X-Git-Url: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/ucgi/~ianmdlvl/git?a=blobdiff_plain;f=developers-reference.sgml;h=02eb0cc32358cb50e40844907d55719661246860;hb=f28d5e9547049afa872a1f0d246d169bc9d3365a;hp=a09903cfd840dcdd2035f96644ebf1d09a5a1873;hpb=5381651c352723b79a2c71528f5fd0670d826725;p=developers-reference.git diff --git a/developers-reference.sgml b/developers-reference.sgml index a09903c..02eb0cc 100644 --- a/developers-reference.sgml +++ b/developers-reference.sgml @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ %dynamicdata; - + @@ -396,12 +396,13 @@ security update, etc.) occurs while you're on vacation. Sometimes it's nothing as critical as that, but it's still appropriate to let others know that you're unavailable.
-In order to inform the other developers, there are two things that you should do.
-First send a mail to &email-debian-private; with "[VAC] " prepended to the
-subject of your message
The other thing to do is to mark yourself as "on vacation" in the
Generally you should deal with bug reports on your packages as described in
. However, there's a special category of bugs that
-you need to take care of — the so-called release-critical bugs (RC bugs).
-All bug reports that have severity critical, grave or
-serious are considered to have an impact on whether the package can
-be released in the next stable release of Debian.
-These bugs can delay the Debian release
-and/or can justify the removal of a package at freeze time. That's why
-these bugs need to be corrected as quickly as possible.
+you need to take care of — the so-called release-critical bugs (RC
+bugs). All bug reports that have severity critical,
+grave or serious are considered to have an impact on
+whether the package can be released in the next stable release of Debian.
+These bugs can delay the Debian release and/or can justify the removal of
+a package at freeze time. That's why these bugs need to be corrected as
+quickly as possible.
Developers who are part of the
-Please read the
@@ -603,7 +606,7 @@ occasionally used to talk about documentation, like the document you are
reading. Other channels are dedicated to an architecture or a set of
packages: #debian-bsd, #debian-kde, #debian-jr,
#debian-edu,
-#debian-sf (SourceForge package), #debian-oo (OpenOffice
+#debian-oo (OpenOffice
package) ...
Some non-English developers' channels exist as well, for example
@@ -614,15 +617,15 @@ Channels dedicated to Debian also exist on other IRC networks, notably on
the
-To get a cloak on freenode, you send Jörg Jaspert <joerg@debian.org>
-a signed mail where you tell what your nick is.
+To get a cloak on freenode, you send Jörg Jaspert
+<joerg@debian.org> a signed mail where you tell what your nick is.
Put "cloak" somewhere in the Subject: header.
The nick should be registered:
-Most of the machines are available for individual developers to use,
+Some of the machines are available for individual developers to use,
as long as the developers follow the rules set forth in the
Generally speaking, you can use these machines for Debian-related purposes
as you see fit. Please be kind to system administrators, and do not use
up tons and tons of disk space, network bandwidth, or CPU without first
-getting the approval of the system administrators. Usually these machines are run by
-volunteers.
+getting the approval of the system administrators. Usually these machines
+are run by volunteers.
Please take care to protect your Debian passwords and SSH keys installed on
Debian machines. Avoid login or upload methods which send passwords over
@@ -664,8 +667,11 @@ contact information, information about who can log in, SSH keys etc.
If you have a problem with the operation of a Debian server, and you
think that the system operators need to be notified of this problem,
-the Debian system administrator team is reachable at
-
If you have a problem with a certain service, not related to the system
administration (such as packages to be removed from the archive,
@@ -691,8 +697,8 @@ wasted processing time.
-The ftp-master.debian.org server holds the canonical copy of the Debian
-archive (excluding the non-US packages). Generally, package uploads
+The ftp-master.debian.org server holds the canonical copy of the
+Debian archive. Generally, package uploads
go to this server; see .
It is restricted; a mirror is available on merkel.
@@ -702,13 +708,6 @@ bugs against the
-The non-US server non-us.debian.org
-was discontinued with the release of sarge. The pseudo-package
-
The main web server is www-master.debian.org.
@@ -742,23 +741,21 @@ one of the other servers located outside the United States.
