Debian LTS and ELTS - October 2025

[Sylvain Beucler <beuc@beuc.net>]

Here is my public monthly report.

Thanks to our sponsors for making this possible, and to Freexian for
handling the offering.
https://www.freexian.com/lts/debian/#sponsors


LTS

- gimp
  - Sync fixed CVEs with buster and bookworm
  - Reproduce and test vulnerabilities
  - Tidy packaging (Salsa CI, git-buildpackage)
  - DLA-4342-1
    https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2025/10/msg00022.html

- gegl
  - Merge work to maintainer's repository
    https://salsa.debian.org/gnome-team/gegl/-/merge_requests/6
  - Tidy packaging (Salsa CI, git-buildpackage, Lintian)
  - DLA-4341-1
    https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2025/10/msg00021.html


ELTS

- gimp
  - Common work with LTS
  - Tidy packaging (Lintian)
  - ELA-1550-1
    https://www.freexian.com/lts/extended/updates/ela-1550-1-gimp/

- gegl
  - Common work with LTS
  - Fix postponed CVEs in stretch
  - ELA-1548-1, ELA-1549-1
    https://www.freexian.com/lts/extended/updates/ela-1548-1-gegl/
    https://www.freexian.com/lts/extended/updates/ela-1549-1-gegl/

- erlang
  - Superficial review


Common documentation and tooling

- Documentation revamp
  The LTS Coordinators pushed a complete review of the documentation
  and I contributed to the overhaul, mainly:
  - clear top-level structure
  - split the massive Development page to new Front Desk and CVE
    Triage separate pages
  - consolidate DLA workflow info from other sources
  - clean-up stale/orphan pages
  - follow reviews from other contributors and review changes from
    other contributors
  https://salsa.debian.org/lts-team/lts-extra-tasks/-/issues/95
  https://salsa.debian.org/lts-team/lts-extra-tasks/-/issues/96
  https://salsa.debian.org/lts-team/lts-extra-tasks/-/issues/97
  https://salsa.debian.org/lts-team/lts-team.pages.debian.net/-/merge_requests/24

  This also covered the internal documentation:
  - clear top-level structure
  - de-duplicate LTS/ELTS information, express ELTS procedures as a
    small delta from the LTS ones
  - move technical information to the public pages
  - clean-up stale/orphan pages
  - upload procedure: further troubleshooting
  - external support: reference partnerships for Samba and Xen
  - follow reviews from other contributors and review changes from
    other contributors

- Technical Workflows
  LTS Contributors work with different tools and ways to organize,
  with pros and cons, sometimes clashing in the documentation.
  This new page consolidates and compares these technical approaches,
  independently of the common DLA workflow.
  - Development within target VM vs. in-host with volatile VMs
  - LTS/ELTS-specific notes and trick for tools like sbuild,
    git-buildpackage, chdist, debvm, ansible, incus, etc.
  - Creating a clean source package archive for upload
  https://lts-team.pages.debian.net/technical-workflows.html

- Git workflows: mention 'push -o ci.skip' to skip CI
  https://lts-team.pages.debian.net/git-workflow-lts.html

- ARM development
  Update to Raspberry Pi OS trixie
  Move generic debvm and sbuild info to Technical Workflows above
  More details on VM kernels and graphics, and piuparts
  https://lts-team.pages.debian.net/howtos/arm-debug.html
  https://lts-team.pages.debian.net/howtos/arm-vm.html

- TestSuites
  - Code Sanitizers: reference one-liner shortcut
    DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS='sanitize=+address'
    https://lts-team.pages.debian.net/howtos/lts-Development-Asan.html
  - GIMP: ASan build, plug-ins quick debug, double-build work-arounds
    https://lts-team.pages.debian.net/wiki/TestSuites/gimp.html

- Issue template: informative request for package review/testing
  https://salsa.debian.org/lts-team/lts-updates-tasks/-/merge_requests/1
  (also replicated to the ELTS issue tracker)

- Debian Wiki
  sbuild: apt-cacher-ng: typos/rephrase
  https://wiki.debian.org/sbuild?action=diff&rev2=327&rev1=326

- security-tracker (July Sprint follow-ups)
  - BTS data inconsistency in JSON export (merged!)
    https://salsa.debian.org/lts-team/lts-extra-tasks/-/issues/87
  - Display not-affected issues as such (rather than fixed) (CVE view)
    https://salsa.debian.org/security-tracker-team/security-tracker/-/merge_requests/233

- debusine
  Report infrastructure issue, related to http pipelining, preventing
  stretch i386 build

- debvm (unattended Debian-based minimal VMs creation and run)
  Report issues
  - KVM acceleration for arm32-on-arm64
    https://salsa.debian.org/helmutg/debvm/-/issues/25
  - OpenGL issues (bookworm-only)
    https://salsa.debian.org/helmutg/debvm/-/issues/26

- Meetings
  - New CVE severity legal requirements: introducing additional data
  - Team meeting (Jitsi)
    https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts/2025/10/msg00026.html

-- 
Sylvain Beucler
Debian LTS Team