Creating Packages for MeeGo

The build infrastructure is not announced yet, so information here is speculative.

What is known:

• The package format used by MeeGo is RPM.

• MeeGo build tools and Infrastructure will probably derive from Moblin's (see [1] and [2]) with hopefully better support for ARM targets.

• MeeGo uses openSUSE Build Services (OBS).

Upstream

As Maemo has had an old version of Debian as an upstream distribution, there have been lots of questions on what will be MeeGo's upstream, and why Maemo's relationship with Debian will be dropped. The answer is that MeeGo is an independent distribution : the only upstream is the projects included into MeeGo such as: kernel.org, X.org, Qt, etc. MeeGo policy is to push all bug fixes to upstream projects.

Why not be Debian-based? Having an upstream distribution has advantages and disadvantages.

• Advantages: you benefit from all the packaging, QA and maintenance done in the upstream distribution, thus there is a large selection of available ported software.
• Disadvantages: you have to align your build infrastructure with your upstream. You are dependent on the release cycle and architecture choices of upstream.

The choice is to have no upstream for MeeGo. It makes it easier to tailor MeeGo for its target devices, which are quite specific compared to Debian's. Maybe the Debian rhythm of updates would also be inadequate for MeeGo (smartphone OSs are currently evolving at a very rapid pace, but there is more up-to-date Ubuntu and Debian is working on more frequent updates). The Moblin build tools would also not have been compatible with Debian as upstream (this is mostly nonsense, see Mer and OBS).

Nonetheless MeeGo will be Linux Standard Base (LSB) compliant and its specific components will probably be available in Debian at some point.

Packaging Guidelines

Evolving packaging guidelines...

References

• MeeGo-dev mailing list
• A nice article about why no upsteam - Meego Devices