[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Misc development news (#7)



The news are collected on http://wiki.debian.org/DeveloperNews
Please contribute: add important news related to your Debian work, too.

debhelper v7
------------

 debhelper v7 is ready for daring developers to use. In this version I've
 tried to learn some things from cdbs, and the result is a new "dh"
 command which can be used to create debian/rules files that are as short
 as 3 lines for many packages. I hope this will be more powerful and have
 a lower learning curve than cdbs, so give it a try.

  -- Joey Hess

Help the DPL
------------

 Steve McIntyre, our beloved DPL, has requested help[1] in handling the CD
 build infrastructure. Work is needed on an on-going basis to handle the
 weekly/daily ISO images and also at release time to generate and test the
 final ISO images.

  -- Raphaël Hertzog

 [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-cd/2008/04/msg00041.html

New debian-ports.org machine
----------------------------

 During the last week-end, debian-ports.org[2] has been moved to a new
 machine, which is faster and has a lot more disk space.

 The goal of this machine is to provide an infrastructure for unofficial
 architectures until they are integrated in the main Debian archive. This
 way porters could spend their time porting packages instead of fighting
 with the infrastructure.

 It provides:
 * a repository to host packages and install CD
 * a wanna-build database
 * a web interface to the build logs
 * a DNS hosting service
 * a POP server for build daemons behind NAT

 The machine is now capable of accepting new ports, currently sh4 seems to
 be the next one. To accept a new port, we require that a minimal set of
 .deb packages has been ported, for example enough to run a buildd. Don't
 hesitate to ask for more details.

 I would like to thank Skyrock/Telefun for hosting the machine, Debian
 for buying it, and our former DPL, Sam Hocevar, who made this possible.

  -- Aurélien Jarno

 [2] http://www.debian-ports.org

Debconf translation updates
---------------------------

 Days have arrived where Debian developers and maintainers are putting
 their packages in shape for lenny. That is Good.

 Among those are all these tiny changes for trivial issues reported by
 lintian that you ignored up to now (lintian got dozens of new checks since
 Etch, did you know?). That is Good.

 Among those are the various warnings about writing style in debconf
 templates (use of first person, interrogative form for
 select/multiselect, no sentences in notes "titles"). Maintainers are
 tempted to fix those. That is Good.

 Then, they upload fixed packages. That is Bad... :-)

 Please consider, when modifying debconf templates, to use the 
 shiny tool named "podebconf-report-po", from the po-debconf package. It
 allows maintainers to send out "call for translations" to translators
 who have incomplete work *and even* send out calls for new
 translations.

 One recommended use for that is:

 cd debian/
 debconf-updatepo
 podebconf-report-po --call --languageteam --with-translators --deadline=`date -d '+10days'`

 (see 'man podebconf-report-po' for more and more options... The above
 will send both a call for updates to existing translators, CC'ed to
 translation teams AND a call for new translations to debian-i18n, with
 a 10 days translation update "window", which is the minimum we need)

  -- Christian Perrier

Planet Debian via Mail(ing list)
--------------------------------

 Joey Schulze announced the existence of a mailing list that
 distributes articles aggregated at Planet Debian[3].
 This enables interested people to read web log articles without having
 the need to use a feed reader or to setup a personal rss to mail
 conversion utility. Here is the full text of his
 announcement[4]:

 /--
 Every once in a while some people complain about the implied need to
 read articles on Planet Debian who don't have the desire to graze the
 website on their own. There are RSS feeds but this requires the use of
 RSS feed readers.

 Most of these people are subscribed to several mailing lists in order to
 keep up with the development within the Debian project. For those people
 I have created a mailing list several years ago that distributes
 articles from Planet Debian via mail. This way, Planet Debian is just
 similar to a mailing list without threads and more people can keep up
 with it.

 Those who are interested execute the following command:
 echo subscribe ticker-planetdebian | mail majordomo@lists.infodrom.org
 \--

  -- Stefano Zacchiroli

 [3] http://planet.debian.org/
 [4] http://www.infodrom.org/~joey/log/?200804201121

-- 
Raphaël Hertzog

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

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: Digital signature


Reply to: