New version of AM-HOWTO
[This version takes account of various people's comments -- jdg]
Mini-HOWTO for Debian New Maintainer Application Managers
Copyright Julian Gilbey <jdg@debian.org>, September 2000
This is in the public domain.
The fount of all knowledge is the New Maintainer pages. Start at
http://www.debian.org/devel/join/newmaint and look around until you
are familiar with the contents. Your responsibilities as an AM are
described there.
As an AM, you will also be subscribed to the AM list:
debian-newmaint-admin@lists.debian.org. Please feel free to ask for
help there; we are a friendly list all trying to get volunteers into
the project! Note that as this is an archived public list, questions
of a highly personal nature should be asked to the Front Desk
privately. Also, please do not send anything like photo IDs to this
list.
The other crucial web page is the database: http://nm.debian.org/.
You will have received a login there (and it's not encrypted, so
please don't use a sensitive password); see the bottom of that page.
This database is used to record the progress of your applicants. You
are also able to specify how many applicants you are willing to
process at once (go the the link at the side "Your profile" to do
so). If you ever do not have enough time to take on more applicants,
simply change this number to zero.
The rest of the database pages are fairly self-explanatory. If you
ever have an applicant who is taking too long to respond or who needs
to wait for a couple of months (vacation or whatever), you can always
put them "on hold" so that you can take on another applicant. There
is a text field "AM Comments" for noting the reasons for such things,
or for noting any other significant information for the front desk and
DAM to note.
The four email addresses of note are:
NM Admin list: debian-newmaint-admin@lists.debian.org
A public list for discussion of issues among AMs. It is a closed
list, but is mirrored to the NM discussion list, so please don't
post very personal information here. (Questions about ID
verification, etc, are OK.)
NM Discussion list: debian-newmaint-discuss@lists.debian.org
A general list for discussion about the NM process. -admin is
mirrored here. It is not necessary for AMs to read this list,
but AMs are, of course, welcome to do so.
Front Desk: new-maintainer@debian.org
Where initial applications get sent, and where the final full
report gets sent. Any personal questions about individual
applications which are inappropriate for a public forum should be
directed here as well.
Debian Account Managers (DAMs): da-manager@debian.org
Where the final report is also sent. The DAMs are responsible
for creating the accounts on the Debian machines and adding the
GPG keys to the keyring. They also get to make the final
decision on each application, as the official New Maintainer
delegates of the Debian Project Leader. Don't hassle the DAMs,
they are usually very busy!
Finally, to make life easier, I found it useful to create some form
letters, and these are attached below as follows:
Appendix 1: Sample initial email
Appendix 2: Sample email about skills, procedures and intro to
philosophy
Appendix 3: Sample questions on philosophy
Appendix 4: Sample report for AM list (possibly GPG sign and send to
debian-newmaint-admin@lists.debian.org); this should also
be attached to the Front Desk/DAM report
Appendix 5: Sample report for Front Desk and DAM (GPG sign and send to
both new-maintainer@debian.org and da-manager@debian.org)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
APPENDIX 1: SAMPLE INITIAL EMAIL
Hello *****!
I have just been appointed Application Manager for your Debian
maintainership application. I have not seen your original
application, so I know nothing about you or your application, I'm
afraid.
As a first step, have you checked out the New Maintainer corner of the
website? Have a look at http://www.debian.org/devel/join/newmaint,
and especially at the checklist referred to from there. That's what
we'll have to work through together.
So, if you can start by letting me have the following, we should be
able to progress fairly quickly:
- GPG key (preferably signed by a current developer or certification
authority)
- If your GPG is not signed by a current developer, you will need to
also provide a piece of GPG-signed digitally photo ID (let me know
if this is a problem; there are other ways to handle this step, but
this is the easiest)
- your preferred account name for the Debian machines
- the email address you would like to be subscribed to debian-private
If you can also let me know a bit about:
- what you intend to do within Debian
- what skills you possess in order to be able to do this sort of work
that would be useful.
Once we've done this, we can look at "philosophy" and that will be
it.
Looking forward to helping you through the process,
----------------------------------------------------------------------
APPENDIX 2: SAMPLE EMAIL ABOUT SKILLS, TASKS AND INTRO TO PHILOSOPHY
"Skills" and "Philosophy".
The next thing we have to figure is whether you yet know enough to
maintain a Debian package, and if not, let me help you! You've said
what you intend to package; have you attempted to do so yet? It's
often easiest if you take over an existing package at first: then you
get to see how someone else has done it. You should also read how the
Bug Tracking System (BTS) works: see /usr/share/doc/debian/bug* or
http://bugs.debian.org/.
