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I've got an app packaged for Ubuntu 12.04, which lives on a PPA.

From that same package and sources tarball, I'd like to generate a package for Ubuntu 12.10. I thought I'd just add an entry to debian/changelog with the same version and a different release and that would do the trick:

qreator (12.05.6) quantal; urgency=low

  * Quantal upload

 -- $EMAIL_HIDDEN

qreator (12.05.6) precise; urgency=low

  * Lots of awesome changes

 -- $EMAIL_HIDDEN

However, when building the package, I get a Lintian warning that tells me latest-debian-changelog-entry-without-new-version which is probably a hint that I'm doing something wrong.

So what's the best way to simply rebuild an existing package for a different release (to be uploaded in a PPA)?

Or alternatively, can I do this automatically from Launchpad (e.g. an option to build the same package on an existing PPA for a different release)?

David Planella
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  • Related: [PPA & Packaging: Having versions of packages for multiple distros](http://askubuntu.com/questions/30145/ppa-packaging-having-versions-of-packages-for-multiple-distros) – jokerdino Nov 11 '12 at 13:23
  • Thanks for the hint, I had already tried that, but got the **Launchpad encountered an error during the following operation: copying a package. qreator 12.05.6 in quantal (same version already has published binaries in the destination archive)** error. – David Planella Nov 11 '12 at 14:16
  • @DavidPlanella: Sounds like you didn't select "keep existing binaries" – tumbleweed Nov 14 '12 at 09:09

1 Answers1

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The same version can't be built for multiple releases, that would mean different binary packages, with the same verison. Either you copy the binaries forward to a newer release (assuming they'll be installable and functional on it) or you have to bump the version number.

Oh, and 12.05.6 isn't a great version for a PPA. It feels like a Debian version. I'd suggest 12.05.6-0qreatorppa1. That makes it far easier for people to understand what they have installed on their systems, and get back to a clean state.

tumbleweed
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  • Thanks, that makes it clear. Out of interest, what's the reason for choosing precisely `-0qreatorppa1` as a suffix? What does each part of the suffix mean? – David Planella Nov 14 '12 at 17:17
  • The debian policy [explains a little about versions](http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html#s-f-Version). But from a downstream point of view, you want your version to indicate origin. `dpkg` has no concept of origin, so once a package is installed, it can be hard to find where it came from. – tumbleweed Nov 15 '12 at 08:04