apt-gettable zotero/jurism install for Ubuntu

edited October 16, 2018
Available at https://github.com/retorquere/zotero_deb. This is just a simple repackaging that I will update manually when new versions of Zotero drop.
  • Cool! Two questions:
    1. Could you put the .deb package up (e.g. under releases)? We're getting a bunch of requests for installation on Chromebooks and I'm not sure your apt workflow will work there, but installing a .deb file will (see https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/08/19/install-linux-applications-chrome-os/ )
    2. I believe Dan has mentioned that they would consider distributing an Ubuntu/Mint version if someone has an automated workflow, which this looks to be. That would also mean you don't have to update the Zotero version (which I think now you need to do manually?) @dstillman would this work?
  • 1. Sure, done.

    2. The workflow turns out to be simple if you don't use a PPA. From what I've been able to gather, PPAs are a) the preferred way of doing things at least for Ubuntu/Mint, and b) a major PITA to get set up. I can vouch for the latter. I've described the workflow at https://github.com/retorquere/zotero_deb because it was easier to just type markdown there (please, please can we have markdown on the forums).
  • Right, ideally Zotero would submit the file to the official Ubuntu (or debian) PPA rather than setting up their own.
  • bintray and even sourceforge will likely also work, but packagecloud was easy to get started.

    AFAICT there's not really a great benefit to PPAs other than recognizability. The user would still have to add repository pointers to the PPA so there's really no difference in convenience between adding a launchpad PPA or a packagecloud repo -- if you trust the packagecloud script, it's actually less work for a user to add packagecloud, and after that there's zero difference.

    For true convenience you'd have to get into the official repos (and you'd need to be in Debian 9 'Stretch' according to the link you provided for Chromebooks to be able to apt-get them). But they don't seem to be chomping at the bit to get new packages in.

    Once that hurdle is cleared you can request Ubuntu/Mint to pick up the package.
  • Juris-M is back, so I've done the same for jurism (same script, just different parameter)
  • I've trimmed the build script to the essentials; the download part can still be cut when ran from the Zotero build process itself.
  • Ugh, I've already exceeded the upload limit for packagecloud. I'm looking into bintray now.
  • Moved to sourceforge (of all places), https://github.com/retorquere/zotero_deb has updated instructions on how to set it up. These are also the instructions for if you want to self-host (or host straight from S3 for example).
  • The full script to build and publish in plain bash can be found at https://gist.github.com/retorquere/c03ee2b29eae14a79472366806f406ad
  • edited November 2, 2018
    I've moved the .debs to github -- sourceforge ought to work and deploy is super easy, but I'm getting a lot of download errors from sourceforge that don't happen from GH releases.

    I expect GH to be stable so I'm keeping them there until/if the debs are included in the regular Juris-M/Zotero deployment pipeline. I use them in my own test suite now so I intend to make sure that there's at least a place (my GH repo or official distribution) where these can be installed from. My tests also check whether I'm on the latest version and error out if not so I get a ping at least within a day of release that I need to update when my nightly runs.
  • Thanks Emiliano -- this will be very helpful
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