Canonical is announcing the availability of PPA: a Launchpad-integrated free service which allows anyone to get 1 GB of space to upload whatever software they want. Launchpad will compile it automatically and will set up an apt repository with your package to anyone who wants to use it. Aditionally, PPAs offer bug reporting and translation services.
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Member since:2005-11-02
Member since:2006-06-21
I know this is not what you meant but I can't help to speculate. I've always wondered whether a Linux-distro-like repository idea would work for Windows.
Probably not. You can't have the source in most cases, so you lose a lot of the things that make Linux repositories attractive: the guarantee to fit with the system, no malware, and so on. The publishers would most likely not all agree to grant distribution rights, so you wouldn't be able to carry some popular pieces of software. You'd have to fight a huge wave of spam and you'd never know if a package isn't a trojan or a keylogger or whatever.
And still... it's a very attractive idea. With very tight screening of the accepted software it might be doable. There's quite a bit of decent honest software out there whose publishers can be trusted (based on past experience) to not bundle crap. And you can always kick them out if they do. If this was kept small scale and high quality it might work.
Member since:
2006-12-06
from the article it sounded like an ok service, but then most of you guys relate it to Linux... I know Canonical makes Ubuntu and probably the majority of people using the service will in fact be using Linux, but... is it suitable for non-Linux? (ie: as in cross-development)
Edited 2007-11-28 02:15