place using the ibiblio system here is the process:
Lets say you put together a .dsl extension, lets call it whizbang.dsl. The first step is to write an accompanying .lsm and also provide the md5sum for the application.
So you would have:
whizbang.dsl
whizbang.lsm
whizbang.md5.txt
To get the md5sum for whizbang.dsl into an md5sum file go like this:
md5sum whizbang.dsl > whizbang.md5.txt
Now the .lsm files will have to be made right in order for the ibiblio robot to understand where to put them. Best I can tell the place where the files uploaded to ibiblio are moved to is mostly governed by what is on the second line of the lsm file -- that is where the bot finds the home directory of the application. So, as illogical as it may seem, all extensions' .lsm files must have Damnsmall in it's second line, and not what the actual application is.
----------------------
Here is an example .lsm for whizbang.dsl...
Begin4
Title: Damnsmall
Version: 1.0
Entered-date: 2004-06-27
Description: Whizbang 1.0 specially packaged to work with damnsmall Linux. Whizbang adds wow to your desktop.
Keywords: whizbang, damn small linux
Author: author@authors-address.com (Author Name Here)
Maintainer: you@your-email-address.com (Your Name Here)
Primary-site: < http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ >
Platforms: x86
450M whizbang.dsl
594 whizbang.lsm
52 whizbang.md5.txt
Copying-policy: GNU General Public License (GPL) 2.0
End
----------------------
The next step is then to upload everything to ibiblio, but there is some tricks to this too.
Upload the files here:
< ftp://ibiblio.org/incoming/linux/ >
You upload anonymously, and blindly -- you have no overwrite ability and you can not see if your files made it up okay. If the files end up corrupted, then you have to wait until the files make it through the cycle and then resubmit them.
upload types:
whizbang.dsl <- binary
whizbang.lsm <- ascii
whizbang.md5.txt <- ascii
(I know, that's really basic but it is easy to forget)
Once you go through the above and then wait a couple of days for the update cycle to happen if everything goes right it will then end up in the root damnsmall section in ibiblio.
ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/damnsmall/
From there, we will need to get the testing on your new extension and if it seems okay we'll add it to the repository list.
Posted by roberts on June 28 2004,01:48
If the testing extensions end up here:| Quote |
| ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/damnsmall/ |
won't that be confusing when someone clicks the download link to get the main iso file. All these untested extensions will be mixed in the same directory.
As it is, we already have some useful but not extension files in the main directory of the iso.
bootusb.img
firefox-i586-pc-linux-gnu-tar.gz
frugal_lite.sh
mkmydsl
Posted by John on June 29 2004,05:45
We can make it work with the system, we just need to place files in appropriate directories.Right now I have four directories sitting in the DSL ibiblio section:
archive/ <- old releases, and scripts
current/ <- the current release
mydsl/ <- tested extensions
mydsl_testing/ <- untested extensions
We have to keep a copy of firefox in the root directory because it's location is fixed in the "got the bandwidth" script. but we can move that over to current/ in a couple of releases.
So as extensions are entered into the ibiblio system they will be gathered from the root directory and moved into mydsl_testing/, after they get the okay from the community they will be moved over to mydsl/ and added to the repository index page.