Microsoft’s failed attempt on Debian packaging
This might be off-topic, but time to chime-in with my experience of packaging an open source software written in python.<p>Once, I spent a good deal of my time making a grammar-based phonetic transliterator engine for an Indic language. I was mostly a python developer with some prior experience in C and plain Make files. After a couple of rewrites, I was mostly happy with the results. Then was the time for packaging and making it a usable software. The application needed to install some files under root so that linux&#x27;s input subsystem (IBus) could recognize them. Also, it dependent on some system packages(both python based and non-python based) like dictionaries for generating suggestions.<p>As I approached the problem, I learned that I had to learn autotools and a bunch of very debian specific scripts which were pretty much focused on packaging applications written in C. It was like an arcane magic. I would probably had to produce &amp; package at least 10 software to make the return of investment on that knowledge. I also tried to use python&#x27;s setuptools, which felt equally dirty without the benefit of generating a proper .deb package. The impedance mismatch of the whole packaging architecture and dynamic language ecosystem was soul crushing.<p>In the end, I wrote a python script which dumps the project in &#x2F;opt and installs&#x2F;uninstalls the system files and called it a day.<p>The end result was that user adoption of my software was very low. One reason for that might be the unusual way of installation(download a tar file, unzip and run a installer from command line).