Uploading a package to a PPA

How you upload a source package to a PPA depends on two things:

whether you're using a recent version of Ubuntu (Ubuntu 9.10 and newer)
whether you want to use FTP or SFTP.

Once you've built your source package, you need to upload it to Launchpad using the dput tool.

Note: We will not accept uploads of packages that are unmodified from their original source in Ubuntu or Debian, only packages that include your own changes. We ask that people include useful changelogs for each package so that users and other developers can understand what new features they are exploring in their work. Read the PPA Terms of Use for more information.

The easy way: FTP in Ubuntu 9.10 and newer

If you're running Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) or newer and you're happy to upload your source package using FTP, uploading is simple.

Visit your PPA's overview page and follow the instructions in the Uploading packages to this PPA section. This will look something like:

dput ppa:your-lp-id/ppa <source.changes>

If you're not sure what this means, you should familiarise yourself with creating packages for Ubuntu.

SFTP and older versions of Ubuntu

If you want to use SFTP to upload your source package, or you're using FTP with an older version of Ubuntu, you'll need to do a little more work to upload your package.

Dput uploads the following files:

.dsc
.changes
.diff.gz
and optionally the .orig.tar.gz (if you used debuild -S -sa to build your package)

FTP

First, you need to tell dput where to send your package and by what method. To do that, edit ~/.dput.cf to look like this:

[my-ppa]
fqdn = ppa.launchpad.net
method = ftp
incoming = ~<your_launchpad_id>/<ppa_name>/ubuntu/
login = anonymous
allow_unsigned_uploads = 0

You'll need to:

Change the first line to whatever name you want to use to refer to your PPA, while retaining the square brackets. Do not use just "ppa" as the name here: that conflicts with an entry in /etc/dput.cf and will cause confusing failures (Could not find person or team named ''.).
If you're uploading to a team PPA, change the ~<your-launchpad-id> to your team's Launchpad name (maintaining the tilde). As you might expect, you must be a member of the team before you can upload to its PPA.
Set the correct <ppa-name>, the default PPA name is ppa, use the specific name for other PPA in the same context. Don't confuse the PPA name with the display name you have configured for your PPA in Launchpad, for most users creating their first PPA the PPA name will be literally just the string ppa.

Next, open a terminal and enter the following:

$  dput my-ppa P_V_source.changes

Replace P with the package name and V with the version number.

Find out about possible upload errors.

Uploading with SFTP

Follow the instructions for uploading with FTP but ensure your dput.cf includes the following:

method = sftp
login = <your Launchpad account name>

Using packages from other distributions

You may be able to use your PPA to build sources from other distributions that use .deb packages. This depends on whether the dependencies can be resolved in Ubuntu.

Create a new dput configuration section using incoming = ~<lp_name>/ppa/ubuntu/<a ubuntu suite> and the suite you specify will override the suite named in the upload changelog when you upload it using the new configuration:

$ dput my-ppa-force-hardy  P_V_source.changes

You can upload a source from any Debian-compatible distribution straight to your PPA with no changes required and it will be built and published in the targeted Ubuntu suite.

Important: Although Launchpad will attempt to build the package, it may not be able to meet all of the dependencies of a source created for another a distribution.

Important: Version numbers must be unique. This has implications if you want to provide packages for multiple Ubuntu series at once:

If your package can be used on different versions of Ubuntu without being recompiled you can copy the existing binaries from the older series to the new series; see Copying packages.

If your package does need to be recompiled to support multiple Ubuntu series, then you should add a suffix of the series name to the version number. So a package for the Intrepid Ibex could be named myapp_1.0-2~ppa1~intrepid1 and for the Hardy Heron myapp_1.0-2~ppa1~hardy1. If you need to release an updated package, increment the ~ppan suffix. Specifying the version name here doesn't change the series that you are targetting; this must still be set correctly as described in the Ubuntu packaging guide's section on the changelog file.