Ubuntu – How to copy packages within a PPA from one release to another? (nonsensical “same version already has published binaries” error)

This can be scripted... It'll need altered versions of two of my previous answers: one to get a list of all the PPAs and another to check if a URL is live. With those two techniques we can build a real launchpad URL and test it.

dist="saucy"
ppas=$(grep -RoPish "ppa.launchpad.net/[^/]+/[^/ ]+" /etc/apt | sort -u)
while read -r ppa; do
    url="http://$ppa/ubuntu/dists/$dist/"
    if [[ $(wget -O /dev/null "$url" 2>&1|grep "200 OK"|wc -l) == "0" ]]; then
        echo "$ppa does not have a $dist version"
    fi
done <<< "$ppas"

It's an ugly script but it's so beautiful at the same time.

Option 3 -- Automatically add the new PPA

This is like 2, but php5-common would automatically add the new PPA, so the new packages would be available after next apt-get update run. Optionally there could be a Debconf question whether the users wants the PPA added automatically or they will do so themselves.

• Pros:
  1. One single repository to handle
  2. No automatic transition
  3. Users can prepare their transition plan
  4. Packages are ready to be installed right away
  5. Adding PPA from same namespace might work flawlessly
• Cons:
  1. Some users will miss the announcement no matter how hard you try
  2. Adding extra PPA automatically seems like security risk
  3. Adding extra PPA from different namespace needs dropping extra GPG keys in /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/ and that also seems like security risk