--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Weekly News http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2002/29/ Debian Weekly News - July 30th, 2002 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to this year's 29th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. If you ever wanted to know how you could fund Free Software development, see what Drew Scott Daniels [1]sent us. You may also find a good job in the UK, that recently released a [2]policy for using Free Software within the UK government. 1. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2002/29/mail#1 2. http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/news/newonsite/oss-policy.htm New Jigdo Howto. This week we found out that Peter Jay Salzman wrote a [3]Debian Jigdo mini-Howto which was added to the Linux Documentation Project recently. Getting Debian ISOs has always been a painful, slow and supremely inefficient process. Jigdo is a new tool for obtaining Debian iso images in an easy, fast and very efficient manner. This HOWTO describes why you should use jigdo, adds a small explanation how it works and how it is used to get and update Debian iso images. 3. http://tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/Debian-Jigdo/ Policy for Woody Point-Releases. [4]Several [5]developers [6]would [7]like to add new packages and updates to their packages to the recently released stable distribution of Debian. Adding new packages and random updates to the stable distribution, however, would nullify the entire idea of having a stable release, Joey [8]explained. Hence, the same policy as before will be used for point-releases of woody. 4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0207/msg01411.html 5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0207/msg01416.html 6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0207/msg01614.html 7. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0207/msg01483.html 8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0207/msg01641.html Gnome2 for Woody. Gustavo Noronha Silva [9]announced that he was backporting Gnome2 for Woody. For installing his packages, you have to add the line deb http://gluck.debian.org/~kov/debian woody gnome2 to your /etc/apt/sources.list. Gustavo is backporting some applications as well. Here are screenshots of [10]gdm2 and [11]Gnome2. 9. http://lists.debian.org/debian-gtk-gnome-0207/msg00222.html 10. http://people.debian.org/~kov/shots/gdm2-woody.png 11. http://people.debian.org/~kov/shots/gnome2-woody.png A Review of the Release Process. Anthony Towns [12]wrote a review about the woody release process. He gave a short summary of the release history and pointed out the main blocking things: a six month delay before trying to release, the twelve-month-development of boot-floppies, the fact that the CDs weren't ready in time and the late noticing that security wasn't ready. His wishlist for sarge includes less wasted time, better communication and transparency and a testing distribution which is kept permanently in a releasable state. 12. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project-0207/msg00094.html Help Needed with GIMP Bugs. Martin Michlmayr [13]investigated bug reports against packages for GIMP 1.0 and 1.1. Both were removed from Debian a while ago, but several bug reports are still open. Martin is looking for someone who has some time and knows GIMP well to go through these bug reports and either close them with an appropriate message if it's fixed in 1.2 or reassign them to the corresponding gimp1.2 package. 13. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0207/msg01274.html Solving the libpng Problem. Marcelo Magallon [14]investigated the situation with libpng version 2 and 3 and lists development packages that depend on the older version of this library. Junichi Uekawa [15]proposed an upgrade path for libraries that depend on the old libpng package. However, people disagree on the need to change the library's SONAME when changing the version of a library dependency. 14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0207/msg01106.html 15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0207/msg01319.html Ceasing Support for Linux 2.0 in Glibc. Ben Collins [16]announced that he's going to cease support for Linux kernel prior to 2.2.0 in the upcoming glibc release for Debian unstable. This change only affects the architectures i386 and m68k. All others already have a similar default. This means that if you have machine that runs a 2.0.X kernel and Debian unstable, you'd better stay with woody or upgrade the kernel. 16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0207/msg01627.html Status of the debian-installer. Tollef Fog Heen wrote a [17]status report about what is supposed to be the installer for sarge. Tollef will lead its development and says that it already works for users on i386 if you tell them what buttons they are supposed to press. Anthony Towns added some interesting [18]bits to that. For those who would like to try it, [19]here are step-by-step instructions for building the system. 17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot-0207/msg00546.html 18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot-0207/msg00548.html 19. http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot-0207/msg00441.html Future glibc Maintenance. Ben Collins [20]announced that he copied the Debian part of the glibc package into [21]CVS. In order to use it, you'll need the glibc_2.2.5.orig.tar.gz tarball from the archive to go with it. Log messages of code commits are forwarded to the [22]debian-glibc list so people stay updated. 20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-glibc-0207/msg00020.html 21. http://cvs.debian.org/glibc-package/?cvsroot=glibc 22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-glibc/ Perl 5.8.0. Raphaël Hertzog [23]reports that Perl 5.8.0 is released and once again we have a binary incompatibility for binary modules. With Debian growing, this affects more packages than last time, of course. Brendan O'Dea, the current Perl maintainer, [24]intends to set up a [25]staging area in his home directory on people.debian.org that should help a smooth transition. In order to speed up this effort, non-maintainer uploads (NMU) are discussed. 23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-perl-0207/msg00016.html 24. http://lists.debian.org/debian-perl-0207/msg00019.html 25. http://people.debian.org/~bod/perl/README Reviving SuperH. It seems that the Debian SuperH people would like to revive the SuperH port -- and add four new architectures with it. Takeshi Yaegashi [26]requested the creation of binary directories for the four architectures sh3, sh4, sh3eb and sh4eb. There is still an ongoing [27]discussion about the binary incompatibility between SH3 and SH4, though. 26. http://bugs.debian.org/154179 27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-superh-0207/msg00016.html Ceasing /usr/doc/. Joey Hess [28]wondered what other developers think about if he would remove the code in debhelper that makes postinst scripts manage /usr/doc links. Joey added that since we'll be recompiling a lot of packages the gcc 3.0 transition anyway, we will lose the links in /usr/doc stuff essentially for free. However, Adam Heath [29]objected to this proposal in order to support backwards compatibility. 28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy-0207/msg00023.html 29. http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy-0207/msg00039.html Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update your systems if you have any of these packages installed. * [30]OpenSSL -- Multiple remote exploits. * [31]MM -- Insecure temporary files. 30. http://www.debian.org/security/2002/dsa-136 31. http://www.debian.org/security/2002/dsa-137 New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the Debian archive recently or contain important updates. * [32]apt-build -- Frontend to apt to build, optimize and install packages. * [33]apt-src -- Manage Debian source packages. * [34]bluez-sdp -- BlueZ Bluetooth SDP daemon and tool. * [35]elinks -- Character mode WWW/FTP browser. * [36]exif -- Command-line utility to show EXIF information in JPEG files. * [37]frost -- A graphical filesharing and messaging client for Freenet. * [38]gsendfile -- GNOME frontend to sendfile. * [39]haddock -- Documentation tool for annotated Haskell source code. * [40]jabber -- Daemon for the jabber.org Open Source Instant Messenger. * [41]ninvaders -- A space invaders-like game using ncurses. * [42]openbox -- A window manager for X. * [43]posh -- Policy-compliant Ordinary SHell. * [44]totd -- Small DNS proxy that supports IPv6/IPv4 record translation. * [45]vcheck -- Utility to check and download the most recent program version. * [46]vegastrike -- A 3d space combat game. 32. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/apt-build.html 33. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/apt-src.html 34. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/bluez-sdp.html 35. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/elinks.html 36. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/exif.html 37. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/frost.html 38. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/gsendfile.html 39. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/haddock.html 40. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/jabber.html 41. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/ninvaders.html 42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/openbox.html 43. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/shells/posh.html 44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/totd.html 45. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/vcheck.html 46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/vegastrike.html Orphaned Packages. 15 packages were orphaned this week and require a new maintainer. This makes a total of 97 orphaned packages. Many thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software community. Please see the [47]WNPP pages for the full list, and please add a note to the bug report and retitle it to ITA: if you plan to take over a package. 47. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/ * [48]ada-mode -- Ada mode for Emacs and XEmacs. ([49]Bug#154094) * [50]adacgi -- CGI programs in Ada. ([51]Bug#154089) * [52]adasockets -- Bindings for the socket services in Ada. ([53]Bug#154104) * [54]asis -- Ada Semantic Interface Specification. ([55]Bug#154095) * [56]erlang -- A real-time, concurrent and distributed functional language. ([57]Bug#154107) * [58]erlang-doc-html -- Erlang HTML pages. ([59]Bug#154096) * [60]erlang-manpages -- Erlang man pages. ([61]Bug#154097) * [62]gnat -- The GNU Ada 95 compiler. ([63]Bug#154098) * [64]gnat-doc -- Documentation for the GNU Ada compiler. ([65]Bug#154099) * [66]gnat-glade -- Distributed systems in Ada. ([67]Bug#154100) * [68]gnat-glade-doc -- GNAT Distributed Systems Annex documentation. ([69]Bug#154101) * [70]gvd -- GNU Visual Debugger. ([71]Bug#154103) * [72]libgtkada -- Ada binding for the GTK library. ([73]Bug#154105) * [74]simulpic -- Microchip PIC simulator. ([75]Bug#154106) * [76]ubit -- Development files for libubit0. ([77]Bug#154093) 48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/editors/ada-mode.html 49. http://bugs.debian.org/154094 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/adacgi.html 51. http://bugs.debian.org/154089 52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/libadasockets0.html 53. http://bugs.debian.org/154104 54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libasis-3.14p-1.html 55. http://bugs.debian.org/154095 56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/non-us/erlang.html 57. http://bugs.debian.org/154107 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/doc/erlang-doc-html.html 59. http://bugs.debian.org/154096 60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/doc/erlang-manpages.html 61. http://bugs.debian.org/154097 62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/gnat.html 63. http://bugs.debian.org/154098 64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/doc/gnat-doc.html 65. http://bugs.debian.org/154099 66. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/gnat-glade.html 67. http://bugs.debian.org/154100 68. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/doc/gnat-glade-doc.html 69. http://bugs.debian.org/154101 70. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/gvd.html 71. http://bugs.debian.org/154103 72. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libgtkada1.html 73. http://bugs.debian.org/154105 74. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/electronics/simulpic.html 75. http://bugs.debian.org/154106 76. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libubit0.html 77. http://bugs.debian.org/154093 Seen something interesting? Please drop us a note whenever you see something noteworthy that you think is appropriate for inclusion in DWN. We don't notice everything, unfortunately. Of course, we are also thankful for completely written items from volunteer writers. Please see the [78]contributing page. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED] 78. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing 79. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
