Hints for contributing to Debian GNU/Linux
Hints for contributing to Debian GNU/Linux
==========================================
1. General Questions
1.1. What is Debian GNU/Linux
Please read the Debian GNU/Linux FAQ. The Debian GNU/Linux WWW server
is at http://www.debian.org/ , the FAQ is located at
http://www.debian.org/FAQ/ .
1.2. Purpose of this document
This document is intended to identify areas that need your
contributions. It provides information that hopefully changes quite often,
so it supplements the Debian GNU/Linux FAQ.
1.3. What do I need to know in order to become a package maintainer ?
Please read the Maintainers FAQ, it is at
ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/project/standards/Maintainers-FAQ .
(It is work-in-progress right now.)
1.4. Acknowledgements
I received feedback from :
* Dirk.Eddelbuettel <Dirk.Eddelbuettel@qed.econ.queensu.ca>
* Erick Branderhorst <branderhorst@fgg.eur.nl>
* J.H.M.Dassen <jdassen@WI.LeidenUniv.NL>
* Susan G. Kleinmann <sgk@sgk.tiac.net>
* Winfried Truemper <winni@ElFi.MI.Uni-Koeln.DE>
* Kenny Wickstrom <kenny@kennet.com>
Thanks!
1.5. Feedback
Please send additions, corrections and suggestions to Sven Rudolph
<sr1@inf.tu-dresden.de>.
Please note to which version of this document your comments refer.
The Id of this version is :
$Id: contributing,v 1.3 1995/11/28 23:35:31 sr1 Exp $
2. Package that have no current maintainer
Packages listed in this section are still part of Debian (unless they
have too many bugs), but the maintainer had reasons to not continue
maintaining it. (Remember: Debian is mainly produced by volunteers who
are not paid for maintaining Debian packages.)
If you find that you need to discontinue maintaining a package, send
an e-mail to Sven Rudolph <sr1@inf.tu-dresden.de>.
If you believe that the following list is incomplete, i.e., that there
are other packages in the Debian distribution that currently have no
active maintainer, send e-mail to Sven Rudolph
<sr1@inf.tu-dresden.de>.
If you would like to maintain one of the packages listed here, write
to ( who should do this (or wants to do this) ? -sr1).
* ghostscript, gsfonts previously maintained by Ted Hajek
<tedhajek@boombox.micro.umn.edu>
* elm \
* ircii \ previously maintained by
* wenglish / Carl Streeter <streeter@cae.wisc.edu>
* unzip, zip /
* strace
3. Packages that the maintainer wants to give away
Packages listed in this section are still part of Debian, but the
maintainer wants to find a new maintainer. It isn't as urgent to find
a new maintainer as in the previous section.
If you maintain Debian packages that you would like to hand off,
send an e-mail to Sven Rudolph <sr1@inf.tu-dresden.de> , then he will
add this package to this section.
If you would like to maintain one of the packages listed here, write
to the current maintainer of this package.
* seyon \ currently maintained by
* mailx / Sven Rudolph <sr1@inf.tu-dresden.de>
* mkisofs currently maintained by Kenny Wickstrom
<kenny@kennet.com>
4. Programs that aren't available yet in Debian
Programs listed in this section aren't yet available as Debian
packages, but there has been an expressed desire to include them.
If you want to create a Debian package, send an e-mail to Alvar Bray
<alvar@meiko.co.uk> .
I
4.1. Programming and development:
* lint (e.g. lclint ftp://larch.lcs.mit.edu/pub/Larch/lclint/ )
* GNU Pascal.
* UPS - the X-based debugger. Probably not worth building until we've
switched to ELF. (There are Linux-specific patches around.)
* checker (electric-fence is already available. Is checker better, worse
or different ? -sr1)
* vgrind (formats source code for printing)
* Scheme->C
* SCM - Scheme interpreter which will soon be the basis of
the GNU extension language.
* SLIB.
* CLISP - Common Lisp interpreter
* ECoLisp - a Common Lisp compiler that produces faster code but
isn't as widely used as GCL
* CLiCC - Common Lisp compiler that generates stand-alone apps
(rather large ones, though)
* GNAT (GNU Ada Translator)
4.2. Mail software:
* BBDB (for Emacs: Big Brother Data Base, a rolodex with hooks into
VM, GNUS, and RMAIL)
* tkmail
* mailtool
4.3. USENET news software:
* nn.
