re:Partial truth (Re: Why other distributions ...)

["brian (b.c.) white" <bcwhite@bnr.ca>]

>Maybe, but I think that there is also lack of 
>willingness on the current developers to accept more people.

I doubt this, but I understand your concerns...

>However I have been unable to find any information about how to upload 
>the package, whom should I contact and what should I do besides uploading 
>the package. I have asked in debian-user and either developers do not 
>read the list or are not willing to answer. I have sent an e-mail to Ian 
>Murdock, and no answer again. So, it seems that developers are not very 
>interested in other people participating or in having new (even GNU-owned) 
>packages available in the distribution. I wish I were wrong, but so far 
>it seems to me that way.

I had the same problems and basically found the info out by trial-and-error.
The "hello" package has wonderful examples of the "debian.*" files.  It's
a prettly slick system and I have used them as the basis for the 'gnats'
and 'zyxel' packages I'm building.

To submit them, you ftp the package, source, and diff files to the main
ftp site (ftp.debian.org) and put them under (if I remember correctly)
"private/incoming".

You then send mail on "debian-changes" that lists the packages, the changes
you made, and an 'md5sum' of all the packages.  I don't believe there is
a man-page for "md5sum", but it has a "--help" option or something from which
you can figure it out.

>So, this is my question to developers: Are you or aren't you interested 
>in having more people participating and more packages available?
>If you are, then you should reconsider the way you are managing it now.
>If you aren't then I guess you are not going to be very popular.

You're correct.  These steps need to be spelled out somewhere.  If they are,
how about making a mothly posting, or putting it in a FAQ and posting that
monthly.

There are "Package" guidelines on the main ftp site under "project/standards/".

                                        Brian
                                 ( bcwhite@bnr.ca )

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