Ann: my LyX PPA for Ubuntu

[Guillaume Munch-Maccagnoni]

Le 18/05/2026 à 18:17, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes via lyx-users a écrit :
> Le 17/05/2026 à 22:12, Guillaume Munch-Maccagnoni via lyx-users a écrit :
>> Bonjour,
>>
>> This message concerns people who are using a Linux distribution based 
>> on Debian (such as Ubuntu), and who used to keep their LyX version up 
>> to date thanks to the official package archive.
>>
>> Because the official archive is no longer updated, I have updated my 
>> own package archive to provide up-to-date LyX 2.5 to my colleagues. 
>> The package archive and the instructions to install the packages are 
>> available here: <https://launchpad.net/~gadmm/+archive/ubuntu/lyx- 
>> unstable>.
> 
> Hello Guillaume,
> 
> This is great news! I have briefly tried to understand how this thing 
> works, but my available bandwidth is not sufficient.
> 
> Are you comfortable having your ppa mentioned on the LyX download page?
> 
>> The packaging scripts are available publicly, so I am hoping that this 
>> effort can also help restarting the updates to the official package 
>> archive.
> 
> I am interested (at least curious) to see those scripts, but I have not 
> been clever enough to find them. Where are they?
> 
> Best,
> JMarc

Bonjour Jean-Marc,

I do not mind it if you link to my PPA from the LyX website until the 
official PPA is restored.

About the packaging, since this is about PPAs on Launchpad, I think the 
trick to understand how it works is to click everywhere you can on this 
website. That's how I managed to reproduce Liviu's builds in the first 
place. For instance if you go to the webpage of my PPA, 
https://launchpad.net/~gadmm/+archive/ubuntu/lyx-unstable :

- For each package there is something called a "recipe" under "package 
details > name of package".
- For instance for lyx-dev 2.6dev, the recipe is called lyx-dev 
https://code.launchpad.net/~gadmm/+recipe/lyx-dev
- At the bottom there is something called "recipe contents" which I 
think describes how things are put together into a source debian package.
- It links to two repositories 
https://code.launchpad.net/+code/~gadmm/lyx/+git/master (branch 
"master") and 
https://code.launchpad.net/~gadmm/lyx/+git/lyx-unstable-debian (branch 
"dev")
- These pages say in turn that they are "an import of the Git repository 
at" git://git.lyx.org/lyx.git and 
https://codeberg.org/gadmm/lyx-unstable-debian.git respectively.
- The first one you know, the second one 
https://codeberg.org/gadmm/lyx-unstable-debian contains the rest of the 
debian package adapted from Liviu's and the debian maintainers (with two 
scripts I made to help me generate them, though the important files I 
still change by hand). It is still a bit mysterious to me. But you can 
for instance inspect the patches I apply to vanilla LyX here: 
https://codeberg.org/gadmm/lyx-unstable-debian/src/branch/dev/debian/patches.
- If you do not know about debian packaging, there are a few 
counterintuitive things to know, and it is 100% boring, so at this point 
you can decide whether to read the Debian maintainer guide or to stop 
there, if you do not know already about Debian packaging. (I am still 
unsure that I do, but do not learn by trial and error like me.)

That is what I meant with everything being public: if you know enough 
about Launchpad and Debian packaging then you have all the info there to 
copy what I did (and which I mostly copied from Liviu and the debian 
maintainers).

Cheers,

Guillaume