* C News (as an alternative to INN) including NOV and NNTP.
* strn.
4.4. Math packages:
* Octave (the FSF's Matlab clone).
* SC (the spreadsheet). (oleo is already available)
* GNU calc (see the Emacs list ...).
* SNNS Stuttgart Neural Network Simulator (ftp.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de)
* SciLab
* Yorick
* mathpad (almost WYSIWIG-Editor for LaTeX with build-in algebraic
functions; http://www.win.tue.nl/win/cs/wp/mathspad/ )
* MuPAD (computer algebra tool from University of Paderborn, Germany
http://gauss-mb.uni-paderborn.de/~cube/ )
* calctool
* felt
4.5. Graphics:
* SISCAD, a CADD package.
ftp://hrz-ws26.hrz.uni-kassel.de/pub/machines/LINUX/misc/siscad
* Kubota Graphics Corporation's now-PD 3-D visualization system, Dore'.
* libgr ( ftp://ftp.ctd.comsat.com/pub/linux/ELF, I don't know whether it
exists for a.out)
4.6. Misc Tools:
* GNU recode
* quota
* zoo/unzoo (packer)
* mc ( http://stekt.oulu.fi/~jtklehto/mc/ )
4.7. Editors:
* XEmacs
* MULE: MULti-lingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs (adds support for many
character sets--Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, and many
more) (A maintainer who uses these enhancements would be welcome.)
4.8. Games:
* nethack
* xpilot ( http://www.cs.uit.no/XPilot/ )
* rocks and diamonds
* xgalaga (space-invaders style game)
* abuse
* xibc (backgammon)
* xevil
* xjewel
* xsnow
* xbill (Sven Rudolph <sr1@inf.tu-dresden.de works on this)
4.9. X11:
* Andrew
* ImageMagick (image viewer) (This package would belong into the
non-free section if it provides the creation of GIF files.)
* XView (at least a library package--the full XView distribution,
with window manager, etc. would also be nice, but not as important)
* Mosaic (This would belong into the non-free section.)
* plan (calender with many functions)
* grok (database with many functions)
* mpeg_play
* tkps (tk-based "top")
* xmem
* xidle
4.10. Communication
* BBS (Bulletin Board System) Software
4.11 TeX
* tmview (svgalib DVI viewer)
Kpathsea support should be added and the original author is already
aware of this. Contact him first.
4.12 Non-Free
* Netscape ( no source available, so this would be a repackaging of
the original distribution.)
4.13 Networking
* other www servers (Spinner-httpd ( http://spinner.infovav.se/ ),
apache-httpd ( http://www.apache.org/ ) )
* tkined / scotty (tk-based network analysis)
* xinetd (replacement for inetd with many enhancements)
* ftptool (This requires the not-yet-available XView libraries.)
4.14 System Tools
* backup software (kbackup, taper, nbackup)
Please note that there are plans for a Debian-specific backup tool
( http://www.access.digex.net/~dhs/debian/debian.html ).
* apsfilter (a printing filter) (ftp://ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de
/pub/Linux/local/packages/APS).
* magicfilter (another printing filter)
(It is quite difficult to write a universal and easy configuration
mechanism for these printing filters.)
4.15 Text utilities
* HTML editors (tkHTML, asWedit, auc-html.el)
* mpage (genscript is already available)
5. Programs that someone should write
This section contains suggestions/wishes for programs. There is no
known implementation of such a program for Linux.
* amspell (ms-dos) like spell checker, i.e. a spell checker what
checks the complete text first, searching for alternatives (on the
fly) and asking for user action at the very end of the checking
process. This saves much time on low memory machines.
6. Beyond packages
(Shall I drop this section ? -sr1)
This section lists some areas of future development of Debian that
cannot be assigned to specific packages.
Please note that you may need to know a lot about the specific topic
and the current Debian architecture, so this probably shouldn't be
your first Debian related contribution.
* internationalization / localization
* documentation and translations
* Debian GNU/Linux for other platforms (m68k, alpha, sparc)
Sven
--
Sven Rudolph (sr1@inf.tu-dresden.de); WWW : http://www.sax.de/~sr1/
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