Say I am able to follow the packaging guides and have figured out how to make a working .deb and .rpm, how can I get distros to actually include my software?
What's firstly the quickest / easiest way, and secondly the most appropriate / official way?
What if my software depends on other people's libraries that do not have packages? Do I then get the responsibility of packaging those?
A couple of points based on my experience with Debian:
- these are volunteer-driven distros, so making the life of others easier is always a good thing so make sure your software builds cleanly, is documented well etc pp
- pre-requisites matter: if your software has Depends: and hence Build-Depends: on other software, then you have to provide that software first
- you can always start with local repositories, and/or .deb and .rpm files hosted on your sourceforge / Google Code / ... site
- if your software is good and relevant, chances are someone will include it, especially if you start to build a bit of a community
- if everything else fails, scratch your own itch and apply to become a Debian Maintainer (DM) so that your packaging can go into the archive
The devel is always in the details. I happen to be a Debian Developer and maintain some software for which I am the upstream author, but I also have other projects that I have not yet put into Debian and may not for some time as they are more specialised.