Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2003/37/
Debian Weekly News – September 16th, 2003
Welcome to this year’s 37th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter
for the Debian community. Several readers told us that the first
hardware audio player that supports Ogg/Vorbis is the
[1]NeurosAudio and has been shipping for months. They are said to
also support one of the key Ogg authors and also supply a
synchronization manager for GNU/Linux, [2]positron, which is
packaged and distributed with Debian.
1. http://www.neurosaudio.com/
2. http://packages.debian.org/positron
Too many Versions of Tcl? Andreas Rottmann [3]wondered why there
are four different versions (8.0, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4) of the Tcl
programming environment in the archive. Matthew Palmer [4]explained
that Tcl isn’t particularly backwards compatible. Hence, several
packages don’t run or build with newer versions of the
language.
3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00468.html
4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00514.html
Status of Testing Migration. Petter Reinholdtsen [5]reported
that the [6]migration of packages into testing has been slowed down
significantly. At least partially this is due to the mips buildd
being under heavy load. Colin Watson [7]pointed out that the reason
is glibc 2.3.2 and that there is a good chance that this will start
to clear quite shortly.
5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00485.html
6.
http://developer.skolelinux.no/info/cdbygging/distdiff-all.html.gz
7. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00498.html
Second Revision of Woody. An official [8]announcement has been
sent out stating the current status of the [9]second revision of
Debian woody (3.0r2). This revision is planned to include about 130
security updates that have been issued since the first revision.
Comments should be sent to [10]Joey directly.
8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0309/msg00002.html
9. http://master.debian.org/~joey/3.0r2/
10. mailto:[email protected]
No Dueling Banjos from Debian. Some of the most bizarre
[11]mails on debian-devel over the [12]years have been [13]repeated
[14]requests by [15]various people for the sheet music for dueling
banjos. Several list subscribers [16]have been [17]eager to
[18]assist the posters in their search. Jim Penny [19]called this
the Dueling Banjo Effect and explained that this has become a
self-perpetuating Google-flop. People use Google which points them
to Debian to get this sheet music, and the act of asking reinforces
Google’s notion that Debian is a good place to get the music.
11. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0009/msg00851.html
12.
http://www.google.com/search?as_oq=sheet.music+dueling+banjos&as_sitesearch=debian.org&safe=images
13. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0306/msg01368.html
14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00378.html
15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0301/msg00027.html
16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0009/msg00874.html
17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0009/msg00862.html
18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-curiosa-0308/msg00000.html
19. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00382.html
Criteria for Inclusion in Debian. Adam Kessel [20]wondered if
there are guidelines for what gets included in Debian other than
what is required by the [21]DFSG. Steve Langasek [22]explained that
it is rare that Debian would overrule a developer who wishes to
maintain a piece of software which is free and legally
distributable. Manoj Srivastava [23]added that if a developer has
spent the time and effort to package software and made it policy
compliant, then as long as Debian can legally distribute it, it has
usually found its way in.
20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00602.html
21. http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00603.html
23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00656.html
Alternative to the GNU FDL. Wouter Verhelst [24]prepared a draft
documentation license that seeks to retain the spirit of the GNU
[25]Free Documentation License (FDL), but which he thinks is
DFSG-free. Branden Robinson [26]wasn’t sure precisely what the
FDL’s intent is, but thought that it would be more fruitful to
enumerate the license’s intentions before constructing the
text.
24. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0309/msg00503.html
25. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0309/msg00585.html
Attribution-ShareAlike License. John Goerzen [27]wondered
whether the Creative Commons [28]Attribution-ShareAlike License was
DFSG-free. On his own [29]analysis it occurred that it would
satisfy each requirement of the DFSG. Branden Robinson [30]agreed,
but warned that licenses must also pass a more “holistic” reading
to make sure they aren’t non-free despite passing each specific
clause of the DFSG. Florian Weimer [31]thought it would depend upon
whether the license was applied to a documentation format suitable
for editing.
