All About Ubuntu Flavor Development

Most of Ubuntu flavor development does not require any coding skills, as the first time reader might soon find out. But, to be able to get one foot in, one probably needs to get some sort of overview of how a Ubuntu flavor is developed.

Also, to be able to perform tasks efficiently, one needs to have easy access to information on how each tasks can be performed.

This documentation is written for those two purposes, and aims at simplifying the process of becoming a Ubuntu flavor developer, both for the unskilled newbie as the veteran developer.

Not all of this might be interesting to you, depending on what you like to do, but should contain all the information you need to do any task concerning Ubuntu flavor development.

What Makes Up A Ubuntu Flavor Operative System?

In order to create a full Ubuntu flavor, you will need to create a source for seeds, a flavor meta package, a default settings package for that flavor, and also, set up the tools for creating the installer ISO image.

The Flavor Meta

The flavor meta source is a single package source, which, when built, may result in a multitude of binary meta packages. The metas themselves are always empty, but depends on a set of packages, which form what you could call a package set - the list of packages that make up that flavor.

Seeds

When building a meta package, it looks for the dependencies from what we call seeds. The seeds are basically a set of text files, where all the package dependencies are listed.

Install Tasks (correct term?)

The seeds are also used for creating "install tasks", which are selectable from a expert install medium, such as the Ubuntu netinstall.

Other Flavor Packages

At the very least, each flavor will have a package called <flavor>-default-settings. This is not an empty package, and includes some specific system settings for that flavor.

Some flavors will have additional special packages, such as theming packages, or flavor specific applications.

The ISO

There may be several build systems. One is for the live ISO.

Ubiquity is the Live installer, and contains instructions for each flavor.

Where to begin?

Install The Development Release

If you're planning on doing any kind of testing, the first thing you need to do is make sure you have the appropriate flavor installed, and ready to be tested.

Set up a Launchpad Account

Launchpad is the central administrative tool used, where bugs are reported, where plans are blueprinted and where packages can be uploaded to PPAs for testing, etc. So, no matter what you do, you will need a launchpad account.

Set up basic dev tools

Even if you are not planning on doing any packaging, at the very least you will need to set up a gpg key which you need to sign the code of conduct at Launchpad. It is also used to sign packages, when building them, which is required if you wish to upload the source package to a PPA in launchpad.

If you're going to do any kind of uploading, or private source management on launchpad, you will need a ssh key. SSH is a protocol used to create encrypted connections to remote places.

Planning - Blueprints

Planning done in Launchpad, using the blueprints system, with workitems, etc

Testing/QA - Quality Assurance

Testing ISOs

Other Forms of Testing

Newly Uploaded Packages - Set Up Notification

Autopilot Testing

UTAH Testing

Updates

Two kinds of updates ..

Backports

When just wanting to add a newer version of an application to a release. This update does not fix any bugs, but may add some new features.

Stable Release Updates

When there is some sort of serious bug that causes major problems for users.

Bug Management

Setting up bug notification

Fixing bugs upstream

Packaging

Anything from fixing minor bugs, to creating packages from scratch will require some knowledge of Ubuntu and Debian packaging.

Feature Development Strategy

Artwork

Information on various Development Tools