Debian Weekly News - 12 to 18 Jan 1999
[ Also available on the web at http://www.debian.org/~joeyh/weeklynews/ ]
Debian Weekly News - 12 to 18 Jan 1999
Welcome to the third edition Debian Weekly News, a newsletter for the
Debian developer community. Overall it's been a slow week, but there's
still a fair amount of interesting things happening. However, a great
deal of it is behind the scenes, on the debian-private mailing list
and I cannot summarize it here. A plea to everyone: please think
before posting to debian-private; debian-devel is usually a better
choice.
This [1]just in: slink will enter deep freeze on Wednesday, January
20th! 9 packages will be removed from the distribution due to critical
bugs unless they are fixed immediately; 36 other critical bugs must be
fixed before we release.
Elections for the next Debian project leader have begun. Elections
will remain open for 3 weeks, closing on February 3rd. The [2]ballot
lists 4 candidates: Ben Collins, Joseph Carter, Richard Braakman, and
Wichert Akkerman. For more information about the candidates, see Lalo
Martins' [3]interview. Of course, only Debian developers can [4]vote.
This topic has come up before on the lists but we've not yet found a
solution. What is Debian to do when someone wants to package up
hundreds of megabytes of free data as part of Debian? This time
around it's some [5]astronomical data, but biological data, map data,
etc, have come up in the past. Such huge packages could require Debian
to expand onto yet another CD, for data sets that are useful to only a
small number of people.
Another interesting question [6]raised on the lists this week: should
mutt become the standard Debian mail reader? Elm is currently our
standard mail reader. The small amount of [7]information we have so
far from the popularity-contest package indicates that mutt is used
more than elm, at least by Debian developers. But elm is more standard
on unix systems as a whole than the upstart mutt, and is easier for a
new user to configure.
The Open Group has released their first LSB compliance [8]test suite.
[9]Reaction so far on the lists has been very negative, both
concerning the scope of the test suite and the actual substance of it
(for instance, it appears to contain i386isms). Joseph Carter is
[10]compiling a list of these problems so we can bring them to The
Open Group's attention.
It looks like we are adding the tecra boot floppies back because a few
people [11]reported problems with the latest boot floppies and
laptops.
Debian Hurd is the only port people who own just i386 hardware can
work on. The Hurd port is in that interesting point it its development
where it's right on the edge of being usable. If you're interested in
dealing with this up-and-coming port, there's a list of [12]tasks to
work on. Of course the Hurd has some interesting new developments in
it; one of these is the ability to mount multiple filesystems in the
same namespace. That ability makes the deep directory tree used by the
FSSTND unnecessary. There's been a [13]long discussion on the
debian-hurd mailing list this week about linking /usr to / on hurd
systems, to allow a flatter directory tree while still preserving
compatibility with the rest of Debian. Interesting stuff.
Debian sparc has finally been [14]frozen.
Package releases this week include:
* For all those interested in XFree 3.3.3, Ben Gertzfield [15]posted
that the Debian JP group has made their own 3.3.3 packages. They
can be found at [16]ftp.debian.or.jp. Your mileage may vary, but
it may be something to try before pulling you hair out when the
binaries from the XFree group give you problems.
* Another version of the cd creation scripts has been [17]released
at the [18]usual place. This set features the ability to install
from a tree of symlinks enabling people to create cd's using
multiple hard drives or over nfs mounted mirrors. The next version
of these scripts will probably have more [19]support for the other
ports.
Packages in trouble this week:
* A severe [20]security hole was found in the design of the ftpwatch
package. Since the problem is with the design of the program, the
only fix is a complete rewrite, so ftpwatch will be pulled from
Debian.
* The version of [21]debhelper in potato had a minor bug in its
support of the menu package. The bug only triggers on rare
occasions, but it is in any packages that use the menu system and
were built with debhelper versions 1.2.21 or 1.2.22. If you
maintain such a package you should rebuild it with the fixed
version of debhelper.
Server news this week:
* The [22]bug tracking system has a new easy way to get to a given
bug report. http://bugs.debian.org/foo will pull up the bug report
for package foo; http://bugs.debian.org/nnnn will pull up a given
bug by number.
* [23]ftp.br.debian.org is up, a new official Debian mirror for
Brazil.
Followups to news items from last week:
* Ben Collins [24]released a new version of the source depends code,
"a full blown implementation (not to be confused with a hack)". It
includes versioned dependencies.
_________________________________________________________________
To receive this newsletter weekly in your mailbox, [25]subscribe to
the debian-devel-announce mailing list.
[26]Back issues of this newsletter are available.
_________________________________________________________________
Copyright © 1999 by [27]Joey Hess, with contributions from Brandon
Mitchel and Robert de Forest
This newsletter is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the [28]GNU General Public License as
published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at
your option) any later version.
References
1. http://www.debian.org/~joeyh/weeklynews/weeklynews3.mail.html#1
2. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-announce-9901/msg00017.html
3. http://www.debian.org/~lalo/
4. http://vote.debian.org/1999/vote_0001
5. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-mentors-9901/msg00051.html
6. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9901/msg01088.html
7. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9901/msg01119.html
8. http://ct.us.mirrors.freshmeat.net/news/1999/01/18/916679929.html
9. http://www.debian.org/~joeyh/weeklynews/weeklynews3.mail.html#2
10. http://www.debian.org/~joeyh/weeklynews/weeklynews3.mail.html#3
11. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-testing-9901/msg00130.html
12. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-hurd-9901/msg00101.html
13. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-hurd-9901/msg00081.html
14. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-sparc-9901/msg00010.html
15. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-testing-9901/msg00125.html
16. ftp://ftp.debian.or.jp/debian-jp/dists/unstable-jp/main/binary-i386/x11/
17. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-testing-9901/msg00131.html
18. http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~stevem/DebianCD/
19. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-cd-9901/msg00058.html
20. http://bugs.debian.org/31627
21. http://kitenet.net/programs/debhelper/
22. http://bugs.debian.org/
23. ftp://ftp.br.debian.org/
24. http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9901/msg00991.html
25. http://www.debian.org/MailingLists/subscribe
26. http://www.debian.org/~joeyh/weeklynews/backissues.html
27. mailto:joeyh@debian.org
28. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
--
see shy jo
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