Outdated Trisquel Packages
Hello;
This may be a little noobish (most likely if you ask me), though I've reached a bit of an impass recently which I would like to help solve, and that is that the Trisquel Repositories are rather out dated. I know how to download a program, compile and package it for a specific architecture, though I'm not too sure how to make my own package repository or send an update to the Trisquel maintainers so that I can see this update across all users. If anyone could help me out in either redirecting me to someone who I can send these package updates to, or send me a link to a tutorial or material regarding creating your own package repo, or even tell me how to do so, then I would love to get on upgrading the packages for the programs that I use regularily which I'd like upgraded, or upgrade them all.
I'm rather new to using GNU+Linux as well as the Trisquel Distribution, though would love to help out in any way that I can. Thank you for reading this and thanks in advance to those who have replied.
~DevDeckardCain (ItsDDC)
Since Trisquel is based off of Ubuntu, you can easily get updated software through Launchpad PPAs.
You can use the Y PPA Manager program from https://launchpad.net/~webupd8team/+archive/y-ppa-manager to easily search for programs offered by others. It is also a great tool to manage your existing PPAs and fix issues you may have like missing archive keys.
You should find the versions to match those found when Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, which is what Trisquel 6 is based on. Ubuntu generally packages up the latest versions that exist at some particular point and then provide bug fixes and such. The next distro release then provides a new set of packages to last until the next release after that. It then continues in that fashion for forever. So, yes - In between releases you may find people saying "These are old." But that's kinda by design so that major changes aren't happening in between releases and a release can be stable and counted on to not be introducing breakage (You mean the API changed just by updating that package?! Now my program is broke!) If you want to live on the edge, look at Parabola. Be forewarned though: The bleeding edge is stained by the blood of the users.
I should probably add on that the next version of Trisquel will be 7.0, and be based on Ubuntu 14.04 which is due this coming April. So you'll get to see all of those new versions sucked in as part of giant forklife upgrade to 7.0. Although when the corresponding Trisquel version will be released is anyone's guess.
Or, check out Parabola and instead of doing giant forklift upgrades every year or so you do lots of smaller updates every few days or so. Different methods - Take your pick.
Well, Trisquel 6.0 LTS have the same packages from Ubuntu 12.04 but without non-free parts.
In my personal computer I have many PPAs, I have the updated LibreOffice, gThumb, Transmission, Deluge, Miro, Inkscape, Synfig, LibreCAD, Scribus, GIMP, VLC and Linux-libre.
You can find easily in the Launchpad or in one search service like DuckDuckGo or Startpage.
Some have suggested PPAs but be careful. I'm not sure if, as the users of the distro, the general response to people should be "go use third party repositories." Third-party repositories are not necessarily committed to only including free software. Even if they only have free software today, that may not be true tomorrow. It could be setting up people for failure to unknowingly taint their system with proprietary software.
Since he is using Trisquel, you would hope that when he searches for PPAs that they are free software. The whole point of Y PPA Manager is the seeking of a specific program that you need a later version of. While it is true that there are some sketchy PPAs out there (that may have non-free software), it in no way discredits Y PPA Manager for making things easier.
"Since he is using Trisquel, you would hope that when he searches for PPAs that they are free software."
You seem to think that, since he uses Trisquel, any third party repositories will also be free. That is not the case. Launchpad has lots of PPAs. Yes they can be made to work with Trisquel but are not Trisquel. Since they are outside of Trisquel, there is no guarantee that any of them are free. So, the cautions I mentioned still apply.
In addition to what jxself said, I want to point out that some packages have been modified by Debian or Trisquel packagers to remove non-free pieces. In cases like those, you may suddenly have those non-free pieces if you get a new version from a PPA. If you're going to use PPAs, always check it: make sure that it is fairly trustworthy (e.g. maintained by the developers of the program) and make sure that there are not non-free pieces in it.
I don't see problems with the PPA I use. All is 100% free software. Only updated version.
"I don't see problems with the PPA I use. All is 100% free software. Only updated version."
Hopefully that's true, but unless you audit it you won't know. As onpon4 some packages are modified before going into Trisquel in order to address freedom problems. If you get a newer version from somewhere else they will probably not contain those changes.
t3g: "Since Trisquel is based off of Ubuntu, you can easily get updated software through Launchpad PPAs."
