Uploading to stable means that the package will be placed into the
-
Extra care should be taken when uploading to stable. Basically, a @@ -1560,13 +1554,29 @@ 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 in proposed-updates and decide if
+regularly evaluate the uploads in 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.
-
+
+The testing distribution is fed with packages from unstable according to the rules
+explained in . However, the release manager may stop the testing
+scripts when he wants to freeze the distribution. In that case, you may want to
+upload to testing-proposed-updates to provide fixed packages during the freeze.
+
+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 manager's eyes, you should read the instructions that he regularly
+gives 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 it but it is recommended to ask
+the authorization of the release manager before.
-When a security bug is detected, a fixed package should be uploaded
-as soon as possible. In this case, the Debian security officers get in
-contact with the package maintainer to make sure a fixed package is
-uploaded within a reasonable time (less than 48 hours). If the package
-maintainer cannot provide a fixed package fast enough or if he/she
-cannot be reached in time, a security officer may upload a fixed
-package (i.e., do a source NMU).
+When a security bug is detected, the security team may do an NMU.
+Please refer to for more information.
During the release cycle (see ), NMUs which fix
serious or higher severity bugs are encouraged and accepted. Even
during this window, however, you should endeavor to reach the current
maintainer of the package; they might be just about to upload a fix
for the problem. As with any source NMU, the guidelines found in need to be followed.
+id="nmu-guidelines"> need to be followed. Special exceptions are made
+for .
Uploading bug fixes to unstable by non-maintainers should only be done
by following this protocol:
@@ -1904,7 +1910,7 @@ announce a certain period of time in which the NMU rules are relaxed.
This usually involves shortening the period during which one is to wait
before uploading the fixes, and shortening the DELAYED period. It is
important to notice that even in these so-called "bug squashing party"
-times, the NMUer has to file bugs and contact the developer first,
+times, the NMU'er has to file bugs and contact the developer first,
and act later.
-If one of your packages has been NMUed, you have to incorporate the
+If one of your packages has been NMU'ed, you have to incorporate the
changes in your copy of the sources. This is easy, you just have
to apply the patch that has been sent to you. Once this is done, you
have to close the bugs that have been tagged fixed by the NMU. You
@@ -2294,7 +2300,7 @@ enhanced to support cross-compiling.
"Collaborative maintenance" is a term describing the sharing of Debian
package maintenance duties by several people. This collaboration is
-almost a good idea, since it generally results in higher quality and
+almost always a good idea, since it generally results in higher quality and
faster bug fix turnaround time. It is strongly recommended that
packages in which a priority of Standard or which are part of
the base set have co-maintainers.
Add the co-maintainer's correct maintainer name and address to the
Uploaders field in the global part of the
-
@@ -2412,10 +2422,21 @@ it. In this case, you need to follow a two-step process. First, set
your
+At other times, you may make a mistake in constructing your package and
+wish to replace it. The only way to do this is to increase the version
+number and upload a new version. The old version will be expired in
+the usual manner. Note that this applies to each part of your package,
+including the sources: if you wish to replace the upstream source tarball
+of your package, you will need to upload it with a different version. An
+easy possibility is to replace
@@ -2511,6 +2532,12 @@ contact the submitter and to record your mail within the
bug log (that means you don't need to send a copy of the mail to
+Once you've dealt with a bug report (e.g. fixed it), mark it as
+done (close it) by sending an explanation message to
+
You should never close bugs via the bug server close
command sent to &email-bts-control;. If you do so, the original
submitter will not receive any information about why the bug was
@@ -2520,15 +2547,17 @@ closed.
As a package maintainer, you will often find bugs in other packages or
have bugs reported against your packages which are actually bugs in
-other packages. The
Filing bugs for problems that you find in other packages is one of
the "civic obligations" of maintainership, see
-for details. However handling the bugs on your own packages is
+for details. However, handling the bugs in your own packages is
even more important.
Here's a list of steps that you may follow to handle a bug report:
@@ -2551,9 +2580,8 @@ to let people know that the bug exists but that it won't be corrected.
If this situation is unacceptable, you (or the submitter) may want to
require a decision of the technical committee by reassigning the bug
to
There are two reasons for releasing information even though secrecy is
-requested: the problem has been known for too long, or the information
-has become public.
+requested: the problem has been known for a while, or that the problem
+or exploit has become public.
@@ -2701,31 +2734,34 @@ text. Information that should be in an advisory includes:
One way that you can assist the security team in their duties is to
provide fixed packages suitable for a security advisory for the stable
Debian release.
