Overview

Using a Personal Package Archive (PPA), you can distribute software and updates directly to Ubuntu users. Create your source package, upload it and Launchpad will build binaries and then host them in your own apt repository.

That means Ubuntu users can install your packages in just the same way they install standard Ubuntu packages and they'll automatically receive updates as and when you make them.

Every individual and team in Launchpad can have one or more PPAs, each with its own URL.

Packages you publish in your PPA will remain there until you remove them, they're superseded by another package that you upload or the version of Ubuntu against which they're built becomes obsolete.

Note: CommercialHosting allow you to have private PPAs.

Note: We do not allow uploading pre-built binary packages.

Size and transfer limits

New PPAs get 8 GiB of disk space. If you need more space for a particular PPA, ask us.

While we don't enforce a strict limit on data transfer, we will get in touch with you if your data transfer looks unusually high.

Supported architectures

When Launchpad builds a source package in a PPA, by default it creates binaries for:

You may also request builds for arm64, armhf, ppc64el, and/or s390x. Use the "Change details" page for the PPA to enable the architectures you want.

Changing the set of architectures for which a PPA builds does not create new builds for source packages that are already published in that PPA; it only affects which builds will be created for new uploads. If you need to create builds for newly-enabled architectures without reuploading, go to "View package details" and then "Copy packages", select all the packages for which you want to create builds, select "This PPA", "The same series", and "Copy existing binaries", and submit the form using the "Copy Packages" button.

We use OpenStack clouds for security during the build process, ensuring that each build has a clean build environment and different developers cannot affect one another's builds accidentally. These clouds do not yet have support for the powerpc and s390x architectures; when they do, it will also be possible to request those architectures in PPAs.

Supported series

When building a source package you can specify one of the supported series in your changelog file which are listed at the Launchpad PPA page.

If you specify a different series the build will fail.

Supporting multiple series

If you want to provide a package for multiple series, you can do one of the following:

build the package for the oldest of the releases you care about, then once the build
has finished and been published, copy the binaries forward to the newer releases (e.g. build for bionic and then publish those binaries for focal and jammy as well).
create one source package version per release. People taking the "one source package version per release" approach often end up automating it
using source package recipes.

Activating a PPA

Before you can start using a PPA, whether it's your own or it belongs to a team, you need to activate it on your profile page or the team's overview page. If you already have one or more PPAs, this is also where you'll be able to create additional archives.

Your PPA's key

Launchpad generates a unique key for each PPA and uses it to sign any packages built in that PPA.

This means that people downloading/installing packages from your PPA can verify their source. After you've activated your PPA, uploading its first package causes Launchpad to start generating your key, which can take up to a couple of hours to complete.

Your key, and instructions for adding it to Ubuntu, are shown on the PPA's overview page.

Deleting a PPA

When you no longer need your PPA, you can delete it. This deletes all of the PPA's packages, and removes the repository from ppa.launchpad.net. You'll have to wait up to an hour before you can recreate a PPA with the same name.

Upload permissions

Upload permissions are usually bound to the ppa-owning team. If you want to grant upload permissions to somebody, but you do not want to add them to the team, you can use the https://code.launchpad.net/ubuntu-archive-tools as following:

edit-acl -A ppa:OWNER/ubuntu/ARCHIVE -p PERSON -c main -t upload add

Next steps

You can familiarise yourself with how PPAs work by installing a package from an existing PPA. You can also jump straight into uploading your source packages.

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Installing software from a PPA >