Debian Weekly News - September 30th, 2003
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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2003/39/
Debian Weekly News - September 30th, 2003
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Welcome to this year's 39th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for
the Debian community. Joey attended the "Joey meets Joey" session also
known as Oldenburg Linux Developers [1]meeting last weekend where both
finally met. The meeting was quite [2]successful, both in terms of
Debian as well as for the Linux kernel. A longer report on the Debian
part will probably be sent to the list later.
1. http://oldenburger.linuxtage.de/Oldenburg2003/
2. http://oldenburger.linuxtage.de/Oldenburg2003/success.html
Lessons in Packaging Linux Applications. Billy Biggs and Doug Bell
wrote about their [3]experiences in packaging [4]tvtime for many
distributions, including communication between packagers and
developers, dependency problems, dealing with bugs, and the Debian
menu system. They conclude that coordination between packagers from
different distributions could reduce work for the packagers and reduce
the number of distribution-specific bugs.
3. http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/992/
4. http://tvtime.sourceforge.net/
Committee for FSF-Debian Discussion. Bruce Perens [5]organised people
from the [6]Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Debian to discuss
issues revolving around the GNU [7]Free Documentation License (FDL).
Eben Moglen and Henri Poole (from the FSF), and Benj. Mako Hill (from
Debian) will serve on the committee. Bruce is seeking another Debian
representative with a constructive and dispassionate attitude. The
committee will bring the results of their discussion back to their
respective organisations for consideration.
5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0309/msg01309.html
6. http://www.fsf.org/
7. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
Python Transition Problems. Colin Watson [8]summarised the transition
problems that are currently blocking Python 2.3 from entering testing.
It may be slightly incomplete, though. He listed six packages that
contain bugs which prevent them from entering testing. The
python-gnome package also suffers from various dependency problems.
8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release-0309/msg00057.html
Timeout of ITP bugs. Søren Boll Overgaard [9]wondered how long an ITP
(Intent to Package) should be allowed to exist without an uploaded
package until it times out. In particular he was [10]looking at the
packaging notification for [11]thunderbird. Anthony Towns
[12]explained that ITPs should be considered as advisory locks. If one
doesn't get responses from the person who wanted to work on the
package, one can just maintain the package on his own.
9. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg01447.html
10. http://bugs.debian.org/196504
11. http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/
12. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg01471.html
Converting configure Scripts. Richard Atterer [13]wondered how he is
supposed to regenerate all the libtool and auto* files after fixing
some bugs. Martin Quinson [14]described in detail how to proceed and
provided a [15]script to build the autotools scripts.
13. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg01483.html
14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg01490.html
15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg01522.html
Position Statement on the GNU FDL. After Branden Robinson
[16]announced that he had updated his [17]Free Documentation License
(FDL) [18]webpage, Manoj Srivastava started crafting a [19]position
statement. He believes that a position statement should be issued
under the Debian [20]constitution section 4.1.5. Manoj's page includes
an annotated FDL, details of practical problems with the FDL, results
from Branden's [21]FDL survey, and related links.
16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0309/msg01255.html
17. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
18. http://people.debian.org/~branden/fdl/
19. http://people.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/Position_Statement.xhtml
20. http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution
21. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0308/msg01031.html
Pristine Source Archives. Matthias Urlichs [22]noticed that many
packages seem to contain .orig.tar.gz files which may not be directly
related to the files actually available from upstream. Manoj
Srivastava [23]explained that pristine sources are already desired,
but not required. There are enough strange upstream packaging
practices that Debian can not mandate pristine sources.
22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy-0309/msg00109.html
23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy-0309/msg00110.html
Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update
your systems if you have any of these packages installed.
* [24]marbles -- Buffer overflow.
* [25]freesweep -- Buffer overflow.
* [26]webfs -- Buffer overflows, file and directory exposure.
24. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-390
25. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-391
26. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-392
New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the
unstable Debian archive recently or contain important updates.
* [27]cpu -- Console based LDAP user management tool.
* [28]firedns -- Runtime binaries for firedns, an asynchronos DNS
resolver library.
* [29]imms -- Unobtrusive, automatic, and learning XMMS playlist
manager.
* [30]kbarcode -- A KDE Barcode Creation And Printing Application.
* [31]magicdev -- A GNOME daemon for automatically mounting/playing
CDs.
* [32]mlview -- XML editor for GNOME environment.
* [33]pupa -- The next generation of GNU GRUB.
* [34]pyro -- Distributed object system for Python.
* [35]sound-juicer -- GNOME 2 CD Ripper.
* [36]sumika -- Management utility for dictionaries for input
methods.
27. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/cpu.html
28. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/firedns.html
29. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/imms.html
30. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/kbarcode.html
31. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/magicdev.html
32. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/editors/mlview.html
33. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/pupa.html
34. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/python/pyro.html
35. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/gnome/sound-juicer.html
36. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/sumika.html
Orphaned Packages. 1 package was orphaned this week and requires a new
maintainer. This makes a total of 195 orphaned packages. Many thanks
to the previous maintainer who contributed to the Free Software
community. Please see the [37]WNPP pages for the full list, and please
add a note to the bug report and retitle it to ITA: if you plan to
take over a package.
37. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/
* [38]squidtaild -- Squid log monitoring program. ([39]Bug#213402)
38. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/squidtaild.html
39. http://bugs.debian.org/213402
Want to continue reading DWN? Please help us create this newsletter.
We still need more volunteer writers who watch the Debian community
and report about what is going on. Please see the [40]contributing
page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your
mail at [41]dwn@debian.org.
40. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing
41. mailto:dwn@debian.org
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