The news are collected on http://wiki.debian.org/DeveloperNews Please contribute short news about your work/plans/subproject. In this issue: + Misc news on the QA infrastructure + Shrinking the archive with dedup.debian.net + DEP 12 started + Turtle RDF meta-data for the PTS + An easier way to find work-needing packages of interest Misc news on the QA infrastructure ---------------------------------- The PTS gained package descriptions and other changes to help increase its usefulness for more folks. The watch file upload web interface (called rolex and written by Vasudev Kamath) was deployed to help make it easier to help fixing watch files[1]. The PTS gained links to archives of the mailing lists used by Debian teams for commonly used list servers and to the dedup (see below), clang and screenshots services. More work on the semantic aspects of the PTS was done, a new wnpp site was setup and DEP-12 about upstream metadata was setup. These items are discussed in more detail below. The Debian QA infrastructure always needs more folks working on it, so if you have some spare time, please check out the code and come join us on the debian-qa mailing list and IRC channel. [1] http://wiki.debian.org/qa.debian.org/HowToHelpWithFixingWatchFiles Shrinking the archive with dedup.debian.net ------------------------------------------- A manual or binary placed twice in a package can needlessly grow a package without anyone noticing. Many such cases are easy opportunities to shrink binary packages by replacing one copy with a link to the other. dedup.debian.net[2] lists files shared between packages and summarizes the potential gain. Being a diagnostics tool it also lists e.g. duplication of copyright files, so unless the gain is significant looking into details is likely not worth the effort. It can also be used to discover embedded copies. It therefore also looks at gzip decompressed contents and decompressed PNG image data where applicable. That way it can find compressed GPL copies for example. This tool is very much work in progress, so ideas for improvement and other kind of feedback are very much welcome. The service is linked from the PTS for packages with large amounts of duplicate files and there are tips for reducing duplication[3] available. -- Helmut Grohne <helmut@subdivi.de> [2] http://dedup.debian.net [3] http://wiki.debian.org/dedup.debian.net DEP 12 started -------------- The Debian Enhancement Proposal[4] number 12 (DEP 12[5]), for per-package machine-readable metadata about Upstream, was started. It will specify the syntax of the debian/upstream file in source packages. Discussion takes place on the debian-qa mailing list. -- Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org> [4] http://dep.debian.net [5] http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep12 Turtle RDF meta-data for the PTS -------------------------------- The PTS[6] now produces RDF meta-data[7] in the Turtle format[8], which is both machine-readable and human-readable (at least much more than the RDF/XML format previously used). These meta-data could provide authoritative reference Semantic Web resources for all Debian source packages, to build Linked Data applications, for instance in relation to upstream projects or other distros publishing their own RDF meta-data (using DOAP or ADMS.SW). The full RDF dump currently contains more than 2.1 million triples. More details in obergix's blog post[9]. -- Olivier Berger <obergix@debian.org> [6] http://packages.qa.debian.org/ [7] http://packages.qa.debian.org/common/RDF.html [8] http://www.w3.org/TR/turtle/ [9] http://www-public.telecom-sudparis.eu/~berger_o/weblog/2013/02/01/the-debian-package-tracking-system-now-publishes-turtle-rdf-meta-data/ An easier way to find work-needing packages of interest ------------------------------------------------------- wnpp-by-tags.debian.net[10] makes it easier to find packages to adopt, by organising O/BA/RFA/RFH bug reports based on debtags. You can, for instance, find work-needing packages based on the language they're implemented in[11], the UI toolkit[12] they use, or the field of study[13] they belong to. The service has been revamped with the Debian stylesheet and got per-tag RSS feeds. -- Serafeim Zanikolas <sez@debian.org> [10] http://wnpp-by-tags.debian.net/ [11] http://wnpp-by-tags.debian.net/tags/implemented-in/index.html [12] http://wnpp-by-tags.debian.net/tags/uitoolkit/index.html [13] http://wnpp-by-tags.debian.net/tags/field/index.html -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part