[Discuss-gnuradio] [UHD] Moving to Launchpad PPAs

[Martin Braun]

As we're rolling out the latest UHD release (3.9.2), we're also moving
the Ubuntu .debs we provide as binary installers to Launchpad.

You can now find the debs, and instructions on how to install them,
here: https://launchpad.net/~ettusresearch/+archive/ubuntu/uhd

Once you've added the UHD PPA, you will be able to update to the latest
release image simply by using apt-get upgrade, or whatever your
preferred tool is.
While we believe this'll make things much easier for Ubuntu users, there
are some changes:

- We've matched the package structure to that in Debian. So instead of
the one monolithic deb, we have split it into 3 separate packages
(libuhd003, uhd-host, and libuhd-dev). This allows you to install only
components that you require, but it also allows a clean and easy upgrade
from current Ubuntu packages.
- FPGA images are not included in the .debs, but require
uhd_images_downloader.
- Support for more distros was added. All currently supported Ubuntu
releases (supported by Canonical, that is) are now available.
- Upgrading is now easier (apt-get upgrade), but you need to manually
uninstall old uhd packages if you were using prebuilt binaries before.

Big thanks to Maitland Bottoms for his help with understanding the .deb
ecosystem, and his packaging efforts for mainline Debian (and thus
Ubuntu). His tremendous help allowed us to move to this PPA-based
solution quite easily, and gave us a good structure on how to deploy
packages. Anyone who's used pre-built packages on Ubuntu or Debian has
most likely used packages that Maitland made.

Cheers,
Martin