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The Debian Project http://www.debian.org/
Debian Project News debian-publicity@lists.debian.org
February 10th, 2014 http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2014/03/
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Welcome to this year's third issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian
community. Topics covered in this issue include:
* Call for projects and mentors for Debian GSoC 2014
* Bits from the Release Team
* Reports from recent Debian Sprints
* Other news
* Upcoming events
* New Debian Contributors
* Important Debian Security Advisories
* New and noteworthy packages
* Work-needing packages
* Want to continue reading DPN?
Call for projects and mentors for Debian GSoC 2014
--------------------------------------------------
Nicolas Dandrimont asked all Debian contributors for projects and
mentors [1] to help Debian participate in the tenth year of the Google
Summer of Code [2]. "Everyone (member of the Debian project or not,
student or not) is welcome to submit their ideas, and to try and find
people willing to mentor the projects", explained Nicolas in his mail.
If you have an idea, please publish it on the wiki page [3], and send an
email to the coordination mailing list [4]. You can also contact Nicolas
and the other GSoC administrators for Debian on their mailing list or on
their IRC channel, #debian-soc on irc.debian.org.
1: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/02/msg00001.html
2: https://developers.google.com/open-source/soc/
3: https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects
4: soc-coordination@lists.alioth.debian.org
Bits from the Release Team
--------------------------
Niels Thykier sent some bits from the Release Team [5]. The Release Team
recently reviewed the status of the architectures in sid, and decided
that IA64 should be removed from testing [6], and will soon be removed
from unstable and experimental [7].
Niels also indicated in his message that auto-removal from testing of
non-leaf RC-buggy packages has been suspended until there is a way to
properly notify the maintainers of reverse-dependencies that the removal
will occur.
In the meantime, thanks to the work of Ivo De Decker and Paul Wise, the
Package Tracking Service [8] will now display a warning for packages
that are about to be auto-removed from testing. The auto-removals are
also listed, thanks to Lucas Nussbaum [9], on the Debian Maintainer
Dashboard [10] and by the how-can-i-help [11] package.
5: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/01/msg00008.html
6: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/01/msg00009.html
7: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/02/msg00035.html
8: http://packages.qa.debian.org/
9: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/01/msg00574.html
10: http://udd.debian.org/dmd/
11: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/how-can-i-help
Reports from recent Debian Sprints
----------------------------------
Antonio Terceiro sent a report [12] of the Debian Ruby Sprint [13], held
in Paris on January 15–17, as a satellite event of the Paris Mini-
DebConf [14]. He explained in his message the efforts of the team
regarding the removal of the now deprecated 1.8 version of the Ruby
interpreter, and the goals of the Ruby team for Jessie.
The Debian Med team organised their fourth sprint in Aberdeen [15] from
January 31 until February 2. Several members of the team posted
reports [16] of [17] their [18] activities [19] during the sprint,
including packaging, bug fixing, and presentations of software.
The Ruby Team thanks IRILL for hosting the meeting, and both teams thank
the generous Debian sponsors for funding the expenses required for the
sprints.
12: http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2014/02/msg00028.html
13: https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Ruby/Meeting/Paris2014
14: http://france.debian.net/events/minidebconf2014/
15: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMed/Meeting/Aberdeen2014
16: http://lists.debian.org/debian-sprints/2014/02/msg00000.html
17: http://lists.debian.org/debian-sprints/2014/02/msg00001.html
18: http://lists.debian.org/debian-sprints/2014/02/msg00002.html
19: http://lists.debian.org/debian-sprints/2014/02/msg00003.html
Other news
----------
Lucas Nussbaum, Debian Project Leader, recently updated the delegation
for Debian Policy Editors [20], and reappointed Kurt Roeckx as Project
Secretary [21] for another term.
20: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/02/msg00003.html
21: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/02/msg00002.html
Johannes Schauer posted on his blog [22] some updates about botch [23],
a tool to solve cyclic build dependencies and to generate an order in
which packages have to be built so that Debian can be bootstrapped
easily on new architectures.