Though this is possible, it is not ideal. The whole point of using the Trisuql GNU+Linux distribution is to use only Libre/Free software, and no tools/programs/services that can offer or run on, proprietary software.
JXSelf: "But that's kinda by design so that major changes aren't happening in between releases and a release can be stable and counted on to not be introducing breakage (You mean the API changed just by updating that package?! Now my program is broke!)"
The only way that I could see this being an issue, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is if the libraries that the package depends on are newer than what is expected and the API has some deprecated pieces that were taken out between revisions thus breaking programs that relied on the old style. In this event, could you not just keep both version of the library available and just have that specific program be compiled using the library that it needs/wants (this is pointing at proprietary software but, some games that run on windows only run on specific version of wine, which would essentially be the same idea here).
Onpon4: "n addition to what jxself said, I want to point out that some packages have been modified by Debian or Trisquel packagers to remove non-free pieces."
This however, poses a huge issue, which I would hope these changes would be documented somewhere, or could be requested so that I could steer clear of that :S
The idea here is to not manually update the system itself, but really just the programs (though I've started making an automated program to fetch and attempt to compile all the programs, so maybe not so manual). Some of the programs that I use have had new features added that I was unaware of and would love to use, since the features are rather nice but the new version isnt offered in the current Trisquel repositories. Things such as the system kernel or pieces of the distribution itself I wouldnt really want to touch and feel as though that should remain more of an opt-in.
~DeckardCain
Well, consider GNOME, for example. By default, Trisquel uses GNOME Fallback, which was removed from I think GNOME 3.6 before being re-introduced as GNOME Flashback some time after GNOME 3.8 was released (I don't know if Flashback is available in 3.10 or not). So if Trisquel had been keeping GNOME up-to-date rather than sticking with GNOME 3.4, GNOME would break for most users of Trisquel.
Other than that, getting new versions of programs onto the repo without breaking something is nontrivial. It makes sense to do this with certain programs, such as Abrowser, but there just isn't enough manpower to do backports for every non-essential software update, so some software is going to stay at the old version until a new release of the system.
"The only way that I could see this being an issue, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is if the libraries that the package depends on are newer than what is expected and the API has some deprecated pieces that were taken out between revisions thus breaking programs that relied on the old style. In this event, could you not just keep both version of the library available and just have that specific program be compiled using the library that it needs/wants"
Indeed, but that was only intended to be one example of where breakage can occur by living on the bleeding edge. In general, Trisquel follows the packages that exist in the corresponding upstream Ubuntu version.
I completely agree. I would consider Gnome to be part of the system, which I am not well versed in, and feel should be updated when the developer of the distribution updates it. Things like WGet and Apache should be more updated though, and I would love to jump in and help keep them up to date along with the development libraries that they require whilest still keeping the libraries that programs still depend on. I also agree that not ever package can be kept up to date ALL the time, though I feel like the most essential packages such as WGet and ABrowser would be most important and are one of the most used programs and we should do our best to make sure that atleast the most used programs are kept as up to date as possible.
~DeckardCain
JXSelf: "Indeed, but that was only intended to be one example of where breakage can occur by living on the bleeding edge. In general, Trisquel follows the packages that exist in the corresponding upstream Ubuntu version."
Thats what I thought was going on. Thank you very much JXSelf for you input :) Hopefully I can contribute to either creating some sort of bleeding edge repo for Trisquel users to opt into, or contribute to the next update in some way :)
~DeckardCain
"Hopefully I can contribute to either creating some sort of bleeding edge repo for Trisquel users to opt into, or contribute to the next update in some way :)"
With Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander) coming out very soon work on 14.04 LTS should be beginning soon-ish. It might be good to hang out on the IRC channels, both #trisquel and #trisquel-dev on irc.freenode.net and be subscribed to the trisquel-devel mailing list [0].
Oh, and reading up on stuff like https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/how-trisquel-made
Also https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/package-helpers would be good.
As I understand it the Helpers are applied during the red Filters part of the flowchart so as to bash packages into shape for various reasons before they continue on their journey.