some of my recent changes

[developers-reference.git] / developers-reference.sgml

<!DOCTYPE debiandoc PUBLIC "-//DebianDoc//DTD DebianDoc//EN" [
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<debiandoc>
  <book>
      <title>Debian Developer's Reference

      <author>Developer's Reference Team &email-devel-ref;
      <author>Adam Di Carlo, editor
      <author>Raphaël Hertzog
      <author>Christian Schwarz
      <author>Ian Jackson
      <version>ver. &version;, &date-en;

      <copyright>
        <copyrightsummary>
copyright &copy; 1998&mdash;2003 Adam Di Carlo</copyrightsummary>
        <copyrightsummary>
copyright &copy; 2002 Raphaël Hertzog</copyrightsummary>
        <copyrightsummary>
copyright &copy; 1997, 1998 Christian Schwarz</copyrightsummary>
        <p>
This manual is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any
later version.
        <p>
This is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
<em>without any warranty</em>; without even the implied warranty of
merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.  See the GNU
General Public License for more details.
        <p>
A copy of the GNU General Public License is available as &file-GPL; in
the &debian-formal; distribution or on the World Wide Web at <url
id="&url-gpl;" name="the GNU web site">.  You can also obtain it by
writing to the &fsf-addr;.

    <toc detail="sect1">

    <chapt id="scope">Scope of This Document
      <p>
The purpose of this document is to provide an overview of the
recommended procedures and the available resources for Debian
developers.

<!-- FIXME: rewrites -->
      <p>
The procedures discussed within include how to become a maintainer
(<ref id="new-maintainer">); how to create new packages
(<ref id="newpackage">) and how to upload packages (<ref id="upload">);
how to handle bug reports (<ref id="bug-handling">); how to move,
remove, or orphan packages (<ref id="archive-manip">); how to port
packages (<ref id="porting">); and how and when to do interim
releases of other maintainers' packages (<ref id="nmu">).
      <p>
The resources discussed in this reference include the mailing lists
(<ref id="mailing-lists">) and servers (<ref id="server-machines">); a
discussion of the structure of the Debian archive (<ref
id="archive">); explanation of the different servers which accept
package uploads (<ref id="upload-ftp-master">); and a discussion of
resources which can help maintainers with the quality of their
packages (<ref id="tools">).
      <p>
It should be clear that this reference does not discuss the technical
details of the Debian package nor how to generate Debian packages.
Nor does this reference detail the standards to which Debian software
must comply.  All of such information can be found in the <url
id="&url-debian-policy;" name="Debian Policy Manual">.
      <p>
Furthermore, this document is <em>not an expression of formal
policy</em>.  It contains documentation for the Debian system and
generally agreed-upon best practices.  Thus, it is what is called a
``normative'' document.


    <chapt id="new-maintainer">Applying to Become a Maintainer
        
      <sect id="getting-started">Getting started
        <p>
So, you've read all the documentation, you've gone through the <url
id="&url-newmaint-guide;" name="Debian New Maintainers' Guide">,
understand what everything in the <package>hello</package> example
package is for, and you're about to Debianize your favorite piece of
software.  How do you actually become a Debian developer so that your
work can be incorporated into the Project?
        <p>
Firstly, subscribe to &email-debian-devel; if you haven't already.
Send the word <tt>subscribe</tt> in the <em>Subject</em> of an email
to &email-debian-devel-req;.  In case of problems, contact the list
administrator at &email-listmaster;.  More information on available
mailing lists can be found in <ref id="mailing-lists">.
&email-debian-devel-announce; is another list which is mandatory
for anyone who wishes to follow Debian's development.
        <p>
You should subscribe and lurk (that is, read without posting) for a
bit before doing any coding, and you should post about your intentions
to work on something to avoid duplicated effort.
        <p>
Another good list to subscribe to is &email-debian-mentors;.  See <ref
id="mentors"> for details.  The IRC channel <tt>#debian</tt> can also be
helpful.

        <p>
When you know how you want to contribute to &debian-formal;, you
should get in contact with existing Debian maintainers who are working
on similar tasks.  That way, you can learn from experienced developers.
For example, if you are interested in packaging existing software for
Debian you should try to get a sponsor.  A sponsor will work together
with you on your package and upload it to the Debian archive once they
are happy with the packaging work you have done.  You can find a sponsor
by mailing the &email-debian-mentors; mailing list, describing your
package and yourself and asking for a sponsor (see <ref id="sponsoring">
for more information on sponsoring).  On the other hand, if you are
interested in porting Debian to alternative architectures or kernels
you can subscribe to port specific mailing lists and ask there how to
get started.  Finally, if you are interested in documentation or
Quality Assurance (QA) work you can join maintainers already working on
these tasks and submit patches and improvements.
 

