We're reviewing apps submitted as part of the Ubuntu App Showdown contest. We got a ton of them and we need your help!

So if you've got some experience packaging, would like to learn more along the way and contribute to make Ubuntu a successful app development platform, follow these simple instructions and join us on the Ubuntu App Review Board channel.

Instructions

• Read the ARB Guidelines

• Install arb-lint

  • sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-app-review-contributors/ppa

  • sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install arb-lint

• Run arb-lint in source tree of app.

• Trello: https://trello.com/board/ubuntu-arb-submissions/4fee2215cee295013c0862ba

• List of ARB branches: https://code.launchpad.net/ubuntu-app-reviews/+branches

• Submissions as they came in: https://myapps.developer.ubuntu.com/dev/arb/

Workflow

• get the source of a app showdown submission

• build it, using bzr bd -- -us -uc or debuild -us -uc

• run: arb-lint

• do a quick check of the license - run bzr inventory | xargs licensecheck (or find . -type f | xargs licensecheck) and see if it roughly matches debian/copyright; also check if a LICENSE or COPYING file is included

• if you just find small mistakes, such as
  • multiple debian/changelog entries
  • missing real name in debian/changelog, debian/copyright and debian/control
  • no proper description in debian/control

    please fix them and push your branch to ~<you>/ubuntu-app-reviews/<app>

• test-install the app sudo debi, run it

• if it's fine, send a mail to app-review-board@lists.ubuntu.com asking for a vote on it, mention your branch and CC the app author. Also click on "start review" on the app page, so it does not stay on https://myapps.developer.ubuntu.com/dev/arb/

• if it's not fine,
  • go on to the app page on myapps, click "start review", add comments into text box, click "needs information"

  • write something like "Thanks a lot for your submission. This is a review for inclusion into the Ubuntu Software Center. I pushed a couple of changes to https://code.launchpad.net/~<user>/ubuntu-app-reviews/<....> which you might want to merge."

  • update Trello (https://trello.com/board/ubuntu-arb-submissions/4fee2215cee295013c0862ba)

Issues you might run into

• If you get an error message like:

  • dpkg-source: warning: no source format specified in debian/source/format, see dpkg-source(1)
    dpkg-source: error: Version number suggests Ubuntu changes, but Maintainer: does not have Ubuntu address

  • Simply run 'update-maintainer' (from ubuntu-dev-tools) and try again

Interesting cases

• Files not installed in /opt

  • If app developers don't use "quickly submitubuntu" to push to PPA, this might happen: https://launchpadlibrarian.net/109545227/pictag_12.07.9_12.07.11.diff.gz - so all of the /opt installation changes will be removed

  • It might be good enough to reply to them "Thanks for your submission. This is a review for inclusion into the Ubuntu Software Center. Please resubmit your app to your PPA using 'quickly submitubuntu', so all the files in the package are placed into /opt. To see an example of how your debian/rules should roughly be looking, have a look at http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-app-review-contributors/ubuntu-app-reviews/download-monitor/view/head:/debian/rules"

• crashdb.conf files installed into /etc/apport/

  • Apply this change to the debian/rules file, replacing 'cuckoo' with your package name: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~dholbach/ubuntu-app-reviews/cuckoo/revision/59