Re: Y2K.

["Christian T. Steigies" <cts@debian.org>]

Moin,
On Wed, Jan 05, 2000 at 06:37:30PM -0500, James Waterhouse wrote:

>     you are doing a great job and I'm sorry that some of us newbies are not
I said thank the kernel hackers, I stopped doing that a year ago... no time
> grateful. I also had wondered how you ever make a living seeing that you (and
> others like you like Michael) are answering questions all the time. As for the low
> numbers of maintainers... how do I go about be coming one? (I'll find that on a
> webpage so no need to answer that) I'm not really setup yet to even install debian
yes, there should some pages about how to apply for new maintainer. but
first of course, you should have debian (unstable!) running, then you should
make up your mind if you want to maintain or port. we need porters
(recompiling source packages on m68k). So Id say, once youve set up debian,
you try to build some packages from debian sources, read the packaging
manual and stuff. Once you can do that, you should learn about the
source-dependencies system. James and Roman build an excellant tool, which
allows building with correct source dependencies (most of the time...) with
little effort. A local debian mirror (or a good network connection) help
with that. Unfortunately not all developers use this system yet, or not
correct, so there are many bugs to report... but of course, most of the
packages build without any problems, that is handled by the build demon.

So if you want to help now, before being a maintainer, you can report bugs,
fix bugs. Look here for my current problems
 http://www.debian.org/~cts/failed_logs/
Some are easy to fix, some are build-depends, some require a little more
work. Some programming knowledge would be good, you should know how to
handle Makefiles and diffs, etc. If you want to work on these, first check
the bug tracking system, if a bug exists allready, then try to reproduce it
on your system, try to fix it. Then send a patch with a fix, if possible.
I know, this requires an awful lot of learning, I can not explain it all
now, I simply dont have the time. Read debian-mentors for help on packages,
read the debian documentation, its all out there, you only have to find it.

> (still have to get hold of the MacOS... a mac connected to the internet), and my
> comps are old and slow (it's a Mac IIci, I've also got a Mac LC 630, and then there
> is the dead Amiga 2000HD), but I still would like to offer my services to the Linux
> comunity just  to put something back for all I have taken. Well just wanted to let
> you know you are appreciated and good luck on the thesis.
thanks.
Well, I think (personal opinion) an additional machine for us connected to
the net, would be great. We could really need a slink buildd (what happened
to cookie monster?), so if you could set up slink on that machine and give
root rights to Roman (and a few others). Plus I think it would be nice to
have a Mac to test things on, right now most is done on Amigas, plus a few
Ataris here and there (I keep forgetting David again :-).

Christian
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