Ubuntu – My Rhythmbox plugin can’t meet the Ubuntu Software Center “the-app” requirements

application-developmentsoftware-center

At http://developer.ubuntu.com/publish/my-apps-packages/ the following technical requirements are cited:

Technical requirements

In order for your application to be distributed in the Software Centre it must:

Be in one, self-contained directory when installed

Be able to be installed into the /opt/ directory (*)

Be executable by all users from the /opt/ directory (**)

Write all configuration settings to ~/.config/ (This can be one file or a directory containing multiple configuration files)

A Rhythmbox plugin cannot satisfy any of these requirements. Rhythmbox has compiled-in locations where it looks for installed plugins. So, is there no way for me to publish my app in Ubuntu Software Center? Would it have to go into Universe repository (which would require tremendously more work and political maneuvering to get it accepted)? I already have all the Debian package infrastructure built for it, so I have made a PPA for it.

Best Answer

If you submit your package to the Quantal archives, and it gets accepted, then you can request to have it uploaded to the "backports" repo for Precise.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Can’t I get all reviews for this app in the Ubuntu Software Center using the JSON API

It's not obvious, but the API filter there is using origin to specify whether the app is from the ubuntu archives or a PPA. So for a commercial app, filtering by 'ubuntu' gives zero results. What you want is:

http://reviews.ubuntu.com/reviews/api/1.0/reviews/filter/any/any/any/any/splashtop-streamer/
http://reviews.ubuntu.com/reviews/api/1.0/reviews/filter/any/any/any/any/splashtop-streamer/page/2/

etc.

Note, there's also a tiny wrapper that can keep your code cleaner if you want it:

$ bzr branch lp:~rnr-developers/rnr-server/rnrclient
$ cd rnrclient && virtualenv venv && venv/bin/python setup.py install && venv/bin/python
>>> from rnrclient import RatingsAndReviewsAPI
>>> api = RatingsAndReviewsAPI("http://reviews.ubuntu.com/reviews/api/1.0")
>>> api.server_status()
u'ok'
>>> streamer_reviews = api.get_reviews(packagename='splashtop-streamer')
>>> len(streamer_reviews)
10
>>> streamer_reviews = api.get_reviews(packagename='splashtop-streamer', page=2)
...

Ubuntu – Can commercial applications use Gsettings

You don't need to install schema files into /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/, they can be installed into any ${XDG_DATA_DIRS}/glib-2.0/schemas/.

So you can install your schema to /opt/<yourapp>/share/glib-2.0/schemas, then have your binary add /opt/<yourapp>/share to the XDG_DATA_DIR environment variable before you try to use GSettings.

This is what we do for Quickly apps being installed into /opt/extra.ubuntu.com/<appname>/

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Can’t I get all reviews for this app in the Ubuntu Software Center using the JSON API

Ubuntu – Can commercial applications use Gsettings

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