Hello Debian world, It has been quite some time since our last bits mail, so we thought it is about time to run another one past you. And the same happens to be true of the last week-long team meeting, so two bits in one mail. Short summary for the impatient: We have a live codebase and team, both of which change. And we will meet from 14th til 21st September, expect archive outages in that time. Team introduction -------------------------- Let us start with a short introduction of the current team, as we recently switched our internal setup a little. Our active team consists of the FTPMasters, Joerg Jaspert Mark Hymers and the FTP Assistants, Mike O'Connor Alexander Reichle-Schmehl Ansgar Burchardt Luca Falavigna. In addition to the above named we also have a group of FTPWizard, which consists of former team members, who are currently too busy to be actively involved in the above groups. But they carry valuable experience and can support us with their knowledge on IRC and mail and occasionally by direct actions on the machines, so we recognize them here. Note that this "position" is independent of former Master/Assistant status. Currently there is a single FTPWizard, Torsten Werner. And last, but not least, we also have a role called FTPTrainee. This role, as the name says, is used to train new team members in the daily work we have to do - and to allow them to see if this is really work they want to continue doing. We currently have three members in this position, but we would like to have more, read on. Call for volunteers -------------------------- As usual when posting longish mails to d-d-a about our nice and beloved FTP Team, a call for volunteers is on order. And here it is! Ever felt compelled to do the hard groundwork? Ever wanted to help at a nicely central place inside Debian? Or just want to write some Python code and still look for a good place to stick it in? Here we are. Come join the Nav^Wteam. Just sign over there to the right, or even easier, mail us. We won't bite you, thats for sure. At least not right away. :) The criteria are the same as always: You need to be a DD (except for coding only, though it helps to know the usual flow of a package) and you need to be able to deal with the existing team members. An occasional flame should also not disturb you, if you are working in the NEW queue you will stand between the people uploading and the packages entering the archive, rejecting something is not always liked much. (But you often get positive replies and thanks, to keep your spirits up :) ). And - if you get headaches when reading legal texts - we all do. But it is needed and things like NEW are mainly about that, the ftpteam is *the* one place to decide if something is ok for Debian to distribute or not, and you will have to take this decision. (Yes, there is more, but this is the main point you are going to check). Obviously the other points we made in earlier mails, like [1], still apply too. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Another good way helping the ftpteam is - by not joining us! Yvan eht Nioj! (Or for people not watching Simpsons: Join the Navy!) Err, no, of course not, but: Join the QA team! There is a lot of work commonly associated to the QA group but not many people doing it. You could help out there, which in turn will help us again. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ FTP Team Sprint --------------- As already mentioned in the beginning, we will have a meeting this month. It will run from Friday 14th to Friday 21st September. We will meet in the Office Space sponsored by the Office Factory, in Fulda, Germany. If you are interested to join and think it would help the meeting, feel free to contact us. We do have space for 2 people left. During this time archive outages should be expected, as we plan to work on new and shiny stuff, including but not limited to: * Getting rid of the DMUA flag, replacing it with something much more flexible, and convenient (see here[2] for a rough draft) * Merging of backports.d.o into the main archive host. Much of the code is there, but there are still various little bits and pieces to be dealt with. * Make use of our dak-unpriv user * Improve our ftpmaster playmachine, an external host we use to test dak, but which needs a redesign of its setup * Finalize our proposal for Debians PPAs based on the new multi-archive abilities, then get it out for discussion with the other people who will be involved. * Lots of smaller code changes everywhere in our codebase * Continue the dists/ reworking * Lots more. GSOC conclusion --------------- This year we participated in GSOC again, implementing true multi-archive capability in dak. This was a pre-requisite for merging our "outer" archives, like security and backports, into the main archive, thus greatly reducing the maintenance overhead. As written above, this is going to happen for backports soon. The security archive has a few more requirements making it not yet feasible to merge. Most of the code has been merged, with some follow-ups, bugfixes, and improvements on the sprint agenda. It is currently in use internally in the archive - the NEW queue, the various policy queues (think proposed-updates), and the buildd directories are handled as their own archives. [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2010/03/msg00003.html [2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/06/msg00029.html -- bye, Joerg You tried your best and failed miserably. The lesson is: never try.
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