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Misc developer news (#9)



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Advice on quilt usage and compatibility with new source format
--------------------------------------------------------------

 To prepare a future switch to the "3.0 (quilt)" source package format, I
 tried to convert the whole archive and to rebuild the packages
 afterwards. This resulted in lots of improvements on dpkg-source as I
 adapted the code to make it support many of the existing build setups but
 not all problems could be fixed on the dpkg-source side. I filed a bunch
 of bugs[1] for packages that need additional changes. To ensure
 compatibility with the new source format, please try to follow the
 guidelines below.

 For packages already using quilt:
  * Make sure that all patches apply with -p1 (and not -p0). This is the
    default in quilt but some manually imported patches are only applicable
    with -p0 (and this option is forced in the series file). This can be done
    with quilt refresh (more on this below (*)).
  * Make sure that the quilt patches don't modify/create/delete files
    within the debian directory.
  * Make sure that the .diff.gz doesn't contain cruft related to
    auto-generated/updated files (like config.guess/sub, see #482716[2] to
    avoid this). The upstream changes in the .diff.gz are like a new patch at
    the end of the quilt series. It must be possible to unapply it during
    "debian/rules clean" and to reapply it just before "debian/rules build".
  * Don't hand-edit patches. If you do it nevertheless, please "quilt
    refresh" them to ensure that the various offsets in the patches are
    right.
  * Store the patches in debian/patches/ and the series file as
    debian/patches/series.
  * Don't override the location of the ".pc" directory.
  * Don't reinvent rules to apply/unapply patches, but rely on
    /usr/share/quilt/quilt.make that you can include from debian/rules.
  * If you use CDBS, use /usr/share/cdbs/1/rules/patchsys-quilt.mk but
    don't change the top level source directory with DEB_SRCDIR (or change it
    but apply patches from the top-level directory anyway by setting
    DEB_QUILT_TOPDIR to ".").

 For other packages:
  * Don't keep the quilt series file if you stopped using quilt in your
    source package.
  * Avoid tarball in tarball, dpkg-source can't apply patches if the
    source files are not available directly after extraction of the .orig
    tarball.

 (*) Use this small recipe to refresh all the patches. This will ensure
 they are fully correct and will be applicable with "patch -p1".

  quilt pop -a; while quilt push; do quilt refresh -p1; done

 Note that you can also use quilt refresh -pab if you prefer fake
 top-level directory names (those have the advantage not to change when
 the directory name changes. Directories for source package typically have
 the upstream version embedded).

  -- Raphaël Hertzog

 [1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?archive=0;tag=3.0-quilt-by-default;repeatmerged=1;users=hertzog@debian.org
 [2] http://bugs.debian.org/482716

update-grub starts using UUIDs by default
-----------------------------------------

 Latest versions of update-grub (0.97-40 in GRUB Legacy and
 1.96+20080601-2 in GRUB 2) start using filesystem UUIDs by default.
 Although only GRUB 2 uses them internally for fetching its own files,
 both of them detect the UUID of your root filesystem and pass that to
 Linux in the "root" parameter.

 In GRUB Legacy, this change affects only generation of "kopt" parameter
 when no previous menu.lst existed. If you have an existing menu.lst and
 are only updating it, your kopt will remain unmodified. Since this means
 only new installs will be affected, it would be preferable if existing
 installs explicitly tested this functionality by renaming menu.lst and
 re-running update-grub, so that serious problems (if any exists) can be
 detected in time before the freeze.

  -- Robert Millan

wxwidgets2.8 upload to unstable
-------------------------------

 Adeodato Simó recently uploaded wxwidgets2.8[3] to unstable. This is a
 long requested update, but package maintainers are encouraged to be
 conservative about using it: Only packages that don't work with
 wxwidgets2.6[4] should use the new version, stability and new bug issues
 are expected to happen when switching too fast. This is also the reason
 behind the decision to keep wxwindows2.6 as default for Lenny[5]. Testing
 with the new widgetset for such applications that still would work with
 wxwindows2.6 should happen in private or experimental before decisions
 are done.

  -- Gerfried Fuchs

 [3] http://packages.debian.org/source/sid/wxwidgets2.8
 [4] http://packages.debian.org/source/sid/wxwidgets2.6
 [5] http://www.debian.org/releases/lenny

Volunteers needed to handle update of release notes
---------------------------------------------------

 Frans Pop has acted as the lead editor for the Sarge and Etch release
 notes but recently resigned from this task[6]. For the Lenny release
 notes a new team of editors is needed, but so far no one has stepped up
 to work on that. This is a good opportunity for non-developers to help
 while working in close coordination with the release team. Feel free to
 join and start acting on the open bugs[7].

  -- Raphael Hertzog

 [6] http://lists.debian.org/debian-doc/2008/05/msg00008.html
 [7] http://bugs.debian.org/release-notes


-- 
Raphaël Hertzog

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

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