Bounty for Debian Maintainer to package Bitcoin Armory

[btchris]

Hi everyone,

Armory is now in Debian Sid. If nothing goes wrong, Armory will be in testing (Jessie) around November 4, which is in time for the November 5 freeze. That means that Armory will be in Jessie when it becomes the new stable release.

You can install Armory right now on your Debian Sid system by running the following command:

Code:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install armory

Joseph

Wow... I was a doubter that this would happen, and I'm very happy to be wrong!

Thanks!

[Daily Anarchist]

Nice job!

I never got any bounty going, but I'll happily donate to you for packaging this. What's your bitcoin address?

BTW, this is big news for Armory, as getting into the Debian stable repo is a necessity.

[josephbisch]

Nice job!

I never got any bounty going, but I'll happily donate to you for packaging this. What's your bitcoin address?

BTW, this is big news for Armory, as getting into the Debian stable repo is a necessity.

I have signed a message with my donation address in it. I signed it using the key which I use for Debian stuff.

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Hash: SHA256

The donation address for Joseph Bisch is 1GjnToz7atMN7fUtoqHP9YQvfXu4U5JWPi.
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[Daily Anarchist]

Excellent! Will donate as soon as it's guaranteed in Jessie for the next Debian Stable release. Here's to getting it in before November 5th's freeze!

[josephbisch]

Thank you!

[Mitchell]

I personally use Debian for my VPS' and this is quite an interesting thing. Good job Joseph! I donated a bit as well.

[Daily Anarchist]

It's November 4. How are things looking? Would hate to see it miss the freeze date.

[josephbisch]

It's November 4. How are things looking? Would hate to see it miss the freeze date.

You can check here. It says 9 of 10 days (have passed) but it will be 10 later today. So it is going to make it.

We (my sponsors and upstream and myself) have been talking and we think we can update Armory via stable-updates which are enabled by default, so that people running stable will have up-to-date versions of Armory. Ubuntu has stricter criteria for updates., so I don't think Armory is going to end up in Ubuntu like I thought.

[Daily Anarchist]

There it is folks!

https://packages.debian.org/jessie/armory

I've kept my word and donated 300 mBTC, ~$100.

https://blockchain.info/tx/7622c723d427a4aff95980ffe6783e3aa50aaa9d663d211497f95fe3a22b0ca4

It's not much, but I'm not a wealthy man. The goal was a bunch of people to contribute to the bounty. That being said, it means a lot to me that Joseph is maintaining an armory package. So, thank you Joseph! Your work is a very important step for mainstream Bitcoin adoption.

[josephbisch]

There it is folks!

https://packages.debian.org/jessie/armory

I've kept my word and donated 300 mBTC, ~$100.

https://blockchain.info/tx/7622c723d427a4aff95980ffe6783e3aa50aaa9d663d211497f95fe3a22b0ca4

It's not much, but I'm not a wealthy man. The goal was a bunch of people to contribute to the bounty. That being said, it means a lot to me that Joseph is maintaining an armory package. So, thank you Joseph! Your work is a very important step for mainstream Bitcoin adoption.

Thank you so much that was very generous of you, but I am going to have to ask you for an address to return it. I was doing some more talking with upstream and my sponsors and it looks like it is not going to be possible to update Armory in stable like I thought. It turns out stable-updates is meant for updates that are required to retain a minimal set of expected features. So it is probably not possible to provide updates via stable-updates. Therefore it is best to just not have Armory in stable if it is going to get outdated. To prevent Armory from getting into stable, we are going to have to remove Armory from testing too. That means Armory is going to only be in unstable, which isn't as useful as if it were in testing and stable too.

Sorry if anyone is disappointed. I am disappointed myself having put in the effort to make the package, but this is better than an outdated version in stable. I will return the donations to anyone who wants their donation back.

Hopefully in the future linux distros change their policies to provide exceptions for Bitcoin software or Bitcoin software stabilizes more.

[Daily Anarchist]

Wait, what??

Look, I'm totally fine with an "outdated" version of Armory. I'm currently running an "outdated" version of armory now that I built from source over a year ago.

I have no problem running 0.92.3-1 for all of Jessie's stable lifetime. I mean, why isn't that possible? I can understand it for Bitcoin-core because there's a protocol requirement, yada yada. But Bitcoin Armory doesn't suffer from this problem.

I mean, hell, if Electrum can get into Debian Stable, why can't Amory?

Can you just double check and make sure it's not possible? Again, I'm not hung up on the updates, I just want to be able to sudo aptitude install armory in debian, and get my less technical family and friends to be able to do the same as well. If I start getting on them to change a bunch of stuff to run testing packages, it'll never happen.

Seriously, there has to be a way.

Here is my refund address: 1Fr67J7r5xJgmBE9oTvEDbnE17fbwHdaSu

Although I'd MUCH rather not get a refund, and get Armory in the Stable repo.

[josephbisch]

The main issue is that upstream is a small team that can't support old versions of Armory with new versions of bitcoin core. Even if you won't, there will be people filing bugs against the old version. It might still be possible for old versions of Armory to have bugs that can cause bitcoins to be lost when combined with newer versions of bitcoin core.

I don't know about electrum. Maybe they don't have the same concerns. Maybe the maintainer has gone against the wishes of upstream. I'd rather not do that, because then it is on me if bitcoins are lost due to an outdated version of Armory being in Debian.

I guess I learned not to get people excited until there is a definitive plan of action.

[Daily Anarchist]

So, if Bitcoin Armory had a bigger team of developers that could donate enough time to make the updates necessary for older versions of Armory it would be okay?

Ugg.

I hate to take my donation back, but I would like it back, as it not making to stable does me no good.

That being said, I'll re-donate again in the future if this ever gets straightened out.

[josephbisch]

I don't mean to make it sound like it is just armory's fault. It is also partially Debian's for the policies they have.

I have sent the donation back.

[Daily Anarchist]

Damn. That's a real drag. I'm sorry that I don't understand it all better.

I'm struggling a little bit because it seems like with things like Bitcoin I have to compromise. Either I get a stable distro, where I can install everything I need from the repo, or I have to run less stable distros or install from source or packages that aren't in the repo.

What would you suggest for somebody in my situation? You're saying it won't even make it to testing, too, or just stable?

Should I consider running Debian testing? That seems a bit more technically advanced. I've done some research online and there are several different instructions. I'd like it to be as easy as installing stable and just having it be testing forever, or something.

*sigh*

Thanks for all of your work anyways. Please keep us posted on this thread if things change in the future.

[josephbisch]

It is unfortunate. I don't know of a stable Linux distro that provides Bitcoin software other than stuff like electrum. I don't know what to say for someone in your case. I personally use Debian stable, so I have to either download the binaries from the website or compile from source.

Unfortunately it looks like Armory won't be in testing, because that would mean that Armory would be in stable too.

I will keep the thread updated.

[goatpig]

Build from source. Fairly easy on Debian.

[Ente]

Bummer.
Thank you for all your good effort, Joseph, nevertheless!

Yes, I got used to git too. It boils down to three, four short commands to install Armory:
- download that stuff from github
- auto-configure the source
- compile the source

I always write down the stuff I did, so it takes only a few seconds the next time.
And that way I end up with an up-to-date version too.

So, as maybe the next-best option, how about having a repository/server where all common Bitcoin software is available and up-to-date? One-stop for bitcoin-core, Armory, Electrum, you name it? Of course that server really, really has to be like Fort Knox! :-)
Like, more secure than github or "regular" linux repos. If this one gets hacked and malware built into it's gonna hurt.
Ah, maybe the little gain in convenience isn't worth it?

Ente

[josephbisch]

Bummer.
Thank you for all your good effort, Joseph, nevertheless!

Yes, I got used to git too. It boils down to three, four short commands to install Armory:
- download that stuff from github
- auto-configure the source
- compile the source

I always write down the stuff I did, so it takes only a few seconds the next time.
And that way I end up with an up-to-date version too.

So, as maybe the next-best option, how about having a repository/server where all common Bitcoin software is available and up-to-date? One-stop for bitcoin-core, Armory, Electrum, you name it? Of course that server really, really has to be like Fort Knox! :-)
Like, more secure than github or "regular" linux repos. If this one gets hacked and malware built into it's gonna hurt.
Ah, maybe the little gain in convenience isn't worth it?

Ente

You don't have to worry about the server being compromised, because the software would be signed. The problem is that the person building the software would need to be trusted to not put an exploit into the binaries that the person builds. Someone could probably set up a repository using the binary packages provided by Armory. That way they would be signed by ATI and therefore trusted.

That is a good idea though.