Binary compatibility on Linux

[Thomas Koch]

Jacob Carlborg wrote:

> On 2012-11-11 10:30, Thomas Koch wrote:
> 
>> The best way is to get your software in the official debian archive.
>> There are infrastructure and established workflows to recompile packages
>> for each Debian version.
>> The backports archive contains newer versions of a package for the
>> current stable Debian release.
> 
> I don't want to limit myself to just the debian based package mangers. I
> want my tools to be available/usable on all distributions.

If your package is in Debian then it is automatically also in Ubuntu, Mint, 
Xandros, Univention, Aptosid, Knoppix and a few douzend more distributions 
which are all derivatives of Debian:

http://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census
http://www.debian.org/misc/children-distros

Roughly the other half(?) of the linux universe is based on Fedora, e.g. 
CentOS, Red Hat:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Derived_distributions

So by getting your package in the archives of Debian and Fedora, you should 
serve the large majority of linux users.

The Debian wiki has a list of advantages why somebody would want to have his 
software in a distributions archive:
http://wiki.debian.org/AdvantagesForUpstream

Best regards,

Thomas Koch