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Misc developement news (#3)



The news are collected on http://wiki.debian.org/DeveloperNews
Feel free to contribute.

Updating libraries with symbols files
-------------------------------------

 A few packages of libraries have already been updated to provide symbols
 files (like zlib1g, libxml2, libogg0, liburiparser1, libvorbis0a). The
 adoption rate is still slow but I expect it to increase now that
 dpkg-shlibdeps in dpkg 1.14.14 supports injection of versions extracted
 from build-dependencies in the real dependency. This is a safety measure
 suggested by Loïc Minier[1].

 For package like libgtk2-0 where symbol based dependency could generate a
 dependency weaker than what's really needed at run-time, it offers a way
 for the package using the library to provide a minimal version for the
 dependency. In the case of libgtk2-0, the minimal version of libgtk2-dev
 required at build-time (as identified in the Build-Depends header) would
 be used a minimal version to put in the run-time dependency. For this the
 symbols file needs to indicate to dpkg-shlibdeps the name of the
 corresponding -dev package. This is done with a special header called
 "Build-Depends-Package" (see man dpkg-shlibdeps and man deb-symbols for
 details and precise syntax).

 If you add symbols files to packages, please follow the guidelines
 provided here[2] and feel free to contribute to this wiki page. I'm also
 looking for volunteers to identify the libraries with most reverse
 dependencies, to file bug reports on them and to coordinate the work to
 make it a release goal to have the most important libraries use symbols
 files.

  -- Raphaël Hertzog

 [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2007/12/msg00036.html
 [2] http://wiki.debian.org/UsingSymbolsFiles

Mark easy bugs to let new contributors help you
-----------------------------------------------

 Lucas Nussbaum discussed in his blog how Debian could be more friendly
 towards new contributors[3]. He also created a new wiki page[4]:
 http://wiki.debian.org/HelpDebian/Start

 Another important point in his proposal is to mark easy bugs with a
 special tag so that new contributors can do real and useful work that
 gets quickly integrated. See the explanation on this page:
 http://wiki.debian.org/qa.debian.org/GiftTag

  -- Raphaël Hertzog

 [3] http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=268
 [4] http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=269

D-I i18n news
-------------

 Christian Perrier gave some news[5] of the translation work of
 debian-installer. A new African language (Amharic) has been enabled, and
 the translations have been split in 5 levels according to the importance
 of each string (level 1 for strings always used and level 5 for strings
 used only in special case on non-mainstream architectures). This split
 means that translations can be activated sooner while still having a good
 coverage of most installation scenarios.

  -- Raphaël Hertzog

 [5] http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2007/12/23#d-i_i18n-news

packages.qa.debian.org (PTS) update
-----------------------------------

 Well, you have probably already noticed, but the PTS[6] has got a
 facelift: new layout and new css with (supposedly) Debian "social"
 colors.

  -- Stefano Zacchiroli

 [6] http://packages.qa.debian.org

bugs.qa.debian.org update
-------------------------

 The QA bug-squashing web pages[7] have been belatedly updated for lenny,
 and their idea of the contents of the base system fixed so that it no
 longer needs to be updated manually.

  -- Colin Watson

 [7] http://bugs.qa.debian.org/

Fonts review updates
--------------------

 The Fonts Task Force[8] enabled weekly updates to the review of fonts in
 Debian[9] and will use this to identify non-free fonts, duplicated fonts
 and fonts that need to be split into separate packages.

  -- Paul Wise

 [8] http://wiki.debian.org/Fonts
 [9] http://pkg-fonts.alioth.debian.org/review/

-- 
Raphaël Hertzog

Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch :
http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/

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