[ckan-dev] Debian packaging of ckanclient and datapkg

[J. Félix Ontañón]

El día 23 de junio de 2011 18:00, Rufus Pollock
<rufus.pollock at okfn.org> escribió:
> Apologies for the delay -- travelling has made net access intermittent.

No need for apologizes, actually I've been out too.

> 2011/6/20 J. Félix Ontañón <fontanon at emergya.es>:
>> 2011/6/19 Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>:
>>> 2011/6/19 J. Félix Ontañón <fontanon at emergya.es>:
> [...]
>>> I've already been doing a bit of personal work on this. First there's
>>> the work with ckanjs (js library for ckan) to develop what I call the
>>> 'DataDeck':
>>>
>>> <http://dev.okfn.org/ckanjs/app/>
>>>
>>> Source code: <https://github.com/okfn/ckanjs> or
>>> <http://bitbucket.org/okfn/ckanjs>
>>>
>>> This gives a pure js interface to CKAN and runs out of a single html
>>> file so deployment locally is trivial. The issue is this doesn't have
>>> a way to actually get stuff on to your local machine. We could fix
>>> this in various ways -- you probably have better ideas than me --
>>> including have a minimal python 'server' app that you run locally
>>> which can deal with access to local file system. I sketch some more
>>> along these lines in a notebook post.
>>>
>>> <http://notebook.okfn.org/2011/05/20/thoughts-on-local-ckan-and-the-datadeck/>
>>
>> So the final idea behind ckanjs/datadeck is to provide a web UI for
>> doing the same operations you can do with datapkg, am I wrong?
>
> Basically: yes -- but I can imagine DataDeck doing more. I've started
> a wiki page for us to gather thoughts:
>
> <http://wiki.ckan.net/DataDeck>
>
> Please dive in ...

Great! I've just registered on wiki.ckan.net and updated the mockups
broken link by uploading the files to the wiki.
Would this wiki page be the best point to brainstorm about DataDeck?
Is it better to discuss here at the mailing list?

>> Althoug ckanjs/datadeck approx. sounds multi-platform friendly, first
>> thing coming to my mind was pure a desktop UI. Thinking, for example,
>> about the software deployment chain in Ubuntu: debian-repository ->
>> apt -> ubuntu software center, with data may be: ckan -> ckanclient ->
>> datapkgUI
>
> Right, that makes a lot of sense. I guess I was just thinking a webapp
> that runs locally makes a lot of sense (why distinguish between
> desktop and web ...) -- plus I know zero desktop app programming :-)

If fact we're living now a curious moment with open-desktops like
Gnome3: it allows GUI programming with the traditionally-asociated
web-progamming language javascript, making easier to integrate web and
desktop, and yet more!

Another example is the massive use of webkit web-browser-engine for
developing open-desktop apps. FLOSS-apps like Gwibber and Ubuntu's
software-center relies on webkit for rendering the main part of the
GUI, written in html+js. I think this two could be a good references
to integrate ckanjs into a fulld-desktop app:
* Using webkit for rendering ckanjs onto a browser
* Wrapping the webkit browser widget with desktop-gui widgets which
could manage with the access to filesystem.

Do you like the idea? I think it could be a strightforward way. It
sounds better, for me, than providing some python-server on the
background to handle with the filesystem access.

>> I've made pair of mockups representing the idea behind datapkgUI:
>>
>> http://twitpic.com/5eh1v2
>
> Really useful. I've added this to the wiki page.
>
>>>> So, I thought a nice first step, for Linux users, should be to push
>>>> datapkg into most common distros repositories.
>>>>
>>>> I've built a debian source packages for ckanclient and datapkg,
>>>> development versions, under a forked mercurial repo of both
>>>> okfn/datapkg and okfn/ckanclient:
>>>>
>>>> https://bitbucket.org/fontanon/ckanclient-packaging
>>>> https://bitbucket.org/fontanon/datapkg-packaging
>>>
>>> This is great! I also note we have been working for last couple of
>>> months on getting a good debian/ubuntu package of CKAN itself:
>>>
>>> <http://wiki.ckan.net/Install_CKAN>
>>> <https://bitbucket.org/okfn/ckan-debs-public>
>>>
>>> We'd love to have assistance going forward maintaining these :-)
>>
>> Great! I didn't know packaging work were on the ckan roadmap/interest!
>> I'll check and tell you. Of course it would be a pleasure to help with
>> CKAN packaging.
>
> That's fantastic. James Gardner in cc has done the core of the
> packaging work and I think he's just finished a big improvement and
> would love to have help going forward.

Nice to meet you James!
First step for me it's to deeply check the packages and tell you.

> By the way can you participate
> (virtually) in one of CKAN sprint days next week (Mon-Wed):
>
> <http://wiki.ckan.net/Sprint_OKCon_2011>

Rufus, James, It's a real pity I mssed todays Pre-OKCon2011 CKAN Workshop.
I've to deeply read the etherpad notes.

>>>> In order to make easier for testers, I'm building the releases
>>>> ckanclient-0.7 and datapkg-0.8 for Ubuntu 10.10 and Ubuntu 11.04 under
>>>> a Launchpad PPA repository (It will take yet some time for the Ubuntu
>>>> binary packages to be available):
>>>>
>>>> https://launchpad.net/~fontanon/+archive/ckanutils/+packages
>>>
>>> We'll try these out.

Did you have the chance for testing them?

>> Ubuntu 11.04 version of datapkg/ckanclient has been correctly built
>> into this PPA few hours ago. The PPA is ready for testing with 11.04 and 10.10
>>
>>>> If the packages worked quite well and you thought pushing
>>>> ckanclient/datapkg into debian/ubuntu it's a good idea, I would speak
>>>> with some debian developers / Ubuntu MOTU.
>>>
>>> That would be amazing! This is really appreciated and really useful!
>>
>> I think a first step might be promoting into Debian/Ubuntu
>> python-ckanclient and datapkg (both easy to package and probably easy
>> to be accepted). Do you agree?
>
> Yes and if at all possible CKAN core (but as you say may be easier to
> start with simpler items).

IMHO I believe fist step should be python-ckanclient and datapkg, but
just because:
1.- I'm pretty sure the packages are very debian-policy friendly .
2.- I want to start "pinging" some debian developers to see how they
reacts with my uploading requests.

If everything went fine next step would be CKAN core. Do you think i'm
on the right way?

> Rufus

Kind Regards,

-- 
http://fontanon.org