      <sect id="registering">Registering as a Debian developer
        <p>
Before you decide to register with &debian-formal;, you will need to
read all the information available at the <url id="&url-newmaint;"
name="New Maintainer's Corner">.  It describes exactly the
preparations you have to do before you can register to become a Debian
developer.

For example, before you apply, you have to to read the <url
id="&url-social-contract;" name="Debian Social Contract">.
Registering as a developer means that you agree with and pledge to
uphold the Debian Social Contract; it is very important that
maintainers are in accord with the essential ideas behind
&debian-formal;.  Reading the <url id="&url-gnu-manifesto;" name="GNU
Manifesto"> would also be a good idea.
        <p>
The process of registering as a developer is a process of verifying
your identity and intentions, and checking your technical skills.  As
the number of people working on &debian-formal; has grown to over
&number-of-maintainers; people and our systems are used in several
very important places we have to be careful about being compromised.
Therefore, we need to verify new maintainers before we can give them
accounts on our servers and let them upload packages.
        <p>
Before you actually register you should have shown that you can do
competent work and will be a good contributor.  You can show this by
submitting patches through the Bug Tracking System or having a package
sponsored by an existing maintainer for a while.  Also, we expect that
contributors are interested in the whole project and not just in
maintaining their own packages.  If you can help other maintainers by
providing further information on a bug or even a patch, then do so!
        <p>
Registration requires that you are familiar with Debian's philosophy
and technical documentation.  Furthermore, you need a GnuPG key which
has been signed by an existing Debian maintainer.  If your GnuPG key
is not signed yet, you should try to meet a Debian maintainer in
person to get your key signed.  There's a <url id="&url-gpg-coord;"
name="GnuPG Key Signing Coordination page"> which should help you find
a maintainer close to you (If you cannot find a Debian maintainer
close to you, there's an alternative way to pass the ID check.  You
can send in a photo ID signed with your GnuPG key.  Having your GnuPG
key signed is the preferred way, however.  See the
<url id="&url-newmaint-id;" name="identification page"> for more
information about these two options.)

        <p>
If you do not have an OpenPGP key yet, generate one. Every developer
needs a OpenPGP key in order to sign and verify package uploads. You
should read the manual for the software you are using, since it has
much important information which is critical to its security.  Many
more security failures are due to human error than to software failure
or high-powered spy techniques.  See <ref id="key-maint"> for more
information on maintaining your public key.
        <p>
Debian uses the <prgn>GNU Privacy Guard</prgn> (package
<package>gnupg</package> version 1 or better) as its baseline standard.
You can use some other implementation of OpenPGP as well.  Note that
OpenPGP is an open standard based on <url id="&url-rfc2440;" name="RFC
2440">.
        <p>
The recommended public key algorithm for use in Debian development
work is DSA (sometimes call ``DSS'' or ``DH/ElGamal'').  Other key
types may be used however.  Your key length must be at least 1024
bits; there is no reason to use a smaller key, and doing so would be
much less secure.  Your key must be signed with at least your own user
ID; this prevents user ID tampering.  <prgn>gpg</prgn> does this
automatically.
        <p>
If your public key isn't on public key servers such as &pgp-keyserv;,
please read the documentation available locally in &file-keyservs;.
That document contains instructions on how to put your key on the
public key servers.  The New Maintainer Group will put your public key
on the servers if it isn't already there.
        <p>
Some countries restrict the use of cryptographic software by their
citizens.  This need not impede one's activities as a Debian package
maintainer however, as it may be perfectly legal to use cryptographic
products for authentication, rather than encryption purposes.
&debian-formal; does not require the use of cryptography <em>qua</em>
cryptography in any manner.  If you live in a country where use of
cryptography even for authentication is forbidden
then please contact us so we can make special arrangements.
        <p>
To apply as a new maintainer, you need an existing Debian maintainer
to verify your application (an <em>advocate</em>).  After you have
contributed to Debian for a while, and you want to apply to become a
registered developer, an existing developer with whom you
have worked over the past months has to express his belief that you
can contribute to Debian successfully.
        <p>
When you have found an advocate, have your GnuPG key signed and have
already contributed to Debian for a while, you're ready to apply.
You can simply register on our <url id="&url-newmaint-apply;"
name="application page">.  After you have signed up, your advocate
has to confirm your application.  When your advocate has completed
this step you will be assigned an Application Manager who will
go with you through the necessary steps of the New Maintainer process.
You can always check your status on the <url id="&url-newmaint-db;"
name="applications status board">.
        <p>
For more details, please consult <url id="&url-newmaint;" name="New
Maintainer's Corner"> at the Debian web site.  Make sure that you
are familiar with the necessary steps of the New Maintainer process
before actually applying.  If you are well prepared, you can save
a lot of time later on.


