Please allow multiple PPAs per user

[William Grant]

Bug #88611 resulted in each person/team having only one PPA. This is a bad thing, and I consider it dangerous.

I use my PPA for testing various bits and pieces, and am about to ask for widespread testing of a new mplayer, with largely redone packaging. However, if users add my PPA to their sources.list, they'll get a whole lot of (likely dangerous) packages, which I really don't want every user to get automagically. This can be fixed by allowing multiple PPAs again (no, creating a bazillion teams is *not* a solution).

Alternatively, now that the component in a PPA doesn't actually matter (ogre-model operates as if everything were multiverse), why not allow people to specify their own components? That's probably a neater solution.

[Robie Basak (racb)]

Could multiple PPAs possibly be implemented by modifying https://blueprints.launchpad.net/soyuz/+spec/archive-derivatives/ slightly?

If anyone with a PPA could create an archive derivative and archive derivatives were not tied to a distro, then users could use their main PPAs as a personal testing/staging area, then copy to one of these archive derivatives as required for further publishing.

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

First stage being done in 2.2.1

[Celso Providelo (cprov)]

finished in r7916, available on staging.

[Max Bowsher (maxb)]

I just tried this out at https://staging.launchpad.net/~maxb/+archive/mercurial - and may I say this is a wonderful feature - but, the naming "PPA named mercurial for Max Bowsher" leaves a little to be desired in elegance. Is that going to carry over into the naming of the associated PGP keys too?

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

Max, I'd be very happy to take any suggestions if you feel they're better.

[William Grant (wgrant)]

On Mon, 2009-03-30 at 12:10 +0000, Julian Edwards wrote:
> Max, I'd be very happy to take any suggestions if you feel they're
> better.

'“mercurial” PPA for Max Bowsher'?

Alternatively drop the 'PPA for Max Bowsher' bit and just use the
user-specified title, as is done for branches.

--
William Grant

[Celso Providelo (cprov)]

Max,

One alternative for mitigating this problem is allowing owners to set a free-form 'displayname' for their PPAs, bug #340457.

bug #344105 also suggests we should include more specific information the the signing-key UIDs, like PPA repository URL and its LP URL (both constant).

[Max Bowsher (maxb)]

I like William's suggestion of '“mercurial” PPA for Max Bowsher' - or, if you want to keep PPA at the front to emphasize the fact that it is a PPA, 'PPA (mercurial) for Max Bowsher'.

Custom displaynames would certainly mitigate this a little, but it would still be nice to have more pleasant default naming - and I'm guessing that freeform displaynames would not be propagated to signing-key UIDs, for security reasons.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

is this more on the side of using the same PPA but with different tags or 2 separate PPA's for each user?

[Celso Providelo (cprov)]

Max,

We plan to make both, name and displayname, required when activating a new PPA. This way users will be able to user any format of reference format for their PPAs. Existing and new PPAs displaynames will be editable as well.

The signing-key UID discussing is also relevant here, and using the PPA displayname on it doesn't look right even when it is mechanical (as they are now), even more when it becomes editable. That's why we are planning to simply use the PPA LP url:

{{{
Signing key for https://launchpad.net/~maxb/+archive/mercurial
}}}

And block 'name' changes on users who have PPAs (PPA name is already constant). Mistakes and typos will be much easily sortable by activating a new PPA (and subsequently deactivating the broken ones).