Helping the Debian Qt/KDE team
Dear Debian/KDE users,
Following our long standing tradition of hijacking[0] GNOME messages[1],
we're asking for your help as the GNOME guys did a while ago[2]. (No,
seriously, we've been wanting to send a mail like this for a while now.)
Since the creation of the Qt/KDE team, the KDE packages have been in a
reasonably good state. As you may have followed, the packaging is going
on at a reasonable pace besides the two transitions we have had to manage,
and we have enough manpower for packaging new KDE versions, although not as
fast as we'd like to.
However, it could be much better. One area where we've been constantly
lagging behind is the handling of bugs. Of course, release-critical bugs
or bugs that affect us directly are fixed. But lots of KDE packages are
rotting in the BTS with piles of bugs we simply can't handle because we
don't have the time. We don't know whether those bugs are still here, we
don't know whether they are known upstream, we don't know how to reproduce
them or we don't know where to start to fix them.
That's why we're requesting help with bug triage. This is a task any of
you can do, provided you have some time and know how to use the BTS and
Bugzilla.
What can you do to help? Start with this query[3].
Here, you can look for packages needing attention. High numbers in the
bug columns are a good hint. If you have filed bugs against KDE packages
in the past, it may be better to check your own bugs [4] to see whether
they still apply.
What to do to deal with a specific bug:
* Check whether you can reproduce the bug. If it's meant to be
easily reproducible, check whether it can be reproduced with the
latest version.
* Check whether a similar bug has been reported in
http://bugs.kde.org/ and whether it has a patch available.
* Check for a fix in the KDE SVN tree [5]. You don't need to grab
patches if you're not used to, pointing us at the relevant change is
enough.
* Forward the bug if it isn't reported there. Don't forget to add
debian-qt-kde@lists.debian.org in the Bugzilla Cc field.
If you think a bug is already fixed, you should close it by sending a mail
to nnn-done@bugs.debian.org including the version which fixed the bug with
a Version: pseudo-header and the reason you think the bug should be closed.
Otherwise, once you have an idea of what can be done to fix the bug (a patch,
a SVN log, an idea on how to change the package), please send a message to
nnn@bugs.debian.org explaining the fix. If it's a really important bug,
one that should get fixed ASAP since it's making KDE much less usable for
our users, the best way to get the bug fixed is to find some maintainers on
#debian-qt-kde@freenode and harass them until the fix is in our SVN
repository.
In short, if you're willing to improve KDE in Debian, your
contribution is welcome. Of course, people more familiar with KDE
packaging are welcome to join the team itself to work on the packages.
[0] http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-devel&m=113662599719724&w=2
[1]
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2006-January/msg00033.html
[2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-gtk-gnome/2006/01/msg00037.html
[3] http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=debian-qt-kde@lists.debian.org
[4] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?submitter=your.mail@address
[5] http://websvn.kde.org/branches/KDE/3.5/
The Debian Qt/KDE maintainers
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