A word on mailing lists: there are quite a lot of Debian mailing lists
now and packaging-related packages, and I'd just like to check with
you whether you know about the key ones. I think all of the packages
are listed as dependencies of task-debian-devel, but you may not be
aware of what you have got.
Packages:
dpkg-dev All of the primary tools needed to put a Debian package
together: dpkg-buildpackage, dpkg-source, etc.
debhelper A very useful set of scripts designed to make
debian/rules files more readable and uniform.
debian-policy, packaging-manual
Describe the policy relating to packages and details of
the packaging mechanism. Cover everything from
required gcc options to the way the maintainer scripts
(postinst etc.) work, package sections and priorities,
etc. An absolute must-read. Also useful is the file
/usr/share/doc/debian-policy/upgrading-checklist.txt,
which lists changes between versions of policy.
doc-debian Lots of useful Debian-specific documentation: the
constitution and DFSG, explanation of the Bug Tracking
System (BTS), etc.
maint-guide
The New Maintainer's Guide to making Debian packages.
devscripts Lots of useful (and not-so-useful) scripts to help build
packages.
developers-reference
Lots of information on procedures and suchlike.
dupload Automatically upload packages to the archive once they
are built.
fakeroot Build packages without having to be root.
It's not half as bad as it seems at first, but the long-term
advantages to the maintainer and user of having such detailed
descriptions of package building should be clear ;-)
And as for mailing lists, you do not really need to read lots, but the
most significant ones are probably:
debian-announce: Major public announcements
debian-devel-announce: Major announcements to the developer community
These two lists are must-subscribes. Everything else is optional. I
abbreviate 'debian-' to '-' from now on!
-security-announce (?):
security updates to stable (and possibly also frozen)
-private: you'll be subscribed automatically when your new-maintainer
application is accepted; sensitive discussions, flamewars
etc. You can unsubscribe if you wish.
-devel: general mailing list for developer issues
-policy: where possible changes to debian-policy are discussed
There are many others; check the mailing list page on the web site
for details.
The other thing we have to discuss is "philosophy".
Have you read the Debian Social Contract
(/usr/share/doc/debian/social-contract.txt)? Do you agree to follow
it in your Debian-related work? We'll ask some more detailed
questions next time around.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
APPENDIX 3: SAMPLE QUESTIONS ON PHILOSOPHY
Philosophy
----------
We have to check that you understand the Social Contract (at least the
way it is at the moment ;-) and the Debian Free Software Guidelines
(DFSG). I know you have read them, and if you want, you can find them
on your machine in /usr/(share/)doc/debian. (It's possible you've
been reading them online up to now....)
Firstly, can you explain the key points of the Social Contract and
DFSG?
Secondly, a few questions, based on them:
(1) Donald Knuth, author of TeX, insists that no-one has the right to
modify the source code of TeX, and that any changes must be made
using "change files" (a sort of patch file). Furthermore, any
modification of TeX which produces something which fails the "trip
test" (a regression test suite) may not be called TeX. So how
come TeX (in the guise of tetex-*) is in main?
(2) What is Debian's (current) approach to non-free software? Why?
(3) Debian was offered a Debian-specific license to package a certain
piece of software (I forget which). Would we put it in main?
----------------------------------------------------------------------
APPENDIX 4: SAMPLE REPORT FOR AM LIST
Report for new developer applicant:
Summary: Accept/Don't accept
2. Identification
-----------------
3. Philosophy and Procedures
-----------------------------
4. Tasks and Skills
-------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------
APPENDIX 5: SAMPLE REPORT FOR FRONT DESK AND DAM
Front Desk/DAM Report for new developer applicant:
Summary: Accept/Don't accept
1. The applicant's photo ID which is digitized and signed by the
applicant (if necessary)
* Attached/Not necessary
2. The applicants GPG (or PGP if needed) public key for Identification
* Attached
3. Logs of the discussions with the applicant to satisfy steps 2-4 in
the checklist.
* Attached [you may want to edit out everything but the key points
of the discussion, so that the DAM only has 150 lines to look
through, not 1500]
* Also attached: summary as sent to AM list
4. The applicants GPG public key (RSA/IDEA keys created by PGP are not
accepted now) to sign his (or her) Debian packages. This will be
incorporated into the Keyring of Debian
* Attached/As in 2
5. The request from the applicant for their account name on Debian
(used as <account>@debian.org)
* ???
6. The request from the applicant for the email address which will be
used to forward the emails at <account>@debian.org.
* ???
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