FAQ: Work-Needing and Prospective Packages
(The last version contained some wrong statements about PAM and
shadow. I removed these.)
Work-Needing and Prospective Packages for Debian GNU/Linux
Sven Rudolph, sr1@inf.tu-dresden.de
$Id: packages.sgml,v 1.13 1996/04/05 04:04:17 sr1 Exp sr1 $
______________________________________________________________________
Table of Contents:
1. General Questions
1.1. What is Debian GNU/Linux
1.2. Purpose of this document
1.3. What do I need to know in order to become a package maintainer
?
1.4. Feedback
2. Packages that have no current maintainer
3. Packages that the maintainer wants to give away
4. Packages that someone is working on
5. Programs that aren't available yet in Debian
5.1. Programming and development:
5.2. Mail software:
5.3. USENET news software:
5.4. Math packages:
5.5. Graphics:
5.6. Misc Tools:
5.7. Editors:
5.8. Games:
5.9. X11:
5.10. Communication
5.11. TeX
5.12. Networking
5.13. System Tools
5.14. Text utilities
6. Programs that someone should write
7. Beyond packages
______________________________________________________________________
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/ . The FAQ is available via FTP at
ftp.debian.org:/debian/doc .
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 documents at ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/doc/package-
developer/ .
The packaging guidelines are included in the dpkg-1.1.0 package.
You should subscribe to the debian-devel mailing list, details are
given in the FAQ.
1.4. Feedback
Please send additions, corrections, suggestions and wishes to Sven
Rudolph sr1@inf.tu-dresden.de. Please mention to which version of
this document your comments refer.
2. Packages 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
me an e-mail.
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 me an e-mail.
If you would like to maintain one of the packages listed here, send me
an e-mail.
previously maintained by Ian Murdock imurdock@debian.org :
o acm
o aout-librl (this package might be unnecessary now)
o elisp-manual
o emacs
o glibcdoc
o metamail
o pmake
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
me an e-mail, then I 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.
currently maintained by Sven Rudolph sr1@inf.tu-dresden.de :
o seyon
currently maintained by David Engel david@ods.com :
o tclX
currently maintained by Christian Linhart chris@cosy.sbg.ac.at :
o statserial
o tgif
o xarchie
currently maintained by Ian Jackson ian@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk :
o trn
o m4
o at
o cron
4. Packages that someone is working on
Programs listed in this section aren't yet available as Debian
packages, but someone is working on providing a package.
If you would like to work on one of these packages please contact the
responsible person listed below.
Chris Fearnley cjf@netaxs.com :
o dome (http://www.netaxs.com/ cjf/jpegs.html)
o and probably : xli, Tix, povray
krs@caos.aamu.edu (Karl R. Sackett) :
o CLX - Common Lisp Xlib implementation
o PCL - Portable Common Loops for GCL
Dale Miller dale@csd.uwo.ca :
o lclint (ftp://larch.lcs.mit.edu/pub/Larch/lclint/ )
Richard Kaszeta kaszeta@me.umn.edu :
o xmotd
Mike Wilson cmwilson@uncc.edu :
o mule
Sven Rudolph sr1@inf.tu-dresden.de :
o xbill
o NCSA Mosaic (waiting for 2.7)
"behan (b.) webster" behanw@bnr.ca
o sxpc (Simple Xwindows Protocol Compresser)
o ncsa-httpd
o qfax (multi-user e-mail extension to efax).
CD Rasmussen cdr@sme.siemens.com:
o xautolock
wendal@onyx.southwind.net:
o tkHTML
Darren torin@daft.com :
o netpbm, mew, giftool
"Prud'homme Christophe" prudhomm@lions.asci.fr :
o Xemacs
Miquel van Smoorenburg miquels@debian.het.net :
o INN
Dirk.Eddelbuettel@qed.econ.queensu.ca :
o tob
o BBDB (for Emacs: Big Brother Data Base, a rolodex with hooks into
VM, GNUS, and RMAIL)
Michael Alan Dorman mdorman@lot49.med.miami.edu :
o glimpse, glimpsehttpd
Warwick Harvey warwick@cs.mu.OZ.AU :
o mercury (a purely declarative logic programming language with
strong modes, strong types, and strong determinism)
Patrick.Weemeeuw@kulnet.KULeuven.ac.be :
o PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) (
http://www.pilgrim.umass.edu/pub/osf_dce/RFC/rfc86.0.txt )
marcus@sysc.pdx.edu :
o CLISP
David H. Silber dhs@firefly.com :
o dbackup - A Debian-specific backup program.
o lockstep - A program to keep various directory trees in sync.
o uucpconfig - A configuration program which will become part of my
uucp package.
