Re: Debian projects
There are several internal Debian subprojects now which are all subsets of
Debian aimed at a specific kind of use. Debian Jr., Debian Med, DebianEdu,
and the new multimedia project (formerly the external Debian-based
project DeMudi/Agnula) are all such subprojects.
The PTS (Package Tracking System[0]) and the Debian Developer's Package
Overview page[1] have great potential to assist in improving and maintaining
the quality of our subprojects.
Currently, a few key developers of each subproject maintain or at least
keep an eye on a particular subset of the expansive Debian distribution.
The workload is far too much for this handful of developers to maintain all
of the packages contained within each subproject.
These new tools support package subscription, package news, and
collaborative maintenance, which are of particular importance to
subprojects. Using these facilities our subproject members can follow the
bug reports and new developments for every package that is part of the
subproject, even ones they don't maintain. Before the arrival of these new
tools, this process was entirely ad hoc, leaving great gaping holes where
packages could fall through the cracks. As a result, packages could be
easily left in a buggy state without being noticed in time. Some of them
were actually dropped from Woody when it finally released. Furthermore,
concentrating all our efforts on knocking off all of the bugs just before we
release is a stressful and ineffective way of maintaining quality. By
having each subproject constantly keep an eye on all subproject packages, we
ensure the workload doesn't all pile up at the end.
So I encourage as those who would like to help to subscribe to a portion of
the packages in the subproject(s) you would like to assist. Visit
http://qa.debian.org/developer and locate all packages included in the
subproject you are helping with (you can check the wiki sites, or use
apt-cache to find and examine the contents of the meta packages). This site
has links for each package to the PTS and a form to subscribe to the
package.
One way to go about doing this is to take an entire meta package at a time
that is of particular interest to you and subscribe to its packages. Of
course, even if you can only subscribe to one or two packages, every little
bit helps. I'll be checking the subscriber count for all packages contained
in Debian Jr. and will let our debian-jr list know if there are packages
that don't have subscribers. I would like to see complete coverage.
[0] http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/ch-resources.en.html#s-pkg-tracking-system
[1] http://qa.debian.org/developer
Thanks,
Ben Armstrong for Debian Jr.
--
nSLUG http://www.nslug.ns.ca synrg@sanctuary.nslug.ns.ca
Debian http://www.debian.org synrg@debian.org
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