Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2003/39/
Debian Weekly News – September 30th, 2003
Welcome to this year’s 39th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter
for the Debian community. Joey attended the “Joey meets Joey”
session also known as Oldenburg Linux Developers [1]meeting last
weekend where both finally met. The meeting was quite
[2]successful, both in terms of Debian as well as for the Linux
kernel. A longer report on the Debian part will probably be sent to
the list later.
1. http://oldenburger.linuxtage.de/Oldenburg2003/
2. http://oldenburger.linuxtage.de/Oldenburg2003/success.html
Lessons in Packaging Linux Applications. Billy Biggs and Doug
Bell wrote about their [3]experiences in packaging [4]tvtime for
many distributions, including communication between packagers and
developers, dependency problems, dealing with bugs, and the Debian
menu system. They conclude that coordination between packagers from
different distributions could reduce work for the packagers and
reduce the number of distribution-specific bugs.
3. http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/992/
4. http://tvtime.sourceforge.net/
Committee for FSF-Debian Discussion. Bruce Perens [5]organised
people from the [6]Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Debian to
discuss issues revolving around the GNU [7]Free Documentation
License (FDL). Eben Moglen and Henri Poole (from the FSF), and
Benj. Mako Hill (from Debian) will serve on the committee. Bruce is
seeking another Debian representative with a constructive and
dispassionate attitude. The committee will bring the results of
their discussion back to their respective organisations for
consideration.
5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0309/msg01309.html
6. http://www.fsf.org/
7. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
Python Transition Problems. Colin Watson [8]summarised the
transition problems that are currently blocking Python 2.3 from
entering testing. It may be slightly incomplete, though. He listed
six packages that contain bugs which prevent them from entering
testing. The python-gnome package also suffers from various
dependency problems.
8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release-0309/msg00057.html
Timeout of ITP bugs. Søren Boll Overgaard [9]wondered how
long an ITP (Intent to Package) should be allowed to exist without
an uploaded package until it times out. In particular he was
[10]looking at the packaging notification for [11]thunderbird.
Anthony Towns [12]explained that ITPs should be considered as
advisory locks. If one doesn’t get responses from the person who
wanted to work on the package, one can just maintain the package on
his own.
9. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg01447.html
10. http://bugs.debian.org/196504
11. http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/
12. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg01471.html
Converting configure Scripts. Richard Atterer [13]wondered how
he is supposed to regenerate all the libtool and auto* files after
fixing some bugs. Martin Quinson [14]described in detail how to
proceed and provided a [15]script to build the autotools
scripts.
13. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg01483.html
14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg01490.html
15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg01522.html
Position Statement on the GNU FDL. After Branden Robinson
[16]announced that he had updated his [17]Free Documentation
License (FDL) [18]webpage, Manoj Srivastava started crafting a
[19]position statement. He believes that a position statement
should be issued under the Debian [20]constitution section 4.1.5.
Manoj’s page includes an annotated FDL, details of practical
problems with the FDL, results from Branden’s [21]FDL survey, and
related links.
16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0309/msg01255.html
17. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
18. http://people.debian.org/~branden/fdl/
19. http://people.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml
20. http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution
21. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0308/msg01031.html
Pristine Source Archives. Matthias Urlichs [22]noticed that many
packages seem to contain .orig.tar.gz files which may not be
directly related to the files actually available from upstream.
Manoj Srivastava [23]explained that pristine sources are already
desired, but not required. There are enough strange upstream
packaging practices that Debian can not mandate pristine
sources.
22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy-0309/msg00109.html
23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy-0309/msg00110.html
Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you
update your systems if you have any of these packages
installed.
- [24]marbles — Buffer overflow.
- [25]freesweep — Buffer overflow.
- [26]webfs — Buffer overflows, file and directory
exposure.
24. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-390
25. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-391
26. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-392
New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to
the unstable Debian archive recently or contain important
updates.
- [27]cpu — Console based LDAP user management tool.
- [28]firedns — Runtime binaries for firedns, an asynchronos DNS
resolver library. - [29]imms — Unobtrusive, automatic, and learning XMMS playlist
manager. - [30]kbarcode — A KDE Barcode Creation And Printing
Application. - [31]magicdev — A GNOME daemon for automatically
mounting/playing CDs. - [32]mlview — XML editor for GNOME environment.
- [33]pupa — The next generation of GNU GRUB.
- [34]pyro — Distributed object system for Python.
- [35]sound-juicer — GNOME 2 CD Ripper.
- [36]sumika — Management utility for dictionaries for input
methods.
27. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/cpu.html
28. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/firedns.html
29. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/imms.html
30. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/kbarcode.html
31. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/magicdev.html
32. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/editors/mlview.html
33. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/pupa.html
34. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/python/pyro.html
35. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/sound-juicer.html
36. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/sumika.html
Orphaned Packages. 1 package was orphaned this week and requires
a new maintainer. This makes a total of 195 orphaned packages. Many
thanks to the previous maintainer who contributed to the Free
Software community. Please see the [37]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.
37. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/
- [38]squidtaild — Squid log monitoring program.
([39]Bug#213402)
38. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/squidtaild.html
39. http://bugs.debian.org/213402
Want to continue reading DWN? Please help us create this
newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers who watch the
Debian community and report about what is going on. Please see the
[40]contributing page to find out how to help. We’re looking
forward to receiving your mail at [41][email protected].
40. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
41. mailto:[email protected]