Thank you for offering to contribute. Qianqian Fang wrote:
1. is there an established procedure to convert an official Fedora RPM to a deb package?
Not that I'm aware of. (The package 'alien' can install RPM binary packages on Debian, but does not convert source packages.)
any best practices guide for creating a package? any links/steps on how to become a maintainer would be fantastic. Any one willing to mentor me would be great!
(Non-trust warning: wiki.debian.org is an anyone-can-edit site) General (possibly out of date): https://wiki.debian.org/Packaging/Intro https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/ https://www.debian.org/devel/ Relevant teams: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianScience https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DebianOctaveGroup https://neuro.debian.net/ (possibly inactive)