Re: Maemo's way forward as an Open project
On Mar 29, 2011, at 11:17, Hector Oron wrote:
> 2011/3/29 Jeremiah Foster <jeremiah@jeremiahfoster.com>:
>
>> I'd like to say to the Maemo Council, old and new, that there is an
>> excellent way to move Maemo forward. Not just as a legacy operating
>> system for Nokia devices, but even for newer devices. That way
>> forward is through Debian.
Excellent questions Hector. Let me see if I can answer them clearly (hopefully I'll get some help from folks on the debian-derivatives list.)
> * As Debian Developer how could we help on such task?
If you're already a DD and have permission to upload to the repos, then perhaps adding packages that you find relevant for Debian from Maemo would be a good place to start. If these packages are already in Debian, then perhaps any relevant code and patches might get added?
> Maemo packages follow Debian Policy?
Maemo packages should follow a fairly reasonable subset of Debian policy yes. I don't think they will necessarily be "lintian clean" but I think that the effort to get them there might not be so huge. Lots of packages in maemo are direct ports from Debian, so there really should be not so many packages in maemo that shouldn't build from source in Debian.
> * As Maemo Developer what should I do to get my packages into Debian?
There are essentially two routes to submit packages to Debian if you are not already a Debian Developer with permission to upload to the Debian repos. (And there is no reason anyone on this list should not seek to become a DD if they are not already, many of your maemo skills are transferable!) The two routes are via mentors and via a packaging team.
The mentors route means that you subscribe to mentors@lists.debian.org and submit your finished package from maemo to the mentors web site. Often on the mentors list someone will take a look at it and fix something if they see it as wrong or what have you, and then they can upload it to debian directly. This is an excellent route to start yourself on your way to becoming a full fledged Debian Developer.
The other route is to find a packaging team, say debian-python if your software is python based, and submit your package there. Packaging teams in Debian are efficient because you can share the burden with others and there are some special tools (like PET) which help you with the work. This is also an excellent way to become a DD.
There are some interesting projects like DEX which aim to reduce the patch sets from Debian to derivatives and already much work has been done in this regard with Ubuntu, maemo would be a logical candidate for this work as well. So joining the DEX project if you are a maemo dev is a really great way to get involved. http://dex.alioth.debian.org/
Hopefully that is a start.
Regards,
Jeremiah
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