Welcome to the Splat alpha!

• Tags:

  -	Type-Defect
  +	Type-Enhancement

• Tags:

  +	Component-Deployment

Just a heads-up on this.  Review Board as it is in SVN should be somewhat
"installable".  It'd be great to get some feedback about what (if anything) needs to
change with the build system to make a .deb easier.

I think the biggest blocker at the moment is a Django release, so the django .deb can
be upgraded as a dependency.

Ubuntu has had a Django package since the Fiesty (7.04) release.

http://packages.ubuntu.com/django

The current reviewboard installation procedure seems overly complex.  A ubuntu
package would be a big improvement and would reduce the effort require by people
wishing to evaluate reviewboard.  This could lead to more widespread adoption of
the tool.

With a Django package now available what is the next item blocking the creation of
a reviewboard package?

Elliot has suggested above that Django 0.97 is needed.  Ubuntu currently has Django
0.96, is that a problem?

It's definitely a problem. We make use of features only available in Django SVN. Our
1.0 version will require 0.97, which isn't released yet.

What would be a huge help is if someone maintained packages for all our dependencies.
This will be required once there's a Review Board package anyway, and in the short
term it will help people on Ubuntu get up and running with Review Board quickly.

Review Board installation is complicated for a few key reasons.

1) Our required dependencies are not all packaged on the big distros, requiring
people to install from source. This can be fixed now, even before a stable Django or
Review Board release.

2) Review Board requires configuration in a web server. This is highly dependent on a
person's setup, so it can't really be automated, though we do provide sample
configuration files to get people started.

3) Users have to edit a configuration file to point to the database. We might be able
to do something about this down the road by providing a web front-end for first-time
installs, but it would still require some manual steps (changing permissions of the
settings_local.py file, or introducing a new auto-generated settings file, in which
case the server would need to be able to write to the directory).

#1 is the biggest and most important thing to address. We can look into solutions for
#3 (pretty much by doing what WordPress and such do), but it's not likely for 1.0.

Thanks for the update.

#1 is the most important.  If users can easily install that's a big step forward, 
further post-install configuration is acceptable and can be addressed later - let's 
fix one step at a time.

Regarding ReviewBoard's dependencies, I notice that Debian has a SVN snapshot built 
as a package (0.97~svn7189-1) in the experimental repository.
http://packages.debian.org/django

Ubuntu doesn't have this package.  However there's a chance that the Debian package 
may work on Ubuntu.  Failing that, at least the packaging work has been done for 
Debian, the packaging control files could possibly be reused to build a Ubuntu 
specific package.

If ReviewBoard is depending on packages which haven't made it into major distros, 
would it be possible for this project to provide a repository with these extra 
dependencies?

In time the distros would include the packages themselves, hence reducing the 
burden on the ReviewBoard project.  Eventually, with a stable release, ReviewBoard 
itself would make it into major distros.

However before we reach that stage, hosting the necessary packages on the 
ReviewBoard site would greatly ease installation.

With any luck, that will in turn increase the project's profile and speed up the 
process of adoption into the distros.

We could easily set up a PPA on launchpad.net to host any interim packages until they
are accepted into Ubuntu. I don't have much time to work on this currently but I'd
happily assist with setting up the PPA. Does that SVN snapshot package work on Ubuntu?

I filed an ITP ("Intent-to-package") bug with Debian and have created some initial
packages. You can follow the status of this process:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=495148. Once uploaded it can easily
be synced by Ubuntu.

• Status:

  +	Confirmed

Debian has a package in experimental.

http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=reviewboard

Hopefully, this will get updated to stable release 1.0 and propagated into Ubuntu.

http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=reviewboard

I'm actually going to close this as a 3rd-party issue. Someone related to
debian/ubuntu will need to finish this up and maintain it.

• Status:

  -	Confirmed
  +	ThirdParty