Beyond Packaging
Debian is about a lot more than just packaging software and maintaining those
packages. This chapter contains information about ways, often really critical
ways, to contribute to Debian beyond simply creating and maintaining packages.
As a volunteer organization, Debian relies on the discretion of its members in
choosing what they want to work on and in choosing the most critical thing to
spend their time on.
Bug reporting
We encourage you to file bugs as you find them in Debian packages. In fact,
Debian developers are often the first line testers. Finding and reporting bugs
in other developers' packages improves the quality of Debian.
Read the instructions for
reporting bugs in the Debian bug tracking system.
Try to submit the bug from a normal user account at which you are likely to
receive mail, so that people can reach you if they need further information
about the bug. Do not submit bugs as root.
You can use a tool like reportbug
1 to submit bugs. It can automate and
generally ease the process.
Make sure the bug is not already filed against a package. Each package has a
bug list easily reachable at
http://bugs.debian.org/packagename
Utilities like querybts
1 can also provide you with this
information (and reportbug will usually invoke
querybts before sending, too).
Try to direct your bugs to the proper location. When for example your bug is
about a package which overwrites files from another package, check the bug
lists for both of those packages in order to avoid filing
duplicate bug reports.
For extra credit, you can go through other packages, merging bugs which are
reported more than once, or tagging bugs `fixed' when they have already been
fixed. Note that when you are neither the bug submitter nor the package
maintainer, you should not actually close the bug (unless you secure permission
from the maintainer).
From time to time you may want to check what has been going on with the bug
reports that you submitted. Take this opportunity to close those that you
can't reproduce anymore. To find out all the bugs you submitted, you just have
to visit
http://bugs.debian.org/from:<your-email-addr>.
Reporting lots of bugs at once (mass bug filing)
Reporting a great number of bugs for the same problem on a great number of
different packages — i.e., more than 10 — is a deprecated practice. Take
all possible steps to avoid submitting bulk bugs at all. For instance, if
checking for the problem can be automated, add a new check to lintian so that an error or warning is emitted.
If you report more than 10 bugs on the same topic at once, it is recommended
that you send a message to debian-devel@lists.debian.org
describing your intention before submitting the report, and mentioning the fact
in the subject of your mail. This will allow other developers to verify that
the bug is a real problem. In addition, it will help prevent a situation in
which several maintainers start filing the same bug report simultaneously.
Please use the programms dd-list and if appropriate
whodepends (from the package devscripts) to generate a list
of all affected packages, and include the output in your mail to
debian-devel@lists.debian.org.
Note that when sending lots of bugs on the same subject, you should send the
bug report to maintonly@bugs.debian.org so that the bug report
is not forwarded to the bug distribution mailing list.
Quality Assurance effort
Daily work
Even though there is a dedicated group of people for Quality Assurance, QA
duties are not reserved solely for them. You can participate in this effort by
keeping your packages as bug-free as possible, and as lintian-clean (see ) as possible. If you do not find that possible, then you
should consider orphaning some of your packages (see ). Alternatively, you may ask the help of other people
in order to catch up with the backlog of bugs that you have (you can ask for
help on debian-qa@lists.debian.org or
debian-devel@lists.debian.org). At the same time, you can look
for co-maintainers (see ).
Bug squashing parties
From time to time the QA group organizes bug squashing parties to get rid of as
many problems as possible. They are announced on
debian-devel-announce@lists.debian.org and the announcement
explains which area will be the focus of the party: usually they focus on
release critical bugs but it may happen that they decide to help finish a major
upgrade (like a new perl version which requires recompilation of all the binary
modules).
The rules for non-maintainer uploads differ during the parties because the
announcement of the party is considered prior notice for NMU. If you have
packages that may be affected by the party (because they have release critical
bugs for example), you should send an update to each of the corresponding bug
to explain their current status and what you expect from the party. If you
don't want an NMU, or if you're only interested in a patch, or if you will deal
yourself with the bug, please explain that in the BTS.
People participating in the party have special rules for NMU, they can NMU
without prior notice if they upload their NMU to DELAYED/3-day at least. All
other NMU rules apply as usually; they should send the patch of the NMU to the
BTS (to one of the open bugs fixed by the NMU, or to a new bug, tagged fixed).
They should also respect any particular wishes of the maintainer.
If you don't feel confident about doing an NMU, just send a patch to the BTS.
It's far better than a broken NMU.
Contacting other maintainers
During your lifetime within Debian, you will have to contact other maintainers
for various reasons. You may want to discuss a new way of cooperating between
a set of related packages, or you may simply remind someone that a new upstream
version is available and that you need it.
Looking up the email address of the maintainer for the package can be
distracting. Fortunately, there is a simple email alias,
<package>@packages.debian.org, which provides a way to
email the maintainer, whatever their individual email address (or addresses)
may be. Replace <package> with the name of a source
or a binary package.