Send mail to &email-debian-devel; if you have any questions.
-
-Our CVS server is located on cvs.debian.org.
+
-If you need to use a publicly accessible CVS
-server, for instance, to help coordinate work on a package between
-many different developers, you can request a CVS area on the server.
-
-Generally, cvs.debian.org offers a combination of local CVS
-access, anonymous client-server read-only access, and full
-client-server access through
-To request a CVS area, send a request via email to
-&email-debian-admin;. Include the name of the requested CVS area,
-the Debian account that should own the CVS root area, and why you need it.
+Historically, Debian first used cvs.debian.org to host CVS
+repositories. But that service is deprecated in favor of Alioth.
+Only a few projects are still using it.
@@ -818,7 +815,8 @@ Here is an example directory tree of a complete Debian archive:
&sample-dist-dirtree;
As you can see, the top-level directory contains two directories,
-
-
In each of the areas, there is a directory for the source packages
(
A distribution comprises Debian source and binary packages, and the
-respective
After a period of development, once the release manager deems fit, the
testing distribution is frozen, meaning that the policies
-which control how packages move from unstable to testing are
-tightened. Packages which are too buggy are removed. No changes are
-allowed into testing except for bug fixes. After some time
-has elapsed, depending on progress, the testing distribution
-is frozen even further.
-Details of the handling of the testing distribution are published
-by the Release Team on debian-devel-announce.
-After the open issues are solved to the satisfaction of the Release Team,
-the distribution is released.
-Releasing means
-that testing is renamed to stable,
-and a new copy is created for the new testing,
-and the previous stable is renamed to oldstable
-and stays there until it is finally archived.
-On archiving, the contents are moved to &archive-host;).
+which control how packages move from unstable to testing
+are tightened. Packages which are too buggy are removed. No changes are
+allowed into testing except for bug fixes. After some time has
+elapsed, depending on progress, the testing distribution is
+frozen even further. Details of the handling of the testing distribution
+are published by the Release Team on debian-devel-announce. After the
+open issues are solved to the satisfaction of the Release Team, the
+distribution is released. Releasing means that testing is
+renamed to stable, and a new copy is created for the new
+testing, and the previous stable is renamed to
+oldstable and stays there until it is finally archived. On
+archiving, the contents are moved to &archive-host;).
This development cycle is based on the assumption that the
unstable distribution becomes stable after passing a
@@ -1088,8 +1084,8 @@ An alternative to experimental is to use your personal web space
on people.debian.org.
When uploading to unstable a package which had bugs fixed in experimental,
-please consider using the option -v to
@@ -1169,18 +1165,18 @@ This directory is scanned every few minutes by a daemon called
remaining and correctly signed
Once the package is accepted, the system sends a confirmation
mail to the maintainer and closes all the bugs marked as fixed by the upload,
@@ -1193,9 +1189,9 @@ This happens only once a day
the package
is then removed from incoming and installed in the pool along with all
the other packages. Once all the other updates (generating new
-
The archive maintenance software will also send the OpenPGP/GnuPG signed
The
-In this example, you can see that the version in unstable differs from
-the version in testing and that there has been a binary-only NMU of the
-package for the alpha architecture. Each version of the package has been
-recompiled on most of the architectures.
+In this example, you can see that the version in unstable differs
+from the version in testing and that there has been a binary-only
+NMU of the package for the alpha architecture. Each version of the package
+has been recompiled on most of the architectures.
@@ -1339,6 +1335,11 @@ to sourcepackage@&pts-host;. In order to prevent spam,
all messages sent to these addresses must contain the X-PTS-Approved
header with a non-empty value.
+
-If you use a publicly accessible CVS repository for maintaining
+If you use a publicly accessible VCS repository for maintaining
your Debian package, you may want to forward the commit notification
to the PTS so that the subscribers (and possible co-maintainers) can
closely follow the package's evolution.
-Once you set up the CVS repository to generate commit notifications,
+Once you set up the VCS repository to generate commit notifications,
you just have to make sure it sends a copy of those mails
to sourcepackage_cvs@&pts-host;. Only the people
who accept the cvs keyword will receive these notifications.
