We’ll update the progress of packaging diaspora for debian here from time to time.
The main tracking page is Diaspora ITP on debian bug tracker http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=597093
Current documentation: http://wiki.debian.org/Diaspora/Packaging
Progress Bar: http://vps.aneesh.nl/diaspora.html
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There is some interest from students of College of Engineering Pune, India
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/cofsug/nN9uC4NUbCw
We’ll be meeting this Friday to take it further.
Awesome! Keep us up to date or even better, once you get going invite the people here 
Lucas Nussbaum from the Debian project has put a lot of work into improving the state of Ruby/Rails packages in Debian, perhaps we could ask him for some advice on common problems that he’s had to deal with?
Sean, I have worked with Lucas in debian ruby team. I have been discussion the issues in the ruby team and we will continue to work with them. Things are much better for ruby in debian thanks to work done by Lucas, Antonio etc.
I already co-maintain about 13 ruby gems/libraries in debian http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pravi.a@gmail.com
Sorry but I have to repeat myself: You’ll never succeed for getting all dependencies in the right versions into Debian. Even if you do for one release you’ll basically have to start over with the next one. Not to mention the conflict hell if you want to install another ruby project alongside. Really consider just building a bundler cache in vendor/ during package compilation.
Jonne, I agree it is going to be very difficult (even impossible as you say) to get all dependencies to debian. But we will try all intermediate methods like custom repos (aka ppa) and even the bundler option you are suggesting. May be we will try this as the first option. Thanks.
There will be live packaging sessions everyday at 10pm IST or 8.30am PST ot 4.30pm GMT at the irc channel mentioned below. Join in, learn packaging and contribute to diaspora packaging effort.
IRC Channel: #debian-diaspora on irc.oftc.net or via web at http://mibbit.com/?channel=%23debian-diaspora&server=irc.oftc.net
See dashboard for current status http://piratepad.net/tu0H1eU2vH
We already covered two days with 5 people learning packaging. Two of them already completed one package.
Great to hear, Praveen.
Awesome Praveen!
We are tying make an app to track progress of this effort. See more info at http://piratepad.ca/TlEP1VOwGF
If anyone interest to help out jump in, we need coding help.
Cedric has created this dependency graph http://people.debian.org/~boutil/diaspora/deps.pdf You can visually track the progress now - we need to make all the circles green!
We had to spend some extra effort working on an obsolete gem 
Can someone respond to this https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/issues/3735 ? I requested the removal of this package on the same day it entered!
Capistrano-Ext has been dropped, should be good now.
Current documentation: http://wiki.debian.org/Diaspora/Packaging
Progress Bar: http://vps.aneesh.nl/diaspora.html
Awesome. I’d love to get the existing Debian packages copied over to our Ubuntu PPA as well.
Well personally I’d be happier just doing it the RVM way. IMHO forcing users to install all the Ruby gems to the system is a bit restrictive and to make installation easy for anyone we can pull the gems under the users RVM installation easily without having to touch the system Ruby.
(previous comment about Ubuntu PPA - Debian packaging team has chosen their path :))
bundler makes it easy install the gems using the system ruby without actually installing them system wide too, no need for RVM 