--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Weekly News http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2003/37/ Debian Weekly News - September 16th, 2003 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to this year's 37th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Several readers told us that the first hardware audio player that supports Ogg/Vorbis is the [1]NeurosAudio and has been shipping for months. They are said to also support one of the key Ogg authors and also supply a synchronization manager for GNU/Linux, [2]positron, which is packaged and distributed with Debian. 1. http://www.neurosaudio.com/ 2. http://packages.debian.org/positron Too many Versions of Tcl? Andreas Rottmann [3]wondered why there are four different versions (8.0, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4) of the Tcl programming environment in the archive. Matthew Palmer [4]explained that Tcl isn't particularly backwards compatible. Hence, several packages don't run or build with newer versions of the language. 3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00468.html 4. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00514.html Status of Testing Migration. Petter Reinholdtsen [5]reported that the [6]migration of packages into testing has been slowed down significantly. At least partially this is due to the mips buildd being under heavy load. Colin Watson [7]pointed out that the reason is glibc 2.3.2 and that there is a good chance that this will start to clear quite shortly. 5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00485.html 6. http://developer.skolelinux.no/info/cdbygging/distdiff-all.html.gz 7. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00498.html Second Revision of Woody. An official [8]announcement has been sent out stating the current status of the [9]second revision of Debian woody (3.0r2). This revision is planned to include about 130 security updates that have been issued since the first revision. Comments should be sent to [10]Joey directly. 8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0309/msg00002.html 9. http://master.debian.org/~joey/3.0r2/ 10. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] No Dueling Banjos from Debian. Some of the most bizarre [11]mails on debian-devel over the [12]years have been [13]repeated [14]requests by [15]various people for the sheet music for dueling banjos. Several list subscribers [16]have been [17]eager to [18]assist the posters in their search. Jim Penny [19]called this the Dueling Banjo Effect and explained that this has become a self-perpetuating Google-flop. People use Google which points them to Debian to get this sheet music, and the act of asking reinforces Google's notion that Debian is a good place to get the music. 11. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0009/msg00851.html 12. http://www.google.com/search?as_oq=sheet.music+dueling+banjos&as_sitesearch=debian.org&safe=images 13. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0306/msg01368.html 14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00378.html 15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0301/msg00027.html 16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0009/msg00874.html 17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0009/msg00862.html 18. http://lists.debian.org/debian-curiosa-0308/msg00000.html 19. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00382.html Criteria for Inclusion in Debian. Adam Kessel [20]wondered if there are guidelines for what gets included in Debian other than what is required by the [21]DFSG. Steve Langasek [22]explained that it is rare that Debian would overrule a developer who wishes to maintain a piece of software which is free and legally distributable. Manoj Srivastava [23]added that if a developer has spent the time and effort to package software and made it policy compliant, then as long as Debian can legally distribute it, it has usually found its way in. 20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00602.html 21. http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines 22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00603.html 23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00656.html Alternative to the GNU FDL. Wouter Verhelst [24]prepared a draft documentation license that seeks to retain the spirit of the GNU [25]Free Documentation License (FDL), but which he thinks is DFSG-free. Branden Robinson [26]wasn't sure precisely what the FDL's intent is, but thought that it would be more fruitful to enumerate the license's intentions before constructing the text. 24. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0309/msg00503.html 25. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html 26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0309/msg00585.html Attribution-ShareAlike License. John Goerzen [27]wondered whether the Creative Commons [28]Attribution-ShareAlike License was DFSG-free. On his own [29]analysis it occurred that it would satisfy each requirement of the DFSG. Branden Robinson [30]agreed, but warned that licenses must also pass a more "holistic" reading to make sure they aren't non-free despite passing each specific clause of the DFSG. Florian Weimer [31]thought it would depend upon whether the license was applied to a documentation format suitable for editing. 