Build deb package in CI

[elisalle]

For our product, we are using mdal-python on Ubuntu, and it takes a while to compile and install MDAL every time before installing mdal-python. Would you be open to building a deb package for MDAL via CI, possibly including it in the Debian (or only Ubuntu) repos?
I see that there is already an open issue about platform packaging of MDAL at #114 but I saw no mention of Ubuntu or Debian there.

[runette]

If your concern is mainly about access through mdal-python then it would be good to join this conversation ViRGIS-Team/mdal-python#9

MDAL packaging always gets complicated by the dependency on GDAL and the relatively large spread of versions of that in the wild. You are probably going to have to build MDAL locally on the system version of GDAL - which I am guessing is not impossible, but I am not a debian person, but does get complicated.

[elisalle]

If I remember correctly, packages in the non-third-party Debian and Ubuntu repositories have a certain version which is released on a certain distribution release, and no breaking version upgrades are made within that distribution release, just bugfixes.

Ubuntu focal (20.04), for instance, is released with GDAL 3.0.4, and Ubuntu jammy (22.04) is released with GDAL 3.4.1.

What I'm suggesting is to build an Ubuntu package for the current LTS Ubuntu, for the GDAL version included on that Ubuntu release, and making it depend on the libgdal-dev included on that Ubuntu release.