+Note that the mail need to be sent from a debian.org machine,
+otherwise you'll have to add the X-PTS-Approved: 1 header.
+
+For Subversion repositories, the usage of svnmailer is recommended.
+See
The PTS has a web interface at
Static news items can be used to indicate:
Here are a few examples of valid mails used to generate news items in
the PTS. The first one adds a link to the cvsweb interface of debian-cd
@@ -1547,8 +1564,8 @@ Url: http://cvs.debian.org/debian-cd/
The second one is an announcement sent to a mailing list which is also sent
-to the PTS so that it is published on the PTS web page of the package. Note the
-use of the BCC field to avoid answers sent to the PTS by mistake.
+to the PTS so that it is published on the PTS web page of the package.
+Note the use of the BCC field to avoid answers sent to the PTS by mistake.
-Alioth is a fairly new Debian service, based on a slightly modified version
-of the GForge software (which evolved from SourceForge). This software
-offers developers access to easy-to-use tools such as bug trackers, patch
+Alioth is a Debian service based on a slightly modified version of the
+GForge software (which evolved from SourceForge). This software offers
+developers access to easy-to-use tools such as bug trackers, patch
manager, project/task managers, file hosting services, mailing lists, CVS
repositories etc. All these tools are managed via a web interface.
It is intended to provide facilities to free software projects backed or led
by Debian, facilitate contributions from external developers to projects
started by Debian, and help projects whose goals are the promotion of Debian
-or its derivatives.
+or its derivatives. It's heavily used by many Debian teams and provides
+hosting for all sorts of VCS repositories.
All Debian developers automatically have an account on Alioth.
They can activate it by using the recover password facility.
External developers can request guest accounts on Alioth.
-For more information please visit
@@ -1640,9 +1664,9 @@ You should set the subject of the bug to ``ITP: foo
-- short description'', substituting the name of the new
package for foo. The severity of the bug report must be set
to wishlist. If you feel it's necessary, send a copy to
-&email-debian-devel; by putting the address in the X-Debbugs-CC: header
-of the message (no, don't use CC:, because that way the message's subject
-won't indicate the bug number).
+&email-debian-devel; by putting the address in the X-Debbugs-CC:
+header of the message (no, don't use CC:, because that way the
+message's subject won't indicate the bug number).
Please include a Closes: bug#nnnnn entry in the
changelog of the new package in order for the bug report to be
@@ -1653,9 +1677,9 @@ When closing security bugs include CVE numbers as well as the
"Closes: #nnnnn".
This is useful for the security team to track vulnerabilities.
If an upload is made to fix the bug before the advisory ID is known,
-it is encouraged to modify the historical changelog entry with the next upload.
-Even in this case, please include all available pointers to background
-information in the original changelog entry.
+it is encouraged to modify the historical changelog entry with the next
+upload. Even in this case, please include all available pointers to
+background information in the original changelog entry.
There are a number of reasons why we ask maintainers to announce their
@@ -1751,8 +1775,8 @@ Remove the package, then reinstall it.
-Please notice that, in non-native packages, permissions on files that are not
-present in the .orig.tar.gz will not be preserved, as diff does not store file
-permissions in the patch.
+Please notice that, in non-native packages, permissions on files that are
+not present in the .orig.tar.gz will not be preserved, as diff does not
+store file permissions in the patch.
Extra care should be taken when uploading to stable. Basically, a
package should only be uploaded to stable if one of the following happens:
@@ -1855,9 +1880,9 @@ packages (by messing with Provides or shlibs files), possibly making
those other packages uninstallable, is strongly discouraged.
The Release Team (which can be reached at &email-debian-release;) will
-regularly evaluate the uploads To stable-proposed-updates and decide if
-your package can be included in stable. Please be clear (and
-verbose, if necessary) in your changelog entries for uploads to
+regularly evaluate the uploads To stable-proposed-updates and
+decide if your package can be included in stable. Please be clear
+(and verbose, if necessary) in your changelog entries for uploads to
stable, because otherwise the package won't be considered for
inclusion.
@@ -1868,7 +1893,8 @@ uploaded package fits the needs of the next point release.
