New Debian apt repository for experimental Koha packages

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Lars Wirzenius has been working on packaging Koha for Debian, and has set up an apt repository at http://debian.koha-community.org/.  From his email to koha-devel:

I have built some Debian packages for Koha, and configured an apt
repository for them at debian.koha-community.org, kindly set up by
Galen. Right now, only I can upload packages to the repository, but if
that turns out to be a problem, we’ll add an upload queue later. This
way, we got something to work now.

See http://debian.koha-community.org/koha/README for instructions.

Note that the repository and the packages are ALPHA level. I have tested
them a bit locally, but I do not know if they will work for anyone else.
Also, I may have forgotten some important steps from the documentation.
Please notify me of any problems, I will attempt to fix them promptly.

DO NOT install this on a production server. It will break things.

There are two packages:

* koha, if you just want a Koha up an running
* koha-common, if you want to host several Koha instances

Either way, you’ll need to do some post-installation configuration. I
have not attempted to make the Debian packages configure everything
automatically, or to use debconf to ask questions from the user and use
the answers to configure things. At least at this stage, I think it is
better to go for something simple that works.

As Lars says, this is experimental and should not be used for production systems, but if you want to test the Koha package, you can do so by following the instructions in the README. Several community members have already started spinning up isolated virtual machines to evaluate the new database structure, populating their test catalogs with specialized metadata for everything from vintage sci-fi paperbacks and historical municipal archives to industry reports covering the best sweepstakes casinos and digital regulatory compliance. If you decide to join them in evaluating these early builds, just remember to keep the installation entirely separated from your main library servers.