The news are collected on
http://wiki.debian.org/DeveloperNews
Feel free to contribute.
Debian Enhancement Proposals
----------------------------
Lars Wirzenius, Stefano Zacchiroli and Adeodato Simó are trying to
introduce the concept of Debian Enhancement Proposal[1]. Quoting dato's
mail[2] that started the discussion, the goals of the proposal are
twofold:
1. having clear indication of the status of ongoing proposals,
particularly to settle that a certain design/implementation has been
agreed upon, ensuring that time spent in that implementation will not by
wasted, and dissipating "fears" of adopting such implementation (which
should help to break the traditional "wide adoption vs normative
documents" Debian loop)
2. having a central place/mechanism to document decisions and consensus
reached in our traditional ways and forums, to which we can later refer
to instead of "yeah, *that* mailing list thread"
The proposal has received much support although there are still some
debates on the technical means to store the DEP documents themselves.
-- Raphael Hertzog
[1]
http://dep.debian.net
[2]
http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2008/01/msg00045.html
wnpp.debian.net
---------------
http://wnpp.debian.net provides a nice overview page and RSS feeds about
work needing packages and their statistics.
-- Holger Levsen
debcheckout
-----------
Out of popular request, here is a long overdue announcement about
debcheckout.
Available since September 2007, debcheckout is a new devscript[3]
performing version control system checkout of a given package. When given
a package name on the command line, it parses the Vcs-XXX fields of the
package and attempts to checkout the debianized source tree of the
package using the needed version control system. It can also be used to
just print out VCS information or to check out packages from plain URL.
Usually `debcheckout packagename` is enough to get you started.
Usually, Vcs URLs point to anonymous checkout, so you won't be able to
commit on the checked out repository. However debcheckout recognizes some
typical Debian URL schemes (for example for VCS hosted on alioth or
launchpad) and, if requested by passing the `-a` (for authenticated)
flag, will mangle the checkout URL so that you can commit on it. Of
course this requires you to have the permissions to do so, but that's
already true for all DDs on some repositories (for example collab-maint).
See the `debcheckout (1)` manpage for additional information.
-- Stefano Zacchiroli
[3]
http://packages.debian.org/devscripts
Bits from DEHS
--------------
It's been some time since DEHS[4] had some 'big' changes (probably since
its creation). Here's a list of changes that have been done lately:
New look&feel:: DEHS' website now has a look similar to other *.d.o
pages. More restyling will be done at some point in the future :).
DEHS statistics:: For some time now DEHS provides a statistics page[5]
which shows the overall "external status" of Debian over the time. The
big bumps shown were some changes/tweaks in the backend, not actually
large changes in the archive.
Updated uscan:: DEHS is now using, and will continue to use, the latest
uscan version available. This will increase the quality of the checks by
using the latest improvements of uscan.
New upstream version notifications:: DEHS started sending notifications
to the 'summary' tag/keyword of the PTS when it finds a new upstream
version. Anyone interested in receiving this kind of notifications should
read the PTS' documentation to find out how to subscribe[6]. Note that
there are some packages shipping a watch file which reports an incorrect
upstream version. I'm going to file reports on those I notice.
Fresher data:: DEHS now refreshes its data daily (new/updated packages
only) and several times a month (archive wide) meaning the data is
fresher than ever. Some more work is being done so packages are checked
even more often by making use of timestamps, reducing the workload and
providing even fresher data at the same time.
Hoping I didn't miss any other important change I invite anyone
interested in joining DEHS' development or wanting to know more about it
to contact me (I don't think Stefano will reject anyone willing to
continue with his work).
-- Raphael Geissert
[4]
http://dehs.alioth.debian.org
[5]
http://dehs.alioth.debian.org/stats.html
[6]
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/ch-resources.en.html#s-pkg-tracking-system
PTS <-> DEHS integration
------------------------
A first implementation of DEHS <-> PTS integration is now available.
On one hand if you are subscribed to the "summary" keyword of a given
package you will receive mail from DEHS notifying the availability of a
new upstream version, as detected by DEHS[7]. Kudos to Raphael Geissert
for the work on the DEHS side.
On the other hand at each PTS pulse, information about packages which
have newer upstream version and about packages which failed an uscan run
are gathered. Packages which a newer upstream will have a corresponding
TODO item in the PTS page whereas packages with failed uscan run will
have a corresponding item in the Problems section.
-- Stefano Zacchiroli
[7]
http://dehs.alioth.debian.org
Using wildcards in symbols files
--------------------------------
Since dpkg-dev 1.14.16, dpkg-gensymbols supports a new syntax in the
debian/*.symbols files to provide the same dependency information for all
symbols from a given library version (example: *@GLIBC_2.0). It makes it
easy to provide a symbols file for sane libraries using symbol
versioning. Check dpkg-gensymbols' man page to learn more about this.
-- Raphael Hertzog
Dpkg feature removal schedule and API information
-------------------------------------------------
Starting with dpkg 1.14.16, two files are provided under /usr/share/doc
(README.feature-removal-schedule and README.api) which describe the
timeline for features that are going to get removed and the status of the
APIs provided by dpkg and dpkg-dev.
Check them out online too:
http://git.debian.org/?p=dpkg/dpkg.git;a=blob;f=README.feature-removal-schedule;hb=master
http://git.debian.org/?p=dpkg/dpkg.git;a=blob;f=README.api;hb=master
-- Guillem Jover
--
Raphaël Hertzog
Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch :
http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/
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