How to run a packaging jam OpenWeek
I'm Rick Harding, a member of the Michigan Loco. You can get a hold of me for any questions or whatnot at rharding@mitechie.com (blog on same site)
So first thing, how many of you guys have made a package?
How many of you guys thought “wow, that was simple as can be. Why don't I make 100 of these?”
Well, when I first looked at packaging my main thought was “whoa...that's a lot of documentation about a lot of strange things.”
I mean, I use Ubuntu and .deb packages because I didn't want to deal with all that compiling, make file, fun and joy.
So Greg (our loco fearless leader) and I were talking one night about how to make this easier and we thought “wouldn't it be cool if we could get an Ubuntu MOTU to teach us?”
Now unfortunately you can't mail order a MOTU.
We did find a former MOTU (Aaron Lake) to sit down with us and walk us through the start of learning to create .deb packages.
So there's your first requirement, someone that can package, even a little.
Now this is probably the most difficult to accomplish, but the better your mentor the more everyone will get out of the packaging jam.
Places to look for a mentor are local user groups, an Ubuntu LoCo, and maybe even the #ubuntu-motu channel.
If you can't find someone, you can try to hold it just with the docs. They've gotten much better and the hands on docs (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PackagingGuide/HandsOn) are pretty easy to get through.
Once you have someone to show the way, it's time to find the venue.
Good things to look for are plenty of table space for everyone, power, network connectivity, and plenty of beverages.
I'd suggest saving the good ones for a least half way through the jam :)
A great alternative would be if you could get a computer lab with a bunch of live cds. One person in our jam connected remotely to my file server running vmware.
In our case we had some 8 people at my house. Everyone used my home network and downloaded packages over my cable modem. Most of the packages you need are small and wasn't much of a strain on the cable line.
If bandwidth is an issue, try to provide a debmirror on the local network. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Debmirror
The mirror will provide the packages to everyone without requiring an internet connection.
Make sure to plan of some people not being up to date. How many of you all run something other than hardy currently?
So we've got our mentor, our network and location, next up we need to do some pre-planning. This should be done with the mentor.
You want to plan out the course of action. Go through the docs and figure out what you want to cover in the time you have.
Just a heads up, whatever time you have, plan on doubling it. I originally planned for a 4 hour session.
After backtracking to get everyone a GPG key, uploading them to LP, signing each other's keys, and getting through things...we had run into 8 hours long.
We didn't cover everything I had wanted to, but in the end we covered a lot of ground.
So for the docs, there are a lot out there and dholbach has done some great stuff in cleaning them up.
If you have lots of time, start out with the https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PackagingGuide/PackagingOverview and move on to the https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PackagingGuide/HandsOn and then go through the https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PackagingGuide/Basic
If you're short of time, you should be able to get through the first two docs in a couple of hours.
Go through the docs with your mentor and plan out what you want to cover, and if you can, write out the guide with copy/paste commands.
You can see how I did this for my Penguicon talk by using the HandsOn as a sample. http://wiki.avwsystems.com//doku.php/linux/packaging/penguicon_2008
At the talk, I hosted it on a wiki on my laptop and had everyone in the room connect to it. This way we can all walk through step by step together.
Our first packaging jam we used gobby over the network. This worked well, but gobby has a few lacking features that make life difficult.
1) Copying and pasting is dangerous as people tend to paste over content. 2) Gobby doesn't have undo...so see 1) 3) everyone has to install it while running a local wiki just means everyone points their web browser at my IP.
It's best if you can test out the commands ahead of time to watch for packages that need to be installed, config options changed, and potential issues.
Once this is done, it's really just a matter of going through the material together. Make sure everyone is up to date at all times and if there are any questions that can't be answered, write them down and follow up.
So this leads us to what should people expect to get out of a Packaging Jam.
First, they should realize they're not alone. My packaging talk at penguicon was packed. So many people want to learn packaging, but it's a bit intimidating.
Second, if you can, try to make it meaningful to the participants. I asked people to bring something they'd like to see packaged, updated, etc.
One guy brought up this xastir package that was out of date.
When we got to talking about updating packages with a new upstream tarball, we use xastir as a second example.
This way, he left with something real. He had a need to learn packaging and when he went home, he could work on that package.
I'd like to think he'd be likely to maintain/update that package in the future.
So ask people to bring problems. This will definitely add to the amount of time needed, but really adds a LOT to the jam.
So let's say you had a jam, make sure to let us know.
There's a bunch of wiki pages for showing you have a jam coming, and telling us how it went.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU/RunningPackagingJam add it to the events page: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU/Events
Blog about it coming up and let us know so we can blog about it. We want you to have a great audience.
Finally, make sure you follow up. I know we've planned on holding another jam here soon. Now that the first one is over with there's a larger pool of people to help run it. There's also the possibility of having a second “advanced” track for next time.
So repeat of my email in case anyone needs/wants any info rharding@mitechie.com
Does anyone have any questions?
Rock On!