Current Situation
The ARB was a session topic (Tues 6th Sept) in the recent Ubuntu App-Developers Week (5th-9th Sept).
Summarising the IRC classroom (transcribed as the lesson unfolded hence the brevity and that it reflects the order of the lesson!):
- In future, just like paid for applications, free/libre apps will be submitted through the MyApps portal (see blueprint below)
- The ARB is a 4 community member group responsible to allow small standalone apps into a stable distro (i.e. has been released)
- Board offers assistance for packaging and ensures apps meets standard ubuntu packaging rules.
- Two apps have gone through the process - 'News' and 'Suspended Sentence' - both made available to Maverick (10.10)
- Confirmed that Launchpad will be dropped in favour of the MyApps portal.
- Ways to get free/libre apps into ubuntu - through debian and sync to ubuntu before feature freeze, via a backport or through the ARB
- Ways to get paid for apps into ubuntu - Canonical partner apps (case be case basis) or via Purchase Apps through Software Center
- If submitted via ARB - you are the maintainer and are responsible for submitting for every new release of Ubuntu. Hence the preference for packages from upstream since they are automatically sync'd.
- ARB accepted apps are added to
extras.ubuntu.com repository
- If there is a critical bug or security issue in an ARB package a board member will attempt to fix on a best effort basis - then contact the maintainer. Where the maintainer is not responsive - app will be removed and an empty package is pushed.
- ARB members recognise the length review process. Looking to use
Arkose to containerise apps - similar to Android app with a list of actions that an app is allowed to perform. Should allow faster review without having to do a full code-review (this is the key reason for the current length delay). It is also the reason cannot accept complex apps or apps written in certain languages
- Also looking to produce a debhelper script to automatically package a app to meet ARB rules.
- Long-term - submission via MyApps as tarball of source code with a build recipe. This will generate a Arkose or Apparmor profile etc. ARB process should be then reviewed in hours (rather than as now weeks) before being pushed to Software Center.
ARB Blueprint
The Oneiric ARB blueprint was raised in May this year and is targeted for Oneiric.
The review tag-line is
"We want to socialize how people can get their apps in Ubuntu, and we want to review how well the ARB is working.
- Which things work well?
- Which are the areas that need improvement?"
Some progress has been made in achieving the blue-print's goals:
- New app-review mailing list (app-review-board@lists.ubuntu.com)
- checklist of steps for uploading apps to the live extras repository
- Progress towards talking towards stakeholders on how to simplify the process on merging and incorporating changes
- Preparing and article for publishing on Ubuntu Planet
- New beta web-page for developers to guide through the process of submitting (although currently for commercial developers)
As the notes in the blue-print indicate - Canonical's own developers need "motivating" to get the ARB process working. There is talk of recruiting someone to primarily to move the process forward.
Time-frame
So to answer the question - the ARB is working for Commercial developers (just), with plans for the ARB to be fully working within Oneiric timeframes.
You could however speculate, given the number of outstanding items in the blueprint - maybe 12.04 would be a more safer bet.
On the page you link to it says:
Canonical provides this packaging service to you free of charge.
and goes on to explain how to lay out the tarball containing your binaries.
If you create such a tarball and submit it via MyApps then all the packaging will be done for you. As it says at the bottom you can provide a source package if you like, but it's not required. Note that this is specific to closed-source or for-pay apps, anything that is libre and gratis has a different process currently.
As for your other questions:
How is the 32-vs-64 bit thing handled?
You can just upload 32-bit if you like as that works on 64-bit too. If you want to upload 32-bit and 64-bit then build it twice and put the results in "i386" and "amd64" subdirectories.
How is supporting different versions of Ubuntu handled -- 10.04, 10.10, 11.04, 11.10, etc?
You can specify which versions of Ubuntu your uploaded binaries work for as part of the submission process.
How are dependencies handled. If, for instance, my app depends on SDL, how do I specify that?
That will be added as part of the packaging process. If you want to add a comment specifying the dependencies then it will likely speed things up.
If I don't want to distribute source code for my application (which is a proprietary license), is there a clean way to indicate that source shouldn't go with the app?
As stated you don't have to provide the source at all.
If I'm not using autoconf/automake, does my Makefile need to be set up in a particular way, or are the autotools required?
Any build system supported in Ubuntu is allowed. If you are using plain Makefiles then that's fine. However, if you're only uploading binaries that's not an issue.
Best Answer
Packages that are submitted for extras.ubuntu.com cannot install binaries that are intended to be accessible from the default
$PATH- they are meant to be relatively lightweight GUI applications. This excludes installing Upstart services or other files into /etc.The restrictions on files were made for security reasons when the ARB process was written up.
For applications such as these, you can still submit them to the Ubuntu archive (main, universe) & request a backport to the stable release.