When an update is made to the stable release, care must be taken to
- avoid changing system behaviour or introducing new bugs. In order to
+ avoid changing system behavior or introducing new bugs. In order to
do this, make as few changes as possible to fix the bug. Users and
- administrators rely on the exact behaviour of a release once it is
- made, so any change we make can possibly break someone's system.
+ administrators rely on the exact behavior of a release once it is
+ made, so any change that is made might break someone's system.
This is especially true of libraries: make sure you never change the
API or ABI, no matter how small the change.
This means that moving to a new upstream version is not a good
-solution. Instead, the relevant changes should be backported to the
+solution. Instead, the relevant changes should be back-ported to the
version present in the current stable Debian release. Generally,
upstream maintainers are willing to help if needed. If not, the
Debian security team may be able to help.
-In some cases, it is not possible to backport a security fix, for
-example when large amounts of sourcecode need to be modified or
+In some cases, it is not possible to back-port a security fix, for
+example when large amounts of source code need to be modified or
rewritten. If this happens, it may be necessary to move to a new
upstream version. However, you must always coordinate that with the
security team beforehand.
@@ -2735,33 +2771,42 @@ changes. If you have an exploit available, try it and see if it
indeed succeeds on the unpatched package and fails on the fixed
package. Test other, normal actions as well, as sometimes a security
fix can break seemingly unrelated features in subtle ways.
+
+Review and test your changes as much as possible. Check the
+differences from the previous version repeatedly
+(
-Once you have created and tested the new package, and it has been
+DO NOT upload your fix to proposed-updates without
+coordinating with the security team. Packages from
+security.debian.org will be copied into the proposed-updates directory
+automatically. If a package with the same or a higher version number
+is already installed into the archive, the security update will be
+rejected by the archive system. That way, the stable distribution
+will end up without a security update for this package instead.
+
+Once you have created and tested the new package and it has been
approved by the security team, it needs to be uploaded so that it can
be installed in the archives. For security uploads, the place to
upload to is
@@ -2799,7 +2852,7 @@ be fixes for security problems that cannot be disclosed yet.
If a member of the security team accepts a package, it will be
installed on security.debian.org as well as the proper
-distribution-proposed-updates on ftp-master or in the non-US
+distribution-proposed-updates on ftp-master or in the non-US
archive.
-If you are using a new version of
-If you want to close bugs the old fashioned, manual way, it is usually
-sufficient to mail the
+Bear in mind that it is not obligatory to close bugs using the changelog
+like described above -- if you simply want to close bugs that don't have
+anything to do with an upload of yours, do it simply by emailing an
+explanation to
-You should periodically get the new
To help you in your packaging effort, you can use helper scripts.
The best scripts available are provided by
-You can however decide to not use any helper script, and still write
-some very good
+Some very good packaging practices for packages using
+
Libraries are always difficult to package for various reasons. The policy
imposes many constraints to ease their maintenance and to make sure
upgrades are as simple as possible when a new upstream version comes out.
-A breakage in a library can result in dozens of dependent packages to
-break...
+A breakage in a library can result in dozens of dependent packages
+breaking.
Good practices for library packaging have been grouped in
-Debconf is a configuration management system, it is used by all the
-various packaging scripts (postinst mainly) to request feedback from the
-user concerning how to configure the package. Direct user interactions
-must now be avoided in favor of debconf interaction. This will enable
-non-interactive installations in the future.
+
+
-Debconf is a great tool but it is often badly used ... many common mistakes
+Debconf is a great tool but it is often poorly used. Many common mistakes
are listed in the
As a volunteer organization, Debian relies on the discretion of its
-members in choosing what they want to work on, and choosing what is
+members in choosing what they want to work on and in choosing
the most critical thing to spend their time on.
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, 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 the backlog of bugs that you have (you can ask
-for help on &email-debian-qa; or &email-debian-devel;).
+for help on &email-debian-qa; or &email-debian-devel;). At the same
+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 announce explains what area will be focused on during the party:
+usually they focus on release critical bugs but it may happen that they
+decide to help finish a major upgrade going on (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 announce of the party is considered like a 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 applies as usually, they
+should send the patch of the NMU in the BTS (in one of the open bugs
+fixed by the NMU or in a new bug tagged fixed). They should
+also respect the maintainer's wishes if he expressed some.
+
+If someone doesn't feel confident with an NMU, he should just send a patch
+to the BTS. It's far better than a broken NMU.
@@ -3226,7 +3322,7 @@ the package meets minimum Debian standards. That implies that you
must build and test the package on your own system before uploading.
You can not simply upload a binary
Once the package meets Debian standards, build the package with
The Maintainer field of the
+You should periodically get the newest
-
@@ -2674,8 +2707,8 @@ for unstable is public.
@@ -3018,15 +3079,18 @@ source package.