-Please see the information in the
-Note: non-us was discontinued with the release of sarge.
-
-
Delayed uploads are done for the moment via the delayed queue at
@@ -2111,7 +2132,8 @@ If this situation is unacceptable, you (or the submitter) may want to
require a decision of the technical committee by reassigning the bug
to
If, on the other hand, you need to change the subsection of
one of your packages (e.g., ``devel'', ``admin''), the procedure is
@@ -2571,8 +2595,8 @@ a removal request is still necessary.
For a source-package, this means that all binary packages it refers to
have been taken over by another source package.
-In your removal request, you have to detail the reasons justifying the request.
-This is to
+In your removal request, you have to detail the reasons justifying the
+request. This is to
avoid unwanted removals and to keep a trace of why a package has been
removed. For example, you can provide the name of the package that
supersedes the one to be removed.
@@ -2581,6 +2605,11 @@ Usually you only ask for the removal of a package maintained by yourself.
If you want to remove another package, you have to get the approval
of its maintainer.
+Further information relating to these and other package removal related
+topics may be found at
If in doubt concerning whether a package is disposable, email
&email-debian-devel; asking for opinions. Also of interest is the
If you just intend to give the package away, but you can keep maintainership
for the moment, then you should instead submit
-a bug against
More information is on the
Some of the data produced by
The buildds admins of each arch can be contacted at the mail address
$arch@buildd.debian.org.
@@ -3009,8 +3038,8 @@ Packages-arch-specific
without making it fail to build on unsupported architectures:
A porter or any other person trying to build your package might
accidently upload it without noticing it doesn't work.
-If in the past some binary packages were uploaded on unsupported architectures,
-request their removal by filing a bug against
+If in the past some binary packages were uploaded on unsupported
+architectures, request their removal by filing a bug against
If there is no debian-revision component in the version
-number then one should be created, starting at `0.1'. If it is
+number then one should be created, starting at `0.1' (but in case
+of a debian native package still upload it as native package).
+If it is
absolutely necessary for someone other than the usual maintainer to
make a release based on a new upstream version then the person making
the release should start with the debian-revision value
@@ -3398,8 +3429,8 @@ urgency uploaded since the previous testing transition is taken into account.
Those delays may be doubled during a freeze, or testing transitions may be
switched off altogether;
To find out whether a package is progressing into testing or not, see the
@@ -3438,7 +3469,8 @@ are not considered by britney.
-
+
For the testing migration script, "outdated" means: There are different
versions in unstable for the release architectures (except for the
architectures in fuckedarches; fuckedarches is a list of architectures
@@ -3481,8 +3513,9 @@ if you maintain glibc or so.)
Sometimes, a package is removed to allow another package in: This happens
only to allow another package to go in if it's ready in every other
-sense. Suppose e.g. that a cannot be installed with the new version of
-b; then a may be removed to allow b in.
+sense. Suppose e.g. that a cannot be installed with the new
+version of b; then a may be removed to allow b
+in.
Of course, there is another reason to remove a package from testing: It's
just too buggy (and having a single RC-bug is enough to be in this state).
@@ -3495,8 +3528,9 @@ then it will automatically be removed.
-A situation which is not handled very well by britney is if package a
-depends on the new version of package b, and vice versa.
+A situation which is not handled very well by britney is if package
+a depends on the new version of package b, and vice
+versa.
An example of this is:
@@ -3566,25 +3600,24 @@ id="http://ftp-master.debian.org/testing/hints/">.
-The testing distribution is fed with packages from unstable according to the rules
-explained above. However, in some cases, it is necessary to upload
-packages built only for testing. For that, you may want to
-upload to testing-proposed-updates.
+The testing distribution is fed with packages from unstable according to
+the rules explained above. However, in some cases, it is necessary to
+upload packages built only for testing. For that, you may want to upload
+to testing-proposed-updates.
-Keep in mind that packages uploaded there are not automatically processed, they
-have to go through the hands of the release manager. So you'd better have a good
-reason to upload there. In order to know what a good reason is in the
-release managers' eyes, you should read the instructions that they regularly
-give on &email-debian-devel-announce;.