27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0309/msg00474.html 28. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/ 29. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0309/msg00476.html 30. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0309/msg00528.html 31. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0309/msg00514.html News from the Package Tracking System. Raphaël Hertzog [32]reported about a new [33]feature which has been added to the [34]Package Tracking System (PTS) a few months ago. It is now possible to add custom information to the PTS web page for a particular package. The PTS features many useful links (BTS, QA statistics, contact information, DDTP translation status, buildd logs) and gathers much more information from various places. There are over 3000 subscriptions from 1500 different addresses for 1650 different source packages. 32. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0309/msg00006.html 33. http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/ch-resources.en.html#s-pts-web 34. http://packages.qa.debian.org/ DebConf 4 in Brazil. Carlos Laviola [35]announced that the Debian Conference #4 will be held in [36]Porto Alegre, Brazil. This country has been extremely active in the Free Software movement but is very unrepresented at past Debian conferences. There are already plans planning to host the conference some days before or after the [37]Fórum Internacional de Software Livre (International Free Software Forum), so that Debian developers can attend this event as well. 35. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0308/msg00003.html 36. http://www.uoregon.edu/~sergiok/brasil/portoalegre.html 37. http://www.softwarelivre.org/forum2003/fotos_evento/ Improvements in the Bug Tracking System. Colin Watson [38]announced the new tag 'fixed-upstream' which is intended to replace the old (mis)use of the 'pending' tag and refers to bugs that were fixed upstream and the maintainer is only waiting for a new release. The new 'owner' attribute allows maintainer teams to divide the work up more conveniently. If set the address receives the same mail sent to that bug as a package maintainer would receive. 38. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0309/msg00005.html Installing Sarge with the Debian-Installer. Sebastian Ley [39]reported that the debian-installer team has cleaned up the build process of debian-installer images. They also put together a [40]howto which guides through the process of installing sarge. At the same time the Debian-CD team has reviewed the netinst iso [41]images for a sarge installation with the new debian-installer. 39. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-0309/msg00007.html 40. http://cvs.debian.org/debian-installer/doc/INSTALLATION-HOWTO?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup 41. http://gluck.debian.org/cdimage/testing/netinst/i386/ Maintaining Packages with Subversion. Eduard Bloch maintains the [42]svn-devscripts package which contains tools that help create and maintain Debian packages in a large Subversion repository. Joey Hess, however, has [43]problems with the implementation and proposed improvements. Graham Wilson also [44]added another method of importing new upstream source archives. 42. http://packages.debian.org/svn-devscripts 43. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00736.html 44. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00738.html Debmirror Survey. Goswin von Brederlow would like to [45]know how other people use the [46]debmirror package to mirror certain parts of the Debian archive. He has rewritten most of debmirror in an effort to clean up the codebase and to add flexibility of the actual download method used. For the configuration part he is seeking input. 45. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0309/msg00794.html 46. http://packages.debian.org/debmirror Using proper Build Dependencies. Joey Hess [47]discovered a glitch in the [48]policy with regards to build dependencies. Hence, Wouter Verhelst [49]explained how Build-Depends and Build-Depends-Indep have been created as a tool to make autobuilding packages easier and [50]proposed to rewrite the paragraph in the policy. 47. http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy-0309/msg00053.html 48. http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ 49. http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy-0309/msg00059.html 50. http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy-0309/msg00067.html Debian-Installer Work Camp. An [51]invitation to the [52]8th Oldenburg Linux developers meeting was sent to the debian-boot list since it will host a [53]debian-installer debcamp. The meeting will take place at the last weekend on September in Oldenburg, Germany. Several developers who work on the debian-installer already subscribed to the meeting. 51. http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot-0309/msg00146.html 52. http://oldenburger.linuxtage.de/Oldenburg2003/ 53. http://people.debian.org/~pere/debian-installer/di-debcamp-2003-1.html Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update your systems if you have any of these packages installed. * [54]sane-backends -- Several vulnerabilities. * [55]XFree86 -- Buffer overflows, denial of service. * [56]MySQL -- Buffer overflow. 54. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-379 55. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-380 56. http://www.debian.org/security/2003/dsa-381 New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently or contain important updates. * [57]athena-jot -- Print out increasing, decreasing, random, or redundant data, one per line. * [58]axiom -- General purpose computer algebra system. * [59]bookcase -- An application for keeping track of your books. * [60]gnuift -- GNU Image Finding Tool - index and search images by content. * [61]gtkguitune -- Guitar and other instruments tuner. * [62]gtranslator -- PO-file editor by the Gnome I18N team. * [63]pconsole -- Parallel console shell for administering clusters. * [64]potrace -- Utility to transform bitmaps into vector graphics. * [65]quagga -- Inofficial successor of the Zebra BGP/OSPF/RIP routing daemon. 57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/athena-jot.html 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/math/axiom.html 59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/bookcase.html 60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/gnuift.html 61. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/gtkguitune.html 62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/gtranslator.html 63. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/pconsole.html 64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/potrace.html 65. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/quagga.html Orphaned Packages. 17 packages were orphaned this week and require a new maintainer. This makes a total of 212 orphaned packages. Many thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software community. Please see the [66]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. 66. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/ * [67]affiche -- Application to "stick" little notes on the desktop. ([68]Bug#210592) * [69]distcc -- Simple distributed compiler client and server. ([70]Bug#210397) * [71]docbook-utils -- Convert Docbook files to other formats (HTML, RTF, PS, man, PDF). ([72]Bug#211053) * [73]dpkg-cross -- Tools for cross compiling Debian packages. ([74]Bug#211013) * [75]freenet-unstable -- Peer-to-peer network for anonymous publishing (unstable branch). ([76]Bug#210590) * [77]gamix -- Graphical mixer for ALSA using gtk+. ([78]Bug#210730) * [79]mydns -- DNS server using MySQL for data storage. ([80]Bug#209071) * [81]preferences -- GNUstep Preferences.app. ([82]Bug#210594) * [83]preferences-app -- GNUstep Preferences.app. ([84]Bug#210595) * [85]remind -- Sophisticated reminder service. ([86]Bug#210891) * [87]sel -- Fullscreen file-selection and execution tool. ([88]Bug#210593) * [89]tcl-sql -- Tcl generic database interface. ([90]Bug#210393) * [91]ttysnoop -- Allows you to spy on telnet+serial connections. ([92]Bug#210892) * [93]xdkcal -- Desktop Calendar for X. ([94]Bug#210889) * [95]xotcl -- Object oriented extension for Tcl. ([96]Bug#210239) * [97]xpaste -- Program to display the contents of the primary paste buffer. ([98]Bug#209359) * [99]xxkb -- Keyboard state indicator and switcher for xkb. ([100]Bug#210890) 67. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/affiche.html 68. http://bugs.debian.org/210592 69. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/distcc.html 70. http://bugs.debian.org/210397 71. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/docbook-utils.html 72. http://bugs.debian.org/211053 73. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/dpkg-cross.html 74. http://bugs.debian.org/211013 75. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/freenet-unstable.html 76. http://bugs.debian.org/210590 77. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/gamix.html 78. http://bugs.debian.org/210730 79. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/mydns.html 80. http://bugs.debian.org/209071 81. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/preferences.html 82. http://bugs.debian.org/210594 83. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/preferences-app.html 84. http://bugs.debian.org/210595 85. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/remind.html 86. http://bugs.debian.org/210891 87. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/sel.html 88. http://bugs.debian.org/210593 89. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/tcl-sql.html 90. http://bugs.debian.org/210393 91. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/ttysnoop.html 92. http://bugs.debian.org/210892 93. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/xdkcal.html 94. http://bugs.debian.org/210889 95. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/xotcl.html 96. http://bugs.debian.org/210239 97. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/xpaste.html 98. http://bugs.debian.org/209359 99. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/xxkb.html 100. http://bugs.debian.org/210890 Want to continue reading DWN? Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers who investigate the Debian community and report about events in the community. Please see the [101]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED] 101. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing 102. mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