22: http://blog.mister-muffin.de/2014/02/06/botch-updates
23: https://gitorious.org/debian-bootstrap/botch
The fourth update of the stable distribution of Debian (codename
"Wheezy") was released on February 8 [24].
24: http://www.debian.org/News/2014/20140208
Upcoming events
---------------
There are several upcoming Debian-related events:
* 28 February–2 March, Phnom Penh, Cambodia — first Mini-DebConf in Cambodia [25]
* 15–16 March, Barcelona, Spain — Debian Women Mini-DebConf [26]
* 15–16 March, Chemnitz, Germany — Debian booth at the Chemnitz Linux Days [27]
25: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianCambodia/MiniDebConf2014
26: http://bcn2014.mini.debconf.org/
27: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEvents/de/2014/ChemnitzerLinuxTage
You can find more information about Debian-related events and talks on
the events section [28] of the Debian web site, or subscribe to one of
our events mailing lists for different regions: Europe [29],
Netherlands [30], Hispanic America [31], North America [32].
28: http://www.debian.org/events
29: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-eu
30: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-nl
31: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-ha
32: http://lists.debian.org/debian-events-na
Do you want to organise a Debian booth or a Debian install party? Are
you aware of other upcoming Debian-related events? Have you delivered a
Debian talk that you want to link on our talks page [33]? Send an email
to the Debian Events Team [34].
33: http://www.debian.org/events/talks
34: events@debian.org
New Debian Contributors
-----------------------
One applicant has been accepted [35] as a Debian Maintainer, and seven
people have started to maintain packages [36] since the previous issue
of the Debian Project News. Please welcome Joao Eriberto Mota Filho,
Pierre Rudloff, Adam Sampson, Rebecca Palmer, Dariusz Dwornikowski,
Raoul Snyman, Iain R. Learmonth, and Joseph HERLANT into our project!
35: https://nm.debian.org/public/nmlist#done
36: http://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/new-maintainers.cgi
Important Debian Security Advisories
------------------------------------
Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages
(among others): curl [37], libyaml [38], drupal6 [39], libgadu [40],
horde3 [41], mumble [42], and libav [43]. Please read them carefully and
take the proper measures.
37: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2849
38: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2850
39: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2851
40: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2852
41: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2853
42: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2854
43: http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-2855
Please note that these are a selection of the more important security
advisories of the last weeks. If you need to be kept up to date about
security advisories released by the Debian Security Team, please
subscribe to the security mailing list [44] (and the separate backports
list [45], and stable updates list [46]) for announcements.
44: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
45: http://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/
46: http://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/
New and noteworthy packages
---------------------------
246 packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently. Among
many others [47] are:
* drupal7-mod-drucall — WebRTC SIP module for the Drupal CMS [48]
* etm-qt — tool to manage events and tasks using simple text files [49]
* fonts-noto — "No Tofu" font families with large Unicode coverage [50]
* gnome-shell-pomodoro — GNOME Shell time-management app [51]
* hash-slinger — tools to generate special DNS records [52]
* mugshot — lightweight user-configuration application [53]
* optcomp — syntax extension for optional compilation with cpp-like directives (tools) [54]
* rurple-ng — learn programming in Python with a robot [55]
* tetgen — quality tetrahedral mesh generator [56]
* udevil — alternative storage media interface [57]
47: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg
48: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/drupal7-mod-drucall
49: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/etm-qt
50: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/fonts-noto
51: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/gnome-shell-pomodoro
52: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/hash-slinger
53: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/mugshot
54: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/optcomp
55: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/rurple-ng
56: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/tetgen
57: http://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/udevil
Work-needing packages
---------------------
Currently [58] 512 packages are orphaned [59] and 152 packages are up
for adoption [60]: please visit the complete list of packages which need
your help [61].
58: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/02/msg00176.html
59: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned
60: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/rfa
61: http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested
Want to continue reading DPN?
-----------------------------
Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer
writers to watch the Debian community and report about what is going on.
Please see the contributing page [62] to find out how to help. We're
looking forward to receiving your mail at
<debian-publicity@lists.debian.org>.
62: http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute
This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Cédric Boutillier and
Justin B Rye.
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