+Keep in mind that packages uploaded there are not automatically processed,
+they have to go through the hands of the release manager. So you'd better
+have a good reason to upload there. In order to know what a good reason is
+in the release managers' eyes, you should read the instructions that they
+regularly give on &email-debian-devel-announce;.
-You should not upload to testing-proposed-updates when you can update your
-packages through unstable. If you can't (for example because you have a
-newer development version in unstable), you may use this facility,
-but it is recommended that you ask for authorization from
-the release manager first.
-Even if a package is
-frozen, updates through unstable are possible, if the upload via unstable
-does not pull in any new dependencies.
+You should not upload to testing-proposed-updates when you can
+update your packages through unstable. If you can't (for example
+because you have a newer development version in unstable), you may use
+this facility, but it is recommended that you ask for authorization from
+the release manager first. Even if a package is frozen, updates through
+unstable are possible, if the upload via unstable does not pull in any new
+dependencies.
Version numbers are usually selected by adding the codename of the testing
distribution and a running number, like 1.2sarge1 for the first upload
@@ -3616,32 +3649,55 @@ release team at &email-debian-release; and ask them to approve your upload.
-All bugs of some higher severities are by default considered release-critical; currently, these are critical, grave, and serious bugs.
+All bugs of some higher severities are by default considered
+release-critical; currently, these are critical, grave, and serious bugs.
-Such bugs are presumed to have an impact on the chances that the package will be released with the stable release of Debian: in general, if a package has open release-critical bugs filed on it, it won't get into "testing", and consequently won't be released in "stable".
+Such bugs are presumed to have an impact on the chances that the package
+will be released with the stable release of Debian: in general, if a
+package has open release-critical bugs filed on it, it won't get into
+"testing", and consequently won't be released in "stable".
-The unstable bug count are all release-critical bugs
-without either any release-tag (such as potato, woody) or with release-tag sid;
+The unstable bug count are all release-critical bugs without either any
+release-tag (such as potato, woody) or with release-tag sid;
also, only if they are neither fixed nor set to sarge-ignore.
The "testing" bug count for a package is considered to be roughly
the bug count of unstable count at the last point
when the "testing" version equalled the "unstable" version.
-This will change post-sarge, as soon as we have versions in the bug tracking system.
+This will change post-sarge, as soon as we have versions in the bug
+tracking system.
-The structure of the distribution archives is such that they can only contain one version of a package; a package is defined by its name. So when the source package acmefoo is installed into "testing", along with its binary packages acme-foo-bin, acme-bar-bin, libacme-foo1 and libacme-foo-dev, the old version is removed.
+The structure of the distribution archives is such that they can only
+contain one version of a package; a package is defined by its name. So
+when the source package acmefoo is installed into "testing", along with
+its binary packages acme-foo-bin, acme-bar-bin, libacme-foo1 and
+libacme-foo-dev, the old version is removed.
-However, the old version may have provided a binary package with an old soname of a library, such as libacme-foo0. Removing the old acmefoo will remove libacme-foo0, which will break any packages which depend on it.
+However, the old version may have provided a binary package with an old
+soname of a library, such as libacme-foo0. Removing the old acmefoo will
+remove libacme-foo0, which will break any packages which depend on it.
-Evidently, this mainly affects packages which provide changing sets of binary packages in different versions (in turn, mainly libraries). However, it will also affect packages upon which versioned dependencies have been declared of the ==, <=, or << varieties.
+Evidently, this mainly affects packages which provide changing sets of
+binary packages in different versions (in turn, mainly libraries).
+However, it will also affect packages upon which versioned dependencies
+have been declared of the ==, <=, or << varieties.
-When the set of binary packages provided by a source package change in this way, all the packages that depended on the old binaries will have to be updated to depend on the new binaries instead. Because installing such a source package into "testing" breaks all the packages that depended on it in "testing", some care has to be taken now: all the depending packages must be updated and ready to be installed themselves so that they won't be broken, and, once everything is ready, manual intervention by the release manager or an assistant is normally required.
