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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * Erick Branderhorst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * J.H.M.Dassen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * Susan G. Kleinmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * Winfried Truemper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * Kenny Wickstrom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Thanks! 1.5. Feedback Please send additions, corrections and suggestions to Sven Rudolph <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. 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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. 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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. 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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * elm \ * ircii \ previously maintained by * wenglish / Carl Streeter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * 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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> , 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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * mkisofs currently maintained by Kenny Wickstrom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> . 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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 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 ([EMAIL PROTECTED]); WWW : http://www.sax.de/~sr1/