You may also be interested in contacting the persons who are subscribed to a
given source package via . You can do so
by using the <package>@packages.qa.debian.org email
address.
Dealing with inactive and/or unreachable maintainers
If you notice that a package is lacking maintenance, you should make sure that
the maintainer is active and will continue to work on their packages. It is
possible that they are not active any more, but haven't registered out of the
system, so to speak. On the other hand, it is also possible that they just
need a reminder.
There is a simple system (the MIA database) in which information about
maintainers who are deemed Missing In Action is recorded. When a member of the
QA group contacts an inactive maintainer or finds more information about one,
this is recorded in the MIA database. This system is available in
/org/qa.debian.org/mia on the host qa.debian.org, and can be queried with a
tool known as mia-query. Use
-query --help
to see how to query the database. If you find that no information has been
recorded about an inactive maintainer yet, or that you can add more
information, you should generally proceed as follows.
The first step is to politely contact the maintainer, and wait a reasonable
time for a response. It is quite hard to define reasonable time, but it is
important to take into account that real life is sometimes very hectic. One
way to handle this would be to send a reminder after two weeks.
If the maintainer doesn't reply within four weeks (a month), one can assume
that a response will probably not happen. If that happens, you should
investigate further, and try to gather as much useful information about the
maintainer in question as possible. This includes:
The echelon information available through the developers' LDAP database, which indicates
when the developer last posted to a Debian mailing list. (This includes
uploads via debian-*-changes lists.) Also, remember to check whether the
maintainer is marked as on vacation in the database.
The number of packages this maintainer is responsible for, and the condition of
those packages. In particular, are there any RC bugs that have been open for
ages? Furthermore, how many bugs are there in general? Another important
piece of information is whether the packages have been NMUed, and if so, by
whom.
Is there any activity of the maintainer outside of Debian? For example, they
might have posted something recently to non-Debian mailing lists or news
groups.
A bit of a problem are packages which were sponsored — the maintainer is not
an official Debian developer. The echelon information is not available for
sponsored people, for example, so you need to find and contact the Debian
developer who has actually uploaded the package. Given that they signed the
package, they're responsible for the upload anyhow, and are likely to know what
happened to the person they sponsored.
It is also allowed to post a query to
debian-devel@lists.debian.org, asking if anyone is aware of the
whereabouts of the missing maintainer. Please Cc: the person in question.
Once you have gathered all of this, you can contact
mia@qa.debian.org. People on this alias will use the
information you provide in order to decide how to proceed. For example, they
might orphan one or all of the packages of the maintainer. If a package has
been NMUed, they might prefer to contact the NMUer before orphaning the package
— perhaps the person who has done the NMU is interested in the package.
One last word: please remember to be polite. We are all volunteers and cannot
dedicate all of our time to Debian. Also, you are not aware of the
circumstances of the person who is involved. Perhaps they might be seriously
ill or might even have died — you do not know who may be on the receiving
side. Imagine how a relative will feel if they read the e-mail of the deceased
and find a very impolite, angry and accusing message!
On the other hand, although we are volunteers, we do have a responsibility. So
you can stress the importance of the greater good — if a maintainer does not
have the time or interest anymore, they should let go and give the package to
someone with more time.
If you are interested in working in the MIA team, please have a look at the
README file in /org/qa.debian.org/mia on qa.debian.org where the technical
details and the MIA procedures are documented and contact
mia@qa.debian.org.
Interacting with prospective Debian developers
Debian's success depends on its ability to attract and retain new and talented
volunteers. If you are an experienced developer, we recommend that you get
involved with the process of bringing in new developers. This section
describes how to help new prospective developers.
Managing sponsored packages
By uploading a sponsored package to Debian, you are certifying that the package
meets minimum Debian standards. That implies that you must build and test the
package on your own system before uploading.
You cannot simply upload a binary .deb from the sponsoree.
In theory, you should only ask for the diff file and the location of the
original source tarball, and then you should download the source and apply the
diff yourself. In practice, you may want to use the source package built by
your sponsoree. In that case, you have to check that they haven't altered the
upstream files in the .orig.tar.gz file that they're
providing.
Do not be afraid to write the sponsoree back and point out changes that need to
be made. It often takes several rounds of back-and-forth email before the
package is in acceptable shape. Being a sponsor means being a mentor.
Once the package meets Debian standards, build and sign it with
-buildpackage -kKEY-ID
before uploading it to the incoming directory. Of course, you can also use any
part of your KEY-ID, as long as it's unique in your
secret keyring.
The Maintainer field of the control file and the
changelog should list the person who did the packaging,
i.e., the sponsoree. The sponsoree will therefore get all the BTS mail about
the package.
If you prefer to leave a more evident trace of your sponsorship job, you can
add a line stating it in the most recent changelog entry.
You are encouraged to keep tabs on the package you sponsor using .
Advocating new developers
See the page about advocating a prospective
developer at the Debian web site.
Handling new maintainer applications
Please see Checklist for Application
Managers at the Debian web site.