[This version takes account of various people's comments -- jdg] Mini-HOWTO for Debian New Maintainer Application Managers
Copyright Julian Gilbey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, September 2000 This is in the public domain. The fount of all knowledge is the New Maintainer pages. Start at http://www.debian.org/devel/join/newmaint and look around until you are familiar with the contents. Your responsibilities as an AM are described there. As an AM, you will also be subscribed to the AM list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please feel free to ask for help there; we are a friendly list all trying to get volunteers into the project! Note that as this is an archived public list, questions of a highly personal nature should be asked to the Front Desk privately. Also, please do not send anything like photo IDs to this list. The other crucial web page is the database: http://nm.debian.org/. You will have received a login there (and it's not encrypted, so please don't use a sensitive password); see the bottom of that page. This database is used to record the progress of your applicants. You are also able to specify how many applicants you are willing to process at once (go the the link at the side "Your profile" to do so). If you ever do not have enough time to take on more applicants, simply change this number to zero. The rest of the database pages are fairly self-explanatory. If you ever have an applicant who is taking too long to respond or who needs to wait for a couple of months (vacation or whatever), you can always put them "on hold" so that you can take on another applicant. There is a text field "AM Comments" for noting the reasons for such things, or for noting any other significant information for the front desk and DAM to note. The four email addresses of note are: NM Admin list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] A public list for discussion of issues among AMs. It is a closed list, but is mirrored to the NM discussion list, so please don't post very personal information here. (Questions about ID verification, etc, are OK.) NM Discussion list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] A general list for discussion about the NM process. -admin is mirrored here. It is not necessary for AMs to read this list, but AMs are, of course, welcome to do so. Front Desk: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Where initial applications get sent, and where the final full report gets sent. Any personal questions about individual applications which are inappropriate for a public forum should be directed here as well. Debian Account Managers (DAMs): [EMAIL PROTECTED] Where the final report is also sent. The DAMs are responsible for creating the accounts on the Debian machines and adding the GPG keys to the keyring. They also get to make the final decision on each application, as the official New Maintainer delegates of the Debian Project Leader. Don't hassle the DAMs, they are usually very busy! Finally, to make life easier, I found it useful to create some form letters, and these are attached below as follows: Appendix 1: Sample initial email Appendix 2: Sample email about skills, procedures and intro to philosophy Appendix 3: Sample questions on philosophy Appendix 4: Sample report for AM list (possibly GPG sign and send to [EMAIL PROTECTED]); this should also be attached to the Front Desk/DAM report Appendix 5: Sample report for Front Desk and DAM (GPG sign and send to both [EMAIL PROTECTED] and [EMAIL PROTECTED]) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- APPENDIX 1: SAMPLE INITIAL EMAIL Hello *****! I have just been appointed Application Manager for your Debian maintainership application. I have not seen your original application, so I know nothing about you or your application, I'm afraid. As a first step, have you checked out the New Maintainer corner of the website? Have a look at http://www.debian.org/devel/join/newmaint, and especially at the checklist referred to from there. That's what we'll have to work through together. So, if you can start by letting me have the following, we should be able to progress fairly quickly: - GPG key (preferably signed by a current developer or certification authority) - If your GPG is not signed by a current developer, you will need to also provide a piece of GPG-signed digitally photo ID (let me know if this is a problem; there are other ways to handle this step, but this is the easiest) - your preferred account name for the Debian machines - the email address you would like to be subscribed to debian-private If you can also let me know a bit about: - what you intend to do within Debian - what skills you possess in order to be able to do this sort of work that would be useful. Once we've done this, we can look at "philosophy" and that will be it. Looking forward to helping you through the process, ---------------------------------------------------------------------- APPENDIX 2: SAMPLE EMAIL ABOUT SKILLS, TASKS AND INTRO TO PHILOSOPHY "Skills" and "Philosophy". The next thing we have to figure is whether you yet know enough to maintain a Debian package, and if not, let me help you! You've said what you intend to package; have you attempted to do so yet? It's often easiest if