Packaging Mobilizon for Debian/FreedomBox?

Development
#1

It would be great to get the federated event-management service Mobilizon into FreedomBox. I have never packaged anything for Debian, but would be interested in learning, and this may be a good opportunity :slight_smile:

https://framablog.org/2020/10/27/mobilizon-your-events-your-groups-your-data/

A few questions:

  • For someone who has never packaged anything for Debian before, how difficult is it?
  • How much time and energy goes into maintaining a package once it is in Debian?
  • Given the dependencies available (see below), is it possible to package Mobilizon? If not, how difficult is it to take care of the dependency issues first?

Dependencies

Following instructions here:

https://docs.joinmobilizon.org/administration/dependencies/

It seems that the packages nodejs, yarnpkg, erlang, and elixir are recommended to be installed by adding non-Debian repos. However, all four packages are in Debian, just not all in the same Debian release.

  • Node.js v12.x (Bullseye has nodejs 12.19.0~dfsg-1, but not in Buster Backports)
  • Yarn (Buster Backports has yarnpkg 1.13.0-1+deb10u1, but not in Bullseye)
  • Erlang (Bullseye has 1:23.1.2+dfsg-1, but not in Buster Backports)
  • Elixir (Bullseye has 1.10.3.dfsg-1.1, Buster Backports has 1.9.1.dfsg-1~bpo10+2)

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#2

For someone who has never packaged anything for Debian before, how difficult is it?

I’m also new to packaging. I’ve run the tools and made some packages but I haven’t tested them beyond lintian.

My second impression is that it is way more complicated than it seems at first sight and that there are loads of alternative methods and tools, all with their own pros and cons. But Debian is in need of more packagers so would rather encourage you to learn than the opposite. So welcome and feel free to ask.

How much time and energy goes into maintaining a package once it is in Debian?

It depends on how fast the upstram moves, how frequent you’re willing to catch up, etc.

Packaging teams are the right solution for this, IMHO.

Given the dependencies available (see below), is it possible to package Mobilizon?

It first sight Yarn would be the only blocker. It feels strange to me that it has disapeared from Bullseye. It might be temporary or the package might be orphaned (?). We should find out.

I don’t see deps missing in Buster as a big problem, since Bullseye is freezing in February and should become stable around October. That could be too much waiting for some, but if you manage to upload to Bullseye before February you can later focus on packaging all the others for Buster if you want to win some few months. It would be quite an effort, though.

On top of that there could be other hidden dependencies, like jquery-based static JavaScript or similar that are not reflected in nodejs’s dependency lists, but from Debian’s perspective are indeed dependencies. We should check that as well.