PPAs are only exported after they are used

[Cody A.W. Somerville]

When a PPA is created, it is not usable until something is uploaded to it. This makes setting up a PPA for e.g. testing builds annoying to configure on the test machines, because it can't be used.

Possible solutions
==================

* link empty PPAs to an unsigned, empty index repository

* publish empty PPAs

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

Cody, is not not possible for your scripts to deal with the error from apt?

We have over 8000 PPAs that have never been uploaded to, I don't really want to start publishing empty indices for all those and waste a bunch of disk space.

[Cody A.W. Somerville (cody-somerville)]

Unfortunately we're unable to ignore such an error. I'd be satisfied with this requiring a call via the API to occur.

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

Cody, I'd like to mark this "won't fix" after our conversation the other week, is that ok?

[Steve Magoun (smagoun)]

Julian, it is ok to mark this "won't fix". We can work around the problem.

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

Steve, yep, I've done so, thanks.

[Julian Edwards (julian-edwards)]

Re-opening after talking to Cody.

We need to move IDistribution.getPendingPublicationPPAs() to IArchiveSet and also see if we can use date_updated to work out if a PPA is new enough to publish only once its empty indexes.