Debian Weekly News - March 8th, 2005

Posted by dave on Mar 9, 2005 5:22 AM EDT
Mailing list; By Martin Schulze <joey@infodrom.org>
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Welcome to this year's 10th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Several developers use the campaigning period of this year's project leader election intensely on the debian-vote list and ask the candidates to clarify their position. John Goerzen announced that SPI can now accept donations by check from Canada.

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Debian Weekly News
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2005/10/
Debian Weekly News - March 8th, 2005
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Welcome to this year's 10th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. Several developers use the campaigning period of this year's project leader election intensely on the [1]debian-vote list and ask the candidates to clarify their position. John Goerzen [2]announced that [3]SPI can now [4]accept donations by check from Canada.

1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/ 2. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/03/msg00000.html 3. http://www.spi-inc.org/ 4. http://www.spi-inc.org/news/2005/20050218

Debian Project Leader Election. [5]Anthony Towns, [6]Jonathan Walther, [7]Branden Robinson and [8]Angus Lees have also nominated themselves for the upcoming [9]project leader election, so that the developers can choose among six candidates. The campaigning period has already will last until March 21st. Helen Faulkner and Martin F. Krafft will conduct an [10]IRC debate on March 19th and [11]called for suggestions for questions to be put to the candidates.

5. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2005/02/msg00119.html 6. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2005/02/msg00121.html 7. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2005/02/msg00123.html 8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2005/02/msg00114.html 9. http://www.debian.org/vote/2005/vote_001 10. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2005/03/msg00071.html 11. http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2005/02/msg00130.html

The Debian Release Family. Jason Perlow [12]explained that Debian is not only one distribution but a family of derived distributions. He emphasised that one should not have to install Debian on the same system twice or more often. He continued to introduce several distributions that are derived from pure Debian.

12. http://www.linuxmagazine.com/content/view/45/115/

Better Asian Support. Two Asian companies [13]announced to jointly develop a universal Debian GNU/Linux infrastructure and actively promote the adoption of Debian-based systems in both the Japan and China markets. "In Asia, especially in Japan and China, Open Source is getting huge publicity and is now well-received," said Tetsuya Ueda, President and CEO of VA Linux in Tokyo. Osamu Aoki [14]added that there are currently not enough Asian developers to develop Asian support for the various tools and systems.

13. http://www.valinux.co.jp/en/newsroom/2005/0301/01/ 14. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2005/03/msg00013.html

Release Team Meeting. Steve Langasek [15]reported that developers affiliated with the release process have had a meeting in Vancouver, thankfully sponsored by NUUGF. They discussed the needs to get sarge out the door, and began preparations for a timely release of etch.

15. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2005/03/msg00015.html

Debian Project Leader Team. Jeroen van Wolffelaar [16]announced the project Scud that consists of a number of developers who intend to support the new project leader after the election. The idea is to lead the Debian project with better decisions than a single individual could do. Due to the diversity of the team, but at the same time, the commitment to cooperate and discuss possible ways of achieving something in a constructive manner they believe to be able to lead Debian well.

16. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2005/03/msg00035.html

APT Migration Status Report. Florian Weimer [17]sent in the first [18]status report covering the migration of [19]APT 0.6 into sarge which lists showstoppers and tasks. He also asked for volunteers to install the new version, recompile their favourite frontend and report success and problems. Recompilation is required due to a change in the exported binary interface.

17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/02/msg00969.html 18. http://www.enyo.de/fw/software/apt-secure/ 19. http://packages.debian.org/experimental/base/apt

Automatic Changelog Generation with Subversion. Torsten Landschoff [20]wondered if there was a tool that could automatically update the debian/changelog file when a change is made to the Subversion repository. Joey Hess [21]provided a script that will use parts of the changelog file for the log message.

20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/02/msg01181.html 21. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/02/msg01258.html

Handling Buildd Problems. Thomas Bushnell [22]started a discussion about build problems with the buildd network with regards to the new XFree86 package. While on one architecture the problem is just missing disk space, the problem on other architectures is more difficult. Steve Langasek [23]asked the developers to send a mail to the buildd admin and the release team in such cases.

22. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/02/msg01198.html 23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/02/msg01260.html

Proper Encoding in Manual Pages. Eric Lavarde [24]noticed that single quotes and hyphens in manual pages don't always look like they should. In a response, Clint Adams [25]explained which characters to use for a hyphen and for a minus sign. Additionally, Adeodato Simó [26]pointed out a workaround described in the [27]groff package.

24. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/02/msg01320.html 25. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/02/msg01321.html 26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/02/msg01322.html 27. http://packages.debian.org/groff

Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update your systems if you have any of these packages installed.

* DSA 691: [28]abuse -- Local root exploit. * DSA 692: [29]kdenetwork -- Privileged file descriptor leak.

28. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-691 29. http://www.debian.org/security/2005/dsa-692

New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive [30]recently or contain important updates.

30. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main

* [31]bazaar -- Arch revision control system. * [32]beep-media-player-scrobbler -- Beep plugin to send track information to audioscrobbler. * [33]capiutils -- Utilities for CAPI-capable ISDN cards. * [34]doodled -- desktop search engine (daemon). * [35]kdoomsday -- Countdown timer panel applet for KDE. * [36]rails -- MVC ruby based framework geared for web application development. * [37]rake -- Ruby build program. * [38]recoverjpeg -- Recover JPEG pictures from a filesystem image. * [39]resmgr -- Resource manager library daemon and PAM module. * [40]robotour -- Control mobile robots in this programmer's game. * [41]rssreader.app -- RSS reader for GNUstep. * [42]xmms-scrobbler -- XMMS plugin that sends your track information to audioscrobbler.

31. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/bazaar 32. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/beep-media-player-scrobbler 33. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/capiutils 34. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/doodled 35. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/kdoomsday 36. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/rails 37. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/rake 38. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/recoverjpeg 39. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/resmgr 40. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/robotour 41. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/rssreader.app 42. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/xmms-scrobbler

Orphaned Packages. 25 packages were orphaned this week and require a new maintainer. This makes a total of 225 orphaned packages. Many thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software community. Please see the [43]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.

43. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/

* [44]acl-installer -- Installer for Franz' Allegro 6.2 Lisp Trial Edition. ([45]Bug#297344) * [46]admesh -- Tool for processing triangulated solid meshes. ([47]Bug#297345) * [48]albert -- Common Lisp -> DocBook documenter. ([49]Bug#297346) * [50]busybox -- Standalone rescue shell with tons of builtin utilities. ([51]Bug#298363) * [52]cl-postoffice -- SMTP, POP, & IMAP interface library for Common Lisp Programs. ([53]Bug#297382) * [54]cl-rsm-memo -- McIntire's Common Lisp Memoization Library. ([55]Bug#297395) * [56]cl-rsm-mpoly -- McIntire's Common Lisp Multivariate Polynomial Library. ([57]Bug#297398) * [58]enbd -- Enhanced Network Block Device support kernel patch. ([59]Bug#298388) * [60]gtk-engines-mac2 -- Mac2 theme for GTK+. ([61]Bug#298151) * [62]hindent -- Reformats HTML code. ([63]Bug#297424) * [64]langband -- Langband Common lisp game. ([65]Bug#297426) * [66]langband-data -- Langband sound/image/etc files for langband engine. ([67]Bug#297427) * [68]libmp3hip -- Python interface to the libmp3hip library. ([69]Bug#298386) * [70]lw-per-installer -- Installer for Lispworks ANSI Common Lisp System, Personal Edition. ([71]Bug#297429) * [72]lw-pro-installer -- Installer for Xanalys' Lispworks ANSI Common Lisp System. ([73]Bug#297431) * [74]lw-pro-installer-43 -- Installer for Xanalys Lispworks Common Lisp System, version 4.3. ([75]Bug#297432) * [76]neon -- Header and static library files for libneon24. ([77]Bug#298370) * [78]onlisp -- Book on Common Lisp programming techniques. ([79]Bug#297436) * [80]openmcl -- Native code ANSI Common Lisp compiler and runtime environment. ([81]Bug#297473) * [82]openmcl-build-tools -- OpenMCL Common Lisp tools for building system. ([83]Bug#297475) * [84]pdp1-lisp -- Early Lisp interpreter for a PDP-1 emulator. ([85]Bug#297441) * [86]python-aima -- Python code for the an Artificial Intelligence book. ([87]Bug#297443) * [88]pyzor -- Spam-catcher using a collaborative filtering network. ([89]Bug#297922) * [90]spamprobe -- C++ Bayesian spam filter. ([91]Bug#298368) * [92]styx -- Combined parser/scanner generator documentation. ([93]Bug#298369)

44. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/acl-installer 45. http://bugs.debian.org/297344 46. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/math/admesh 47. http://bugs.debian.org/297345 48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/albert 49. http://bugs.debian.org/297346 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/busybox 51. http://bugs.debian.org/298363 52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/cl-postoffice 53. http://bugs.debian.org/297382 54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/cl-rsm-memo 55. http://bugs.debian.org/297395 56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/cl-rsm-mpoly 57. http://bugs.debian.org/297398 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/enbd 59. http://bugs.debian.org/298388 60. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/graphics/gtk-engines-mac2 61. http://bugs.debian.org/298151 62. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/hindent 63. http://bugs.debian.org/297424 64. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/langband-engine 65. http://bugs.debian.org/297426 66. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/games/langband-data 67. http://bugs.debian.org/297427 68. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libmp3hip0 69. http://bugs.debian.org/298386 70. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/lw-per-installer 71. http://bugs.debian.org/297429 72. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/lw-pro-installer 73. http://bugs.debian.org/297431 74. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/lw-pro-installer-43 75. http://bugs.debian.org/297432 76. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/libs/libneon24 77. http://bugs.debian.org/298370 78. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/onlisp-code 79. http://bugs.debian.org/297436 80. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/openmcl 81. http://bugs.debian.org/297473 82. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/openmcl-build-tools 83. http://bugs.debian.org/297475 84. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/otherosfs/pdp1-lisp 85. http://bugs.debian.org/297441 86. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/python/python-aima 87. http://bugs.debian.org/297443 88. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/pyzor 89. http://bugs.debian.org/297922 90. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/spamprobe 91. http://bugs.debian.org/298368 92. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/styx 93. http://bugs.debian.org/298369

Want to continue reading DWN? Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers who watch the Debian community and report about what is going on. Please see the [94]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [95]dwn@debian.org.

94. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing 95. mailto:dwn@debian.org

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