Debian repository on Google App Engine

So here is the post about the eureka moment I promised on Twitter.

Last week before releasing Inkface v0.1.2 and twitter-inkface client, I was working on submitting the packages in maemo-extras-devel repo. I was following a long list of instructions. Halfway through the list, I noticed that the example package is assumed to have had autotools kind of build framework. One of my packages uses SCons. I had a doubt (yet unconfirmed) that it won't work. So I scratched my head and that brought to the surface one of the ideas I have had at the back of my mind for a long time. Using one of these "cloud" services to host a debian repo.

And what cloud service can be better than the one that is absolutely free (for such a low traffic purpose, at least) - Google App Engine. So I went through the basics of Debian repo and put together an app for Google App engine. Under couple of hours, I had my very own Debian repo. (Yeah, that's when I leapt out of my bathtub and ran to twit 'Eureka Eureka!') That's what you hit when you point your apt-get to repo.altcanvas.com.

I have submitted the small script as a recipe in Google App Engine cookbook. You can also find it in altcanvas source tree.