Debian Weekly News - January 30th, 2002
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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2002/5/
Debian Weekly News - January 30th, 2002
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Welcome to the fifth issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the
Debian community. The past week has been an exciting one. A lot of
talk with regard to the upcoming release of woody took place on the
[1]debian-devel list. This issue contains items by Tollef Fog Heen and
Yooseong Yang, which are greatly appreciated. The mail version of this
issue uses a new style for embedding links which was generated by a
script provided by Aaron Schrab. Please let us know if it makes DWN
easier to read or not.
1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/
New GDB Manuals free? Thomas Bushnell [2]reports that a new upstream
GDB release has been made which fixes the copyright problem on the GDB
manuals. It fixes the fact that the GDB manuals (for some presumably
accidental reason) labelled various technical sections as being
invariant. Thomas [3]says that this makes GDB now in the same
category as Emacs and GCC: not unproblematic, but also not horrible.
2. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0201/msg00227.html
3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0201/msg00229.html
Package Tracking System. Raphaël Hertzog [4]announced the new Package
Tracking System. It allows developers to subscribe to all messages
regarding a source package: Bug messages and «Installed» messages (not
yet implemented, though). This service can be used by "backup
maintainers" to follow a package, or by upstream authors who wish to
follow how their package is handled within Debian, or by people doing
an NMU. Send a message containing the word «help» to pts@qa.debian.org
for instructions.
4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0201/msg00011.html
Packaging an O'Reilly Book. Stefano Zacchiroli [5]wanted to package
the electronic version of an O'Reilly book covering Objective Caml and
was wondering if the package could go into the main distribution. Even
though O'Reilly [6]believes that the license meets the [7]DSFG
opinions [8]vary, so the book was about to be [9]packaged for
non-free. However, O'Reilly later [10]modified the license, so it now
meets the DFSG and can go into the main distribution.
5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0201/msg00250.html
6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0201/msg00254.html
7. http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0201/msg00260.html
9. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0201/msg00258.html
10. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0201/msg00268.html
Outdated Netscape Packages? Although Netscape 4.79 was released on
November 16th, 2001, the Debian package is still at 4.77. DonDiego
[11]wondered whether the Netscape package is orphaned or not. Several
[12]bugs are outstanding for more than 60 days. Packages for other
browsers seem to be better maintained. Netscape has [13]lost the
browser battle, while Mozilla (or Mozilla-based browsers respectively)
and Konqueror prevail among Open Source web browsers in the Debian
distribution.
11. http://www.debianplanet.org/article.php?sid=570
12. http://bugs.debian.org/netscape
13. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/06/06/1149203
The Emacs Operating System. Adam Major [14]wondered about a couple of
strange manpages distributed with the Emacs 21 package. Replies to his
original mail uncovered [15]phases of the moon, [16]pong, [17]tetris
and [18]display-battery. The latter is useful for all notebook users
who like to keep an eye on the battery. The discussion ended in Adam
saying: "Will this madness never end? I'm trying to get some work
done!"
14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0201/msg01877.html
15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0201/msg01882.html
16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0201/msg01888.html
17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0201/msg01889.html
18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0201/msg01941.html
Desktop Entry Standard or Debian Menu System? Chris Cheney suggested
to switch to the [19]Desktop Entry Standard which has been adopted by
recent Gnome and KDE. Even though a distribution neutral menu system
would be a good thing, Ben Armstrong [20]pointed out that the Debian
menu system does more than just provide a way of specifying
desktop-neutral menu entries. It provides the mechanism for
implementing the same set of menus across all window managers. Joseph
Carter [21]added that the Desktop Entry Standard lacks support for
requirements (such as: needs x11, a virtual console, a terminal etc.).
19. http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec.html
20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0201/msg02034.html
21. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0201/msg02092.html
Adrian Bunk Retired. Since the woody release is making only very
little progress (if any), Adrian Bunk [22]decided to retire from the
Debian project entirely, and has orphaned all of his packages. The
current release process has led to very few motivation on Adrians side
and he doesn't see his work honored in Debian in form of a new stable
release in the forseeable future.
22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0201/msg02160.html
Addressing the Release. Anthony Towns posted a [23]roundup targetting
the woody release. Basically he says that there is currently no real
progress. There is absolutely no magic that can be done to make a
bunch of buggy useless software acceptable as a Debian release. We
shouldn't resign, though. Indeed, it is quite obvious what needs to be
done: we need to fix these bugs.
23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0201/msg00014.html
Besides, NMU (non-maintainer uploads) are okay as of now. However,
please keep in mind that a maintainer upload is still better, passing
on patches and helping the maintainer to integrate them, is preferred
as well. There's also a system implemented for NMUs that will delay
the installation up to 10 days (see details in Anthony's mail). Please
note that once you've made an NMU it is your responsibility to make
absolutely sure you didn't break the package.
Upgrade Problems. The Debian distribution is known for smooth upgrades
from one stable release to the next one. Upgrading from potato to
woody, though, does not seem to follow this path. Several reports
demonstrate problems during the upgrade, such as [24]this one from
Dale or [25]this one, to name some examples. Ted T'so [26]asked if
Debian can only be used by experts or by regular users as well.
24. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0201/msg01694.html
25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-user-0112/msg02261.html
26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0201/msg01771.html
Installation Problems. During an [27]exhibition (HCT, in Germany, see
the [28]trip report) several Debian people tried to install a plain
Debian woody system onto another exhibitor's machine. This should have
worked just as smooth as expected, but didn't. We failed with the
[29]Malformed release file error and even the patch from the
[30]debian-boot [31]didn't work as expected. It only went worse. After
patching the file manually, nano-tiny received a segmentation fault.
