Re: packages for adoption: icu, tiff, xerces-c, psutils

[Jay Berkenbilt <qjb@debian.org>]

Richard Winters <rik@mmogp.com> wrote:

> Hey there:
>
> Posting again because I didn't hit reply-all (sorry, but would rather
> advertise I"m available for help to the whole mailing list.)
>
> I'm not a 'debian' maintainer or developer...total newbie to alioth ->
> but I'm a c++ developer with over 10 years experience.  I'm
> experienced with linux and more specifically debian development (just
> not officially).
>
> That said I'd love to get involved with Debian development -> I love
> debian and live by it. Anyone willing to lemme help out would be
> great. I check on alioth often...projects never seem to be posted for
> help...as a newbie I'm confused how to get started -> I've read
> documentation yet most of these emails looking for helping or
> specifying a package to be orphaned require a dev or
> maintainer....some of the packages I've looked into helping out with
> either dont have a buglist or are severely old and have dozens of
> helpers already.
>
> I offer my help here because I tend to need the ICU packages for
> building various things...if its gonna be orphaned I'd rather help
> out...
>
> Samples of work can be provided if needed.

My suggestion would be to read through the material at
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMaintainer and take it from there. Sounds
like you're about where I was when I started with Debian in 2003: I was
experienced Linux/C/C++ developer using tiff, xerces, and icu at work. I
took over the packages with the help of sponsors and initially as a
co-maintainer and used my experience there toward becoming a full debian
developer about 18 months later.

I'm afraid I don't have time or energy to help with the sponsorship, but
maybe you can find someone who can take over maintaining icu with the
intention of sponsoring you or who can sponsor you to take over
maintenance. I got my start with the tiff packages by managing a
transition that corrected an inadvertent binary compatibility problem
without an soname bump, and through that, earned enough of a reputation
to be able to move through the new maintainer process pretty easily. ICU
presents an opportunity to do something similar. Take a look at
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=757025. When I created
that, ICU 53 was out, but I was not able to get the transition done for
jessie. Now ICU 54 is out, and one of the first jobs of icu's next
maintainer will be, post jessie, to orchestrate a transition of icu to
version 54.1 or whatever is current at the time. This would be a good
way to cut your teeth on slightly more advanced package maintenance
activities required with library packages.

-- 
Jay Berkenbilt <qjb@debian.org>