Karl R. Sackett krs@caos.aamu.edu :
o wily - work-alike of Acme programming environment for Plan9
o 9term - terminal emulator similar to 8-1/2 windows
o libXg - UTF-2 fonts for Sam and 9term
o exmh - X user interface for MH mail
o faces - visual list monitor
Brian Sulcer bsulcer@gibson.com :
o vile (vi-like editor)
o rogue
o umoria
Robert Leslie rob@mars.org :
o GIMP (The General Image Manipulation Program)
http://www.xcf.berkeley.edu/ gimp
Martin Schulze joey@infodrom.north.de :
o cached: Harvest Cached, http, ftp, gopher, wais proxy
o vtwm: Virtual Window Manager for X11
Manoj Srivastava srivasta@pilgrim.umass.edu :
o perl CGI-modules (waiting for copyright information from author)
5. 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 me an e-mail.
5.1. Programming and development:
o GNU Pascal.
o UPS - the X-based debugger. Probably not worth building until
we've switched to ELF. (There are Linux-specific patches around.)
o checker
o Scheme->C
o SCM - Scheme interpreter which will soon be the basis of the GNU
extension language.
o SLIB.
o CLISP - Common Lisp interpreter
o ECoLisp - a Common Lisp compiler that produces faster code but
isn't as widely used as GCL
o CLiCC - Common Lisp compiler that generates stand-alone apps
(rather large ones, though)
o GNAT (GNU Ada Translator)
o Postgres95
5.2. Mail software:
o tkmail
o mailtool
5.3. USENET news software:
o nn.
o strn.
5.4. Math packages:
o SC (the spreadsheet). (oleo is already available)
o GNU calc (see the Emacs list ...).
o SNNS Stuttgart Neural Network Simulator (ftp.informatik.uni-
stuttgart.de)
o SciLab
o Yorick
o MuPAD (computer algebra tool from University of Paderborn, Germany
http://gauss-mb.uni-paderborn.de/ cube/ , please look at the
license conditions.)
o calctool
o felt
o LAPACK and BLAS (numerical libraries,
http://nils.wustl.edu/schiotz/lapack-linux.html )
5.5. Graphics:
o SISCAD, a CADD package. ftp://hrz-ws26.hrz.uni-
kassel.de/pub/machines/LINUX/misc/siscad
o Kubota Graphics Corporation's now-PD 3-D visualization system,
Dore'.
5.6. Misc Tools:
o zoo/unzoo (packer)
o binhex
5.7. Editors:
o NEdit ( http://fnpspa.fnal.gov/nirvana/nedit.html , requires Motif)
o jed (small emacs-like)
5.8. Games:
o rocks and diamonds
o xgalaga (space-invaders style game)
o abuse
o xibc (backgammon)
o xevil
o xjewel
5.9. X11:
o Andrew
o ImageMagick (image viewer) (This package would belong into the non-
free section if it provides the creation of GIF files.)
o XView (at least a library package--the full XView distribution,
with window manager, etc. would also be nice, but not as important)
o plan (calender with many functions)
o grok (database with many functions)
o tkps (tk-based "top")
o xmem
o xidle
o xmcd (ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/applications/xmcd/xmcd-2.0.README)
5.10. Communication
o BBS (Bulletin Board System) Software
o hylafax (http://www.vix.com/hylafax) a fax server with add-ons for
alphanumeric paging
5.11. TeX
o tmview (svgalib DVI viewer) Kpathsea support should be added and
the original author is already aware of this. Contact him first.
5.12. Networking
o other www servers (Spinner ( http://spinner.infovav.se/ ), WN (
http://hopf.math.nwu.edu/docs/overview.html) )
o xinetd (replacement for inetd with many enhancements)
o ftptool (This requires the not-yet-available XView libraries.)
5.13. System Tools
o backup software (kbackup, nbackup) Please note that there are plans
for a Debian-specific backup tool (
http://www.access.digex.net/ dhs/debian/debian.html ). taper is
already available, and tob will be available
o apsfilter (a printing filter) (ftp://ftp-i2.informatik.rwth-
aachen.de/pub/Linux/pkg/APSfilter ) (It is quite difficult to write
a universal and easy configuration mechanism for these printing
filters.) magicfilter is already available
o IBCS2 emulator
5.14. Text utilities
o HTML editors (tkHTML, asWedit, auc-html.el)
o mpage (genscript is already available)
6. Programs that someone should write
This section contains suggestions/wishes for programs. There is no
known implementation of such a program for Linux.
o 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.
7. Beyond packages
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.
o internationalization / localization
o documentation and translations
o Debian GNU/Linux for other platforms (m68k, alpha, sparc)
o shadow passwords ( ftp://ftp.ists.pwr.wroc.pl/pub/linux/shadow/ )
(Previous versions didn't have a free-enough license, so Debian
cannot use these.)
Sven
--
Sven Rudolph <sr1@inf.tu-dresden.de> ; WWW : http://www.sax.de/~sr1/
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