This clearly demonstrates that Debian needs more testing of boot
floppies and more clueful people working on this system.
27. http://www.debian.org/events/2002/0124-hct
28. http://www.infodrom.org/Debian/events/HCT2002/report.html
29. http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot-0201/msg00768.html
30. http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/
31. http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot-0201/msg00794.html
Debian as a CORBA Component? Colin Walters was annoyed that the web
interface to [32]packages.debian.org only displays i386 packages. He
started thinking about how to implement a replacement, and realized
that he requires access to the database on auric. That alone cried out
for a CORBA interface. Once there is a CORBA interface to the archive,
why not a CORBA interface to the bug tracking system and to other
services? He has already implemented a [33]working prototype.
32. http://packages.debian.org/
33. http://cvs.verbum.org/debian/debian-corba/
XFree86 4.2.0 is Out! On January 18th [34]XFree86 4.2.0 was released.
On [35]DebianPlanet the [36]question came up whether Debian is going
to package it anytime soon. Branden Robinson updated the [37]X Strike
Force pages on which he explains that he is currently preparing
packages for 4.1.0-14. He has also started to work on version 4.2.0
but cannot promise when packages may be ready. As in the past, the
first packages of the new upstream version that will be available will
be experimental pre-releases from his private [38]repository.
34. http://www.xfree86.org/4.2.0/
35. http://debianplanet.org/
36. http://debianplanet.org/article.php?sid=578
37. http://people.debian.org/~branden/
38. http://people.debian.org/~branden/woody/
New or Noteworthy Packages. The following new or updated packages were
added to the Debian archive recently.
* [39]file-roller -- Archiver for GNOME.
* [40]gg-gnome -- An instant messenger compatible with Gadu Gadu.
* [41]gputils -- GNU PIC utilities.
* [42]postfix-dev -- Postfix loadable modules development
environment.
* [43]sdcc -- Small Device C Compiler.
* [44]xfonts-gipmers -- X11 fonts created by Artwiz and TigerT.
39. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/file-roller.html
40. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/gg-gnome.html
41. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/electronics/gputils.html
42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/postfix-dev.html
43. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/electronics/sdcc.html
44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/xfonts-gimpers.html
Security Updates. Under normal circumstances we would recommend to
upgrade your packages. However, since the most recent [45]security
advisory breaks what it ought to fix instead, please be careful when
upgrading on a machine which acts as anonymous rsync server. You would
fix a remote root hole, but you would also shut down the service. It
may be advantageous to recompile the package from unstable on your
potato machine instead.
45. http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce-02/msg00013.html
Orphaned Packages. 18 packages were orphaned this week and need a new
maintainer. This makes it total 113 orphaned packages. Please see the
[46]WNPP pages for the full list.
* [47]clime ([48]Bug#130233) -- basic functions for message encoding
for Emacsen
* [49]e3 ([50]Bug#130820) -- A very small editor
* [51]easytag ([52]Bug#130821) -- Viewing, editing and writing ID3
tags of MP3 files
* [53]grun ([54]Bug#131205) -- GTK based Run dialog
* [55]hkgerman ([56]Bug#130824) -- German dictionary files
* [57]libc5 ([58]Bug#130826) -- The Linux C library version 5
* [59]libdb1 ([60]Bug#130827) -- The Berkeley database routines
(libc5 version)
* [61]libg++27 ([62]Bug#130828) -- The GNU C++ libraries (libc5
version)
* [63]mdk ([64]Bug#130832) -- MIX Development Kit
* [65]mtoolsfm ([66]Bug#130834) -- Graphical user interface to the
mtools package
* [67]mule2 ([68]Bug#130232) -- MULtilingual Enhancement to GNU
Emacs
* [69]perlftlib ([70]Bug#130427) -- FreeType font utilities
* [71]si ([72]Bug#131206) -- /proc system information viewer
* [73]tk-brief ([74]Bug#130840) -- GUI for easily writing letters
with LaTeX
* [75]tmview ([76]Bug#130841) -- dvisvga, dvilx and dvifb
* [77]xaw3d ([78]Bug#130843) -- Xaw3d widget set
46. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/
47. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/clime.html
48. http://bugs.debian.org/130233
49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/editors/e3.html
50. http://bugs.debian.org/130820
51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/easytag.html
52. http://bugs.debian.org/130821
53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/grun.html
54. http://bugs.debian.org/131205
55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/wgerman.html
56. http://bugs.debian.org/130824
57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/oldlibs/libc5.html
58. http://bugs.debian.org/130826
59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/oldlibs/libdb1.html
60. http://bugs.debian.org/130827
61. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/oldlibs/libg++27.html
62. http://bugs.debian.org/130828
63. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/mdk.html
64. http://bugs.debian.org/130832
65. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/mtoolsfm.html
66. http://bugs.debian.org/130834
67. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/editors/mule2-plain.html
68. http://bugs.debian.org/130232
69. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/interpreters/libft-perl.html
70. http://bugs.debian.org/130427
71. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/si.html
72. http://bugs.debian.org/131206
73. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/tex/tk-brief.html
74. http://bugs.debian.org/130840
75. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/tex/dvisvga.html
76. http://bugs.debian.org/130841
77. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/oldlibs/xaw3d.html
78. http://bugs.debian.org/130843
Got News? Please keep us informed! We don't want to miss it. Be sure
to send us feedback and tips about new or old packages to
[79]dwn@debian.org. If you only want to meet Debian people, we suggest
you consider attending the [80]LinuxWorld Conference and Expo
currently taking place in New York.
79. mailto:dwn@debian.org
80. http://www.debian.org/events/2002/0130-lwce
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