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Bug Squashing around the world - more about the BSP-Marathon



Hi,

this mail should serve both as a reminder of the planned BSPs around the
world the upcoming weekends[1] and as a proposal for some tasks to
tackle then.

At this point there are two "real-life" BSPs planned for this weekend,
08th-10th September in Vienna[2] (Austria) and Zürich[3] (Switzerland)
and another two BSPs planned for the weekend 15th-17th September in
Jülich[4] (Germany) and San Cristobal[5] (Venezula).

If you would like to attend one of these parties, you can find
additional links regarding these events on
http://wiki.debian.org/BSPMarathon

First a few necessary words on coordination: #debian-bugs on
irc.debian.org will be the main channel for overall coordination.  Do
not hesitate to ask there before tackling any task; there will certainly
be people available that can advise against tackling problematic tasks
or tasks already worked on, and give general advice.

When working on specific bugs, please claim[6] them or let a DD claim
them for you. See http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/claims.cgi for a list
of claims. Tasks that can not be expressed by a claim but are big enough
to warrant a notice for others should be noted on
http://wiki.debian.org/OngoingBSP or pages linked from there.

There should be plenty of bugs for all levels of complexity, programming
language or legal skills and time requirements. So if you never attended
to a BSP before and want to help, *now* is the right time to start.

The RC Bug Squashing HOWTO[7] by Steve Langasek gives a good
introduction and is probably a must-read for beginners. But don't
hesitate to ask questions in #debian-bugs, we will be eager to help you
to do some work. :)

Non-DDs can also easily contribute by creating patches and/or testing
existing ones. Just send them to the related bug report, a DD can easily
pick it up from there. See also the end of this mail for a list of
useful links.

Procedures:

During the BSPs we should use a 0-Day NMU policy again, that means
uploads that fix RC bugs that are more than a week old can be uploaded
directly. If you feel unsure about a patch and/or if the patch is rather
invasive, please consider asking on #debian-bugs for review and/or
giving the maintainer some time to react by uploading to the DELAYED
queue[8]. If you are unsure whether your package upload might break an
ongoing transition, PLEASE speak up on #debian-release and ask for
advice there.


Help Etch forward:

- RC Bugfixing. One way to help is fixing release critical bugs. Here[9]
  you can find a list of RC bugs affecting Etch.

- Test the installer. d-i beta3 was just released[10] recently and should
  be tested by many people to help the people working on it judge
  whether it is a worthy release candidate (they sure hope it is :) See
  http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ for more information on
  how to get it, known issues, etc.

- Test Sarge->Etch upgrades. This is particularly useful with "real"
  systems since you might notice problems that will never occur in more
  or less clean chroots (hint: there is no one saying you can't use a
  copy of your real system ;)

- Verify Release Goals. As one of our major release goals is pervasive
  IPv6 support, all network related applications should be able to work
  with both, IPv4 and IPv6.  If you have the possibility to do so,
  please test IPv6 integration in all packages you use and report bugs
  to the BTS or even better, fix them.

- Translate. There are quite a few .pot files out there waiting for you.
  ;) Start at http://www.debian.org/intl/l10n/. (If you're new to l10n
  and/or new to l10n in Debian, try to find someone at your BSP or on
  IRC to guide you through the first steps. This helps avoid wasted
  effort and frustration.)

- Fix bugs in orphaned packages. At
  http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?maint=packages@qa.debian.org
  you can find all bugs in orphaned packages, free to be squashed by
  anyone.

- Fix bugs tagged "help". See
  http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=help for a list.

- Fix bugs in your own packages and in packages you often use. Also help
  on reproducing bugs, if there are unreproducible[11].

I personally will attend the BSP in Jülich and hope to see many of you
during that weekend there or on IRC.

Greetings,
Martin 'BSP Marathon coordinator' Zobel-Helas <zobel@debian.org>

[1] http://wiki.debian.org/BSPMarathon
[2] http://wiki.debian.org/BSP2006Vienna
[3] http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/ch/Marathon
[4] http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/de/credativ
[5] http://wiki.debian.org/BSPVenezuela
[6] http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2004/03/msg00165.html
[7] http://people.debian.org/~vorlon/rc-bugsquashing.html
[8] http://people.debian.org/~djpig/delayed.html
[9] http://tinyurl.com/jehw9
[10] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006/08/msg00009.html
[11] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=unreproducible


-- 
Martin Zobel-Helas			GPG Key-ID:    0x5d64f870
Debian Developer			eMail Privat:  zobel@ftbfs.de
Debian Stable Release Manager		eMail Debian:  zobel@debian.org

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