How long till a package shows up in the repository?

A package was recently added to Ubuntu. (It was synced from Debian.)

I searched for it on http://packages.ubuntu.com, but it isn't showing up.

How long does it take?

The packages.ubuntu.com website for maverick is not working (yet), i.e. you can use it only to search for packages in releases <= 10.04. If you install the devscripts package you can use the command rmadison:

rmadison stackapplet

will show you all versions in the repositories:

stackapplet |    1.2.0-1 | maverick/universe | source, all

Apparently it's there now.

It's in there now. At least it's on the main server.

I added the maverick universe repo to my Lucid install and this is what I saw:

oli@bert:~$ apt-cache policy stackapplet
stackapplet:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 1.2.0-1
  Version table:
     1.2.0-1 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/universe Packages

I suspect http://packages.ubuntu.com -- like any ubuntu machine -- only updates every so often so will often lag behind.

If you can't see the package, your local repo might be behind the rest. Try changing to the main repo which should be the first to update.

packages.ubuntu.com for maverick is broken due to a bug which is still in the process of being fixed. It should take only some time to get into Ubuntu. Meanwhile, you can also look at launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/package-name for example https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/stackapplet

rmadison is another great tool which can help you know the status of a package.