+When the set of binary packages provided by a source package change in
+this way, all the packages that depended on the old binaries will have to
+be updated to depend on the new binaries instead. Because installing such
+a source package into "testing" breaks all the packages that depended on
+it in "testing", some care has to be taken now: all the depending packages
+must be updated and ready to be installed themselves so that they won't be
+broken, and, once everything is ready, manual intervention by the release
+manager or an assistant is normally required.
-If you are having problems with complicated groups of packages like this, contact debian-devel or debian-release for help.
+If you are having problems with complicated groups of packages like this,
+contact debian-devel or debian-release for help.
Helper scripts take care of these issues. Assuming you comply with
the conventions expected by the helper script, the helper takes care
@@ -3768,8 +3823,8 @@ inter-package dependencies set right in
The first case is a bit more difficult since it involves multiple
recompiles of the same software but with different configuration
-options. The
-Please use gettext-based templates. Install
Avoid changing templates too often. Changing templates text induces
more work to translators which will get their translation "fuzzied". If
@@ -4349,7 +4404,8 @@ To unfuzzy translations, you can proceed the following way:
-If you use po-debconf (and you should, see 2.2), consider making this
-field translatable, if you think it may be translated.
+If you use po-debconf (and you should, see 2.2), consider
+making this field translatable, if you think it may be translated.
If the default value may vary depending on language/country (for
instance the default value for a language choice), consider using the
-special "_DefaultChoice" type documented in
Policy specifies that documentation should be shipped in HTML format.
We also recommend shipping documentation in PDF and plain text format if
-convenient and if output of reasonable quality is possible. However, it is generally
-not appropriate to ship plain text versions of documentation whose source
-format is HTML.
Major shipped manuals should register themselves with
-Deborphan is a program for helping users to detect which packages can safely be
-removed from the system, i.e. the ones that have no packages depending on
-them. The default operation is to search only within the libs and oldlibs
-sections, to hunt down unused libraries. But when passed the right argument,
-it tries to catch other useless packages.
+Deborphan is a program for helping users to detect which packages can
+safely be removed from the system, i.e. the ones that have no packages
+depending on them. The default operation is to search only within the libs
+and oldlibs sections, to hunt down unused libraries. But when passed the
+right argument, it tries to catch other useless packages.
-For example, with --guess-dummy, deborphan tries to search all transitional packages
-which were needed for upgrade but which can now safely be removed. For that,
-it looks for the string "dummy" or "transitional" in their short
-description.
+For example, with --guess-dummy, deborphan tries to search all
+transitional packages which were needed for upgrade but which can now
+safely be removed. For that, it looks for the string "dummy" or
+"transitional" in their short description.
So, when you are creating such a package, please make sure to add this text
to your short description. If you are looking for examples, just run:
@@ -4981,11 +5037,9 @@ A repackaged .orig.tar.gz
must contain detailed information how
-the repackaged source was obtained, and how this can be reproduced, in
-
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
If you report more than 10 bugs on the same topic at once, it is
@@ -5240,11 +5294,12 @@ time, you can look for co-maintainers (see ).
From time to time the QA group organizes bug squashing parties to get rid of
-as many problems as possible. They are announced on &email-debian-devel-announce;
-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).
+as many problems as possible. They are announced on
+&email-debian-devel-announce; 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
@@ -5339,12 +5394,12 @@ about the maintainer in question as possible. This includes:
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.
+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 &email-debian-devel;, asking if anyone
is aware of the whereabouts of the missing maintainer.
@@ -5354,20 +5409,21 @@ Once you have gathered all of this, you can contact &email-mia;.
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.
+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!
+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.
+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
@@ -5396,10 +5452,10 @@ id="&url-sponsors;">.
-->
New maintainers usually have certain difficulties creating Debian packages
-— this is quite understandable. That is why the sponsor is there, to check
-the package and verify that it is good enough for inclusion in Debian.
-(Note that if the sponsored package is new, the ftpmasters will also have to
-inspect it before letting it in.)
+— this is quite understandable. That is why the sponsor is there, to
+check the package and verify that it is good enough for inclusion in
+Debian. (Note that if the sponsored package is new, the ftpmasters will
+also have to inspect it before letting it in.)