27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0309/msg00474.html
28. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/
29. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0309/msg00476.html
30. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0309/msg00528.html
31. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0309/msg00514.html
News from the Package Tracking System. Raphaël Hertzog
[32]reported about a new [33]feature which has been added to the
[34]Package Tracking System (PTS) a few months ago. It is now
possible to add custom information to the PTS web page for a
particular package. The PTS features many useful links (BTS, QA
statistics, contact information, DDTP translation status, buildd
logs) and gathers much more information from various places. There
are over 3000 subscriptions from 1500 different addresses for 1650
different source packages.
32. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0309/msg00006.html
33.
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/ch-resources.en.html#s-pts-web
34. http://packages.qa.debian.org/
DebConf 4 in Brazil. Carlos Laviola [35]announced that the
Debian Conference #4 will be held in [36]Porto Alegre, Brazil. This
country has been extremely active in the Free Software movement but
is very unrepresented at past Debian conferences. There are already
plans planning to host the conference some days before or after the
[37]Fórum Internacional de Software Livre (International
Free Software Forum), so that Debian developers can attend this
event as well.
35. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0308/msg00003.html
36. http://www.uoregon.edu/~sergiok/brasil/portoalegre.html
37. http://www.softwarelivre.org/forum2003/fotos_evento/
Improvements in the Bug Tracking System. Colin Watson
[38]announced the new tag ‘fixed-upstream’ which is intended to
replace the old (mis)use of the ‘pending’ tag and refers to bugs
that were fixed upstream and the maintainer is only waiting for a
new release. The new ‘owner’ attribute allows maintainer teams to
divide the work up more conveniently. If set the address receives
the same mail sent to that bug as a package maintainer would
receive.
38. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0309/msg00005.html
Installing Sarge with the Debian-Installer. Sebastian Ley
[39]reported that the debian-installer team has cleaned up the
build process of debian-installer images. They also put together a
[40]howto which guides through the process of installing sarge. At
the same time the Debian-CD team has reviewed the netinst iso
[41]images for a sarge installation with the new
debian-installer.
39. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0309/msg00007.html
41. http://gluck.debian.org/cdimage/testing/netinst/i386/
Maintaining Packages with Subversion. Eduard Bloch maintains the
[42]svn-devscripts package which contains tools that help create
and maintain Debian packages in a large Subversion repository. Joey
Hess, however, has [43]problems with the implementation and
proposed improvements. Graham Wilson also [44]added another method
of importing new upstream source archives.
42. http://packages.debian.org/svn-devscripts
43. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00736.html
44. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00738.html
Debmirror Survey. Goswin von Brederlow would like to [45]know
how other people use the [46]debmirror package to mirror certain
parts of the Debian archive. He has rewritten most of debmirror in
an effort to clean up the codebase and to add flexibility of the
actual download method used. For the configuration part he is
seeking input.
45. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00794.html
46. http://packages.debian.org/debmirror
Using proper Build Dependencies. Joey Hess [47]discovered a
glitch in the [48]policy with regards to build dependencies. Hence,
Wouter Verhelst [49]explained how Build-Depends and
Build-Depends-Indep have been created as a tool to make
autobuilding packages easier and [50]proposed to rewrite the
paragraph in the policy.
47. http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy-0309/msg00053.html
48. http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/
49. http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy-0309/msg00059.html
50. http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy-0309/msg00067.html
Debian-Installer Work Camp. An [51]invitation to the [52]8th
Oldenburg Linux developers meeting was sent to the debian-boot list
since it will host a [53]debian-installer debcamp. The meeting will
take place at the last weekend on September in Oldenburg, Germany.
Several developers who work on the debian-installer already
subscribed to the meeting.
51. http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot-0309/msg00146.html
52. http://oldenburger.linuxtage.de/Oldenburg2003/
53.
http://people.debian.org/~pere/debian-installer/di-debcamp-2003-1.html
Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you
update your systems if you have any of these packages
installed.
- [54]sane-backends — Several vulnerabilities.
- [55]XFree86 — Buffer overflows, denial of service.
- [56]MySQL — Buffer overflow.
54. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-379
55. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-380
56. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-381
New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to
the unstable Debian archive recently or contain important
updates.
