The news are collected on https://wiki.debian.org/DeveloperNews Please contribute short news about your work/plans/subproject. In this issue: + Gift QA tag is now an official tag called "newcomer" (⎈) + Newcomer bugs for pseudopackages in how-can-i-help + MySQL server and client virtual packages + As-installed package checking + Making packages secure with systemd service files Gift QA tag is now an official tag called "newcomer" (⎈) -------------------------------------------------------- The gift usertag[1] has been made an official tag, and is now called "newcomer" and is represented by a ship's wheel (⎈). Please use this tag to indicate suitable bugs for new contributors to Debian. -- Don Armstrong [1] https://wiki.debian.org/qa.debian.org/GiftTag Newcomer bugs for pseudopackages in how-can-i-help -------------------------------------------------- The maintainers of the package how-can-i-help[2] was recently updated to show newcomer bugs affecting pseudo-packages. If you're looking for new contributors to your team you may have a look at your team's related pseudo-packages[3] and tag the suitable bugs for newcomers as "newcomer". And of course, everybody is invited to install how-can-i-help and help with those bugs. -- Laura Arjona Reina [2] https://wiki.debian.org/how-can-i-help [3] https://www.debian.org/Bugs/pseudo-packages MySQL server and client virtual packages ---------------------------------------- Over the last 6 months, we have introduced a few new MySQL variants into Debian and expanded the use of the existing (but never formalized) virtual-mysql-* virtual packages to supporting switching in/out the different variants. The wider intent is that all maintainers of packages that depend on mysql-server or mysql-client are encouraged to add as alternative dependencies the virtual packages virtual-mysql-server[4] or virtual-mysql-client[5]. This will enable the alternative MariaDB and Percona packages to satisfy the dependency. MySQL 5.5, MariaDB 5.5 and PXC 5.5 are all binary-compatible and most likely to work with any program that currently uses MySQL in Debian. If you prefer some of the non-Oracle versions of MySQL, you can even default to one of them using syntax like for example 'Depends: mariadb-server | virtual-mysql-server'. -- James Page [4] https://packages.debian.org/sid/virtual-mysql-server [5] https://packages.debian.org/sid/virtual-mysql-client As-installed package checking ----------------------------- Several tools for checking packages as installed on the system include piuparts[6] (install/upgrade/remove testing) and DEP-8[7] / autopkgtest[8] / debci[9] (functional testing) and jenkins[10] (whole system testing). A lesser known tool called adequate[11] checks packages installed on the system and reports bugs and policy violations. It reports incompatible licenses, missing libraries/symbols/symbol versions, broken ABIs, broken binfmt entries, missing alternatives, missing copyright files, broken symlinks, program name collisions, obsolete conffiles, Python byte compiling issues and more. Please consider checking your packages with piuparts, autopkgtest and adequate before you upload. piuparts from jessie and later will automatically check packages with adequate if you install adequate. Up-to-date wheezy backports of both piuparts and adequate are available. -- Paul Wise [6] https://piuparts.debian.org/ [7] http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep8/ [8] https://packages.debian.org/sid/autopkgtest [9] http://ci.debian.net/ [10] https://lists.debian.org/201308251648.38010.holger@layer-acht.org [11] https://packages.debian.org/sid/adequate Making packages secure with systemd service files ------------------------------------------------- Packagers of Debian software, who are needing to create systemd service files would benefit from learning from Lennart Poettering's recent presentation (video[12], slides[13]) detailing various security features you can enable in your package's service files. Many of these features are simple to add, and would greatly enhance the overall security of Debian. -- Joe Hill [12] http://ftp.nluug.nl/video/nluug/2014-11-20_nj14/zaal-2/5_Lennart_Poettering_-_Systemd.webm [13] http://0pointer.net/public/systemd-nluug-2014.pdf -- bye, pabs https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
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