Sponsoring merely by signing the upload or just recompiling is
definitely not recommended. You need to build the source
@@ -5430,15 +5486,15 @@ 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
-
The Maintainer field of the
If you prefer to leave a more evident trace of your sponsorship job, you
@@ -5461,31 +5517,33 @@ Application Managers"> at the Debian web site.
-Debian supports an ever-increasing number of natural languages. Even if you are
-a native English speaker and do not speak any other language, it is part of your
-duty as a maintainer to be aware of issues of internationalization (abbreviated
-i18n because there are 18 letters between the 'i' and the 'n' in
-internationalization). Therefore, even if you are ok with English-only
-programs, you should read most of this chapter.
+Debian supports an ever-increasing number of natural languages. Even if
+you are a native English speaker and do not speak any other language, it
+is part of your duty as a maintainer to be aware of issues of
+internationalization (abbreviated i18n because there are 18 letters
+between the 'i' and the 'n' in internationalization). Therefore, even if
+you are ok with English-only programs, you should read most of this
+chapter.
According to
-l10n and i18n are interconnected, but the difficulties related to each of them are very
-different. It's not really difficult to allow a program to change the language
-in which texts are displayed based on user settings, but it is very time
-consuming to actually translate these messages. On the other hand, setting the
-character encoding is trivial, but adapting the code to use several character
-encodings is a really hard problem.
+l10n and i18n are interconnected, but the difficulties related to each of
+them are very different. It's not really difficult to allow a program to
+change the language in which texts are displayed based on user settings,
+but it is very time consuming to actually translate these messages. On the
+other hand, setting the character encoding is trivial, but adapting the
+code to use several character encodings is a really hard problem.
-Setting aside the i18n problems, where no general guideline can be given, there is
-actually no central infrastructure for l10n within Debian which could be
-compared to the dbuild mechanism for porting. So most of the work has to be
-done manually.
+Setting aside the i18n problems, where no general guideline can be given,
+there is actually no central infrastructure for l10n within Debian which
+could be compared to the dbuild mechanism for porting. So most of the work
+has to be done manually.
For program messages, the gettext infrastructure is used most of the time.
-Most of the time, the translation is handled upstream within projects like the
-
-An effort to translate the package descriptions started long ago, even if very
-little support is offered by the tools to actually use them (i.e., only APT can use
-them, when configured correctly). Maintainers don't need to do
-anything special to support translated package descriptions;
+An effort to translate the package descriptions started long ago, even if
+very little support is offered by the tools to actually use them (i.e.,
+only APT can use them, when configured correctly). Maintainers don't need
+to do anything special to support translated package descriptions;
translators should use the
-For debconf templates, maintainers should use the po-debconf package to ease the
-work of translators, who could use the DDTP to do their work (but the French and
-Brazilian teams don't). Some statistics can be found both on the DDTP site
-(about what is actually translated), and on the
-For web pages, each l10n team has access to the relevant CVS, and the statistics
-are available from the Central Debian translation statistics site.
+For web pages, each l10n team has access to the relevant CVS, and the
+statistics are available from the Central Debian translation statistics
+site.
-For general documentation about Debian, the process is more or less the same
-as for the web pages (the translators have access to the CVS), but there are
-no statistics pages.
+For general documentation about Debian, the process is more or less the
+same as for the web pages (the translators have access to the CVS), but
+there are no statistics pages.
-For package-specific documentation (man pages, info documents, other formats),
-almost everything remains to be done.
+For package-specific documentation (man pages, info documents, other
+formats), almost everything remains to be done.
-Most notably, the KDE project handles
-translation of its documentation in the same way as its program messages.
+Most notably, the KDE project handles translation of its documentation in
+the same way as its program messages.
There is an effort to handle Debian-specific man pages
within a
-This is a list of problems that maintainers may face concerning i18n and l10n.
-While reading this, keep in mind that there is no real consensus on these
-points within Debian, and that this is only advice. If you have a better idea
-for a given problem, or if you disagree on some points, feel free to provide
-your feedback, so that this document can be enhanced.
+This is a list of problems that maintainers may face concerning i18n and
+l10n. While reading this, keep in mind that there is no real consensus on
+these points within Debian, and that this is only advice. If you have a
+better idea for a given problem, or if you disagree on some points, feel
+free to provide your feedback, so that this document can be enhanced.