- [57]athena-jot — Print out increasing, decreasing, random, or
redundant data, one per line. - [58]axiom — General purpose computer algebra system.
- [59]bookcase — An application for keeping track of your
books. - [60]gnuift — GNU Image Finding Tool – index and search images
by content. - [61]gtkguitune — Guitar and other instruments tuner.
- [62]gtranslator — PO-file editor by the Gnome I18N team.
- [63]pconsole — Parallel console shell for administering
clusters. - [64]potrace — Utility to transform bitmaps into vector
graphics. - [65]quagga — Inofficial successor of the Zebra BGP/OSPF/RIP
routing daemon.
57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/athena-jot.html
58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/math/axiom.html
59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/bookcase.html
60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/gnuift.html
61. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/gtkguitune.html
62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/gtranslator.html
63. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/pconsole.html
64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/potrace.html
65. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/quagga.html
Orphaned Packages. 17 packages were orphaned this week and
require a new maintainer. This makes a total of 212 orphaned
packages. Many thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed
to the Free Software community. Please see the [66]WNPP pages for
the full list, and please add a note to the bug report and retitle
it to ITA: if you plan to take over a package.
66. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/
- [67]affiche — Application to “stick” little notes on the
desktop. ([68]Bug#210592) - [69]distcc — Simple distributed compiler client and server.
([70]Bug#210397) - [71]docbook-utils — Convert Docbook files to other formats
(HTML, RTF, PS, man, PDF). ([72]Bug#211053) - [73]dpkg-cross — Tools for cross compiling Debian packages.
([74]Bug#211013) - [75]freenet-unstable — Peer-to-peer network for anonymous
publishing (unstable branch). ([76]Bug#210590) - [77]gamix — Graphical mixer for ALSA using gtk+.
([78]Bug#210730) - [79]mydns — DNS server using MySQL for data storage.
([80]Bug#209071) - [81]preferences — GNUstep Preferences.app.
([82]Bug#210594) - [83]preferences-app — GNUstep Preferences.app.
([84]Bug#210595) - [85]remind — Sophisticated reminder service.
([86]Bug#210891) - [87]sel — Fullscreen file-selection and execution tool.
([88]Bug#210593) - [89]tcl-sql — Tcl generic database interface.
([90]Bug#210393) - [91]ttysnoop — Allows you to spy on telnet+serial connections.
([92]Bug#210892) - [93]xdkcal — Desktop Calendar for X. ([94]Bug#210889)
- [95]xotcl — Object oriented extension for Tcl.
([96]Bug#210239) - [97]xpaste — Program to display the contents of the primary
paste buffer. ([98]Bug#209359) - [99]xxkb — Keyboard state indicator and switcher for xkb.
([100]Bug#210890)
67. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/affiche.html
68. http://bugs.debian.org/210592
69. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/distcc.html
70. http://bugs.debian.org/210397
71. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/docbook-utils.html
72. http://bugs.debian.org/211053
73. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/dpkg-cross.html
74. http://bugs.debian.org/211013
75. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/freenet-unstable.html
76. http://bugs.debian.org/210590
77. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/gamix.html
78. http://bugs.debian.org/210730
79. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/mydns.html
80. http://bugs.debian.org/209071
81. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/preferences.html
82. http://bugs.debian.org/210594
83. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/preferences-app.html
84. http://bugs.debian.org/210595
85. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/remind.html
86. http://bugs.debian.org/210891
87. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/sel.html
88. http://bugs.debian.org/210593
89. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/tcl-sql.html
90. http://bugs.debian.org/210393
91. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/ttysnoop.html
92. http://bugs.debian.org/210892
93. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/xdkcal.html
94. http://bugs.debian.org/210889
95. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/xotcl.html
96. http://bugs.debian.org/210239
97. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/xpaste.html
98. http://bugs.debian.org/209359
99. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/xxkb.html
100. http://bugs.debian.org/210890
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Please see the [101]contributing page to find out how to help.
We’re looking forward to receiving your mail at [102][email protected].
101. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
102. mailto:[email protected]