you take over an existing package at first: then you get to see how someone else has done it. You should also read how the Bug Tracking System (BTS) works: see /usr/share/doc/debian/bug* or http://bugs.debian.org/. A word on mailing lists: there are quite a lot of Debian mailing lists now and packaging-related packages, and I'd just like to check with you whether you know about the key ones. I think all of the packages are listed as dependencies of task-debian-devel, but you may not be aware of what you have got. Packages: dpkg-dev All of the primary tools needed to put a Debian package together: dpkg-buildpackage, dpkg-source, etc. debhelper A very useful set of scripts designed to make debian/rules files more readable and uniform. debian-policy, packaging-manual Describe the policy relating to packages and details of the packaging mechanism. Cover everything from required gcc options to the way the maintainer scripts (postinst etc.) work, package sections and priorities, etc. An absolute must-read. Also useful is the file /usr/share/doc/debian-policy/upgrading-checklist.txt, which lists changes between versions of policy. doc-debian Lots of useful Debian-specific documentation: the constitution and DFSG, explanation of the Bug Tracking System (BTS), etc. maint-guide The New Maintainer's Guide to making Debian packages. devscripts Lots of useful (and not-so-useful) scripts to help build packages. developers-reference Lots of information on procedures and suchlike. dupload Automatically upload packages to the archive once they are built. fakeroot Build packages without having to be root. It's not half as bad as it seems at first, but the long-term advantages to the maintainer and user of having such detailed descriptions of package building should be clear ;-) And as for mailing lists, you do not really need to read lots, but the most significant ones are probably: debian-announce: Major public announcements debian-devel-announce: Major announcements to the developer community These two lists are must-subscribes. Everything else is optional. I abbreviate 'debian-' to '-' from now on! -security-announce (?): security updates to stable (and possibly also frozen) -private: you'll be subscribed automatically when your new-maintainer application is accepted; sensitive discussions, flamewars etc. You can unsubscribe if you wish. -devel: general mailing list for developer issues -policy: where possible changes to debian-policy are discussed There are many others; check the mailing list page on the web site for details. The other thing we have to discuss is "philosophy". Have you read the Debian Social Contract (/usr/share/doc/debian/social-contract.txt)? Do you agree to follow it in your Debian-related work? We'll ask some more detailed questions next time around. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- APPENDIX 3: SAMPLE QUESTIONS ON PHILOSOPHY Philosophy ---------- We have to check that you understand the Social Contract (at least the way it is at the moment ;-) and the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG). I know you have read them, and if you want, you can find them on your machine in /usr/(share/)doc/debian. (It's possible you've been reading them online up to now....) Firstly, can you explain the key points of the Social Contract and DFSG? Secondly, a few questions, based on them: (1) Donald Knuth, author of TeX, insists that no-one has the right to modify the source code of TeX, and that any changes must be made using "change files" (a sort of patch file). Furthermore, any modification of TeX which produces something which fails the "trip test" (a regression test suite) may not be called TeX. So how come TeX (in the guise of tetex-*) is in main? (2) What is Debian's (current) approach to non-free software? Why? (3) Debian was offered a Debian-specific license to package a certain piece of software (I forget which). Would we put it in main? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- APPENDIX 4: SAMPLE REPORT FOR AM LIST Report for new developer applicant: Summary: Accept/Don't accept 2. Identification ----------------- 3. Philosophy and Procedures ----------------------------- 4. Tasks and Skills ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- APPENDIX 5: SAMPLE REPORT FOR FRONT DESK AND DAM Front Desk/DAM Report for new developer applicant: Summary: Accept/Don't accept 1. The applicant's photo ID which is digitized and signed by the applicant (if necessary) * Attached/Not necessary 2. The applicants GPG (or PGP if needed) public key for Identification * Attached 3. Logs of the discussions with the applicant to satisfy steps 2-4 in the checklist. * Attached [you may want to edit out everything but the key points of the discussion, so that the DAM only has 150 lines to look through, not 1500] * Also attached: summary as sent to AM list 4. The applicants GPG public key (RSA/IDEA keys created by PGP are not accepted now) to sign his (or her) Debian packages. This will be incorporated into the Keyring of Debian * Attached/As in 2 5. The request from the applicant for their account name on Debian (used as <account>@debian.org) * ??? 6. The request from the applicant for the email address which will be used to forward the emails at <account>@debian.org. * ???