-To translate package descriptions or debconf templates, you have nothing to do;
-the DDTP infrastructure will dispatch the material to translate to volunteers
-with no need for interaction from your part.
+To translate package descriptions or debconf templates, you have nothing
+to do; the DDTP infrastructure will dispatch the material to translate to
+volunteers with no need for interaction from your part.
-For all other material (gettext files, man pages, or other documentation), the
-best solution is to put your text somewhere on the Internet, and ask on debian-i18n
-for a translation in different languages. Some translation team members are
-subscribed to this list, and they will take care of the translation and of the
-reviewing process. Once they are done, you will get your translated document from them
-in your mailbox.
+For all other material (gettext files, man pages, or other documentation),
+the best solution is to put your text somewhere on the Internet, and ask
+on debian-i18n for a translation in different languages. Some translation
+team members are subscribed to this list, and they will take care of the
+translation and of the reviewing process. Once they are done, you will get
+your translated document from them in your mailbox.
From time to time, individuals translate some texts in your package
-and will ask you for inclusion of the translation in the package. This can become problematic if
-you are not fluent in the given language. It is a good idea to send the
-document to the corresponding l10n mailing list, asking for a review. Once it
-has been done, you should feel more confident in the quality of the
-translation, and feel safe to include it in your package.
+and will ask you for inclusion of the translation in the package. This can
+become problematic if you are not fluent in the given language. It is a
+good idea to send the document to the corresponding l10n mailing list,
+asking for a review. Once it has been done, you should feel more confident
+in the quality of the translation, and feel safe to include it in your
+package.
@@ -5575,10 +5636,11 @@ the translation with your new changes.
Keep in mind that this task takes time; at least one week to get
the update reviewed and all.
-If the translator is unresponsive, you may ask for help on the corresponding
-l10n mailing list. If everything fails, don't forget to put a warning in the
-translated document, stating that the translation is somehow outdated, and that
-the reader should refer to the original document if possible.
+If the translator is unresponsive, you may ask for help on the
+corresponding l10n mailing list. If everything fails, don't forget to put
+a warning in the translated document, stating that the translation is
+somehow outdated, and that the reader should refer to the original
+document if possible.
Avoid removing a translation completely because it is outdated. Old
documentation is often better than no documentation at all for non-English
@@ -5599,10 +5661,10 @@ collaborate with your team and the package maintainer.
-Choose what you want to translate, make sure that nobody is already working on
-it (using your debian-l10n-XXX mailing list), translate it, get it reviewed by
-other native speakers on your l10n mailing list, and provide it to the
-maintainer of the package (see next point).
+Choose what you want to translate, make sure that nobody is already
+working on it (using your debian-l10n-XXX mailing list), translate it, get
+it reviewed by other native speakers on your l10n mailing list, and
+provide it to the maintainer of the package (see next point).
@@ -5611,10 +5673,10 @@ list) before providing it for inclusion. It will save time for everyone, and
avoid the chaos resulting in having several versions of the same document in
bug reports.
-The best solution is to file a regular bug containing the translation against
-the package. Make sure to use the 'PATCH' tag, and to not use a severity higher
-than 'wishlist', since the lack of translation never prevented a program from
-running.
+The best solution is to file a regular bug containing the translation
+against the package. Make sure to use the 'PATCH' tag, and to not use a
+severity higher than 'wishlist', since the lack of translation never
+prevented a program from running.
@@ -5625,18 +5687,19 @@ layout) without asking on the corresponding l10n mailing list. You risk for
example breaksing the encoding of the file by doing so. Moreover, what you
consider an error can be right (or even needed) in the given language.
-
You can run it over a pair of binary packages:
+
-
Usual news items may be used to announce that:
@@ -1520,7 +1536,8 @@ Usual news items may be used to announce that:
@@ -1529,10 +1546,10 @@ Both kinds of news are generated in a similar manner: you just have to send
an email either to
+
-
@@ -4636,12 +4691,13 @@ confusing: the translators may put their own choice
Do NOT use empty default field. If you don't want to use default
values, do not use Default at all.