      <sect id="mentors">Debian mentors and sponsors
        <p>
The mailing list &email-debian-mentors; has been set up for novice
maintainers who seek help with initial packaging and other
developer-related issues.  Every new developer is invited to subscribe
to that list (see <ref id="mailing-lists"> for details).
        <p>
Those who prefer one-on-one help (e.g., via private email) should also
post to that list and an experienced developer will volunteer to help.
        <p>
In addition, if you have some packages ready for inclusion in Debian,
but are waiting for your new maintainer application to go through, you
might be able find a sponsor to upload your package for you.  Sponsors
are people who are official Debian maintainers, and who are willing to
criticize and upload your packages for you.  Those who are seeking a
sponsor can request one at <url id="&url-sponsors;">.
        <p>
If you wish to be a mentor and/or sponsor, more information is
available in <ref id="newmaint">.


    <chapt id="developer-duties">Debian Developer's Duties

      <sect id="user-maint">Maintaining your Debian information
        <p>
There's a LDAP database containing information about Debian developers at
<url id="&url-debian-db;">. You should enter your information there and
update it as it changes. Most notably, make sure that the address where your
debian.org email gets forwarded to is always up to date, as well as the
address where you get your debian-private subscription if you choose to
subscribe there.
        <p>
For more information about the database, please see <ref id="devel-db">.



      <sect id="key-maint">Maintaining your public key
        <p>
Be very careful with your private keys.  Do not place them on any
public servers or multiuser machines, such as the Debian servers
(see <ref id="server-machines">).  Back your keys up; keep a copy offline.
Read the documentation that comes with your software; read the <url
id="&url-pgp-faq;" name="PGP FAQ">.
        <p>
If you add signatures to your public key, or add user identities, you
can update the Debian key ring by sending your key to the key server at
<tt>&keyserver-host;</tt>.  If you need to add a completely new key,
or remove an old key, send mail to &email-debian-keyring;.  The same
key extraction routines discussed in <ref id="registering"> apply.
        <p>
You can find a more in-depth discussion of Debian key maintenance in
the documentation of the <package>debian-keyring</package> package.


       <sect id="voting">Voting
        <p>
Even though Debian isn't really a democracy, we use a democratic
process to elect our leaders and to approve general resolutions.
These procedures are defined by the
<url id="&url-constitution;" name="Debian Constitution">.
        <p>
Other than the yearly leader election, votes are not routinely held, and
they are not undertaken lightly. Each proposal is first discussed on
the &email-debian-vote; mailing list and it requires several endorsements
before the project secretary starts the voting procedure.
        <p>
You don't have to track the pre-vote discussions, as the secretary will
issue several calls for votes on &email-debian-devel-announce; (and all
developers are expected to be subscribed to that list). Democracy doesn't
work well if people don't take part in the vote, which is why we encourage
all developers to vote. Voting is conducted via GPG-signed/encrypted emails
messages.
        <p>
The list of all the proposals (past and current) is available on the
<url id="&url-vote;" name="Debian Voting Information"> page, along with
information on how to make, second and vote on proposals.


      <sect id="inform-vacation">Going on vacation gracefully
        <p>
It is common for developers to have periods of absence, whether those are
planned vacations or simply being buried in other work. The important thing
to notice is that the other developers need to know that you're on vacation
so that they can do whatever is needed if a problem occurs with your
packages or other duties in the project.
        <p>
Usually this means that other developers are allowed to NMU (see
<ref id="nmu">) your package if a big problem (release critical bugs,
security update, etc.) occurs while you're on vacation. Sometimes it's
nothing as critical as that, but it's still appropriate to let the others
know that you're unavailable.
        <p>
In order to inform the other developers, there's two things that you should do.
First send a mail to &email-debian-private; with "[VAC] " prepended to the
subject of your message<footnote>This is so that the message can be easily
filtered by people who don't want to read vacation notices.</footnote>
and state the period of time when you will be on vacation. You can also give
some special instructions on what to do if a problem occurs.
        <p>
The other thing to do is to mark yourself as "on vacation" in the
<qref id="devel-db">Debian developers' LDAP database</qref> (this
information is only accessible to Debian developers).
Don't forget to remove the "on vacation" flag when you come back!


      <sect id="upstream-coordination">Coordination with upstream developers
        <p>
A big part of your job as Debian maintainer will be to stay in contact
with the upstream developers.  Debian users will sometimes report bugs
to the Bug Tracking System that are not specific to Debian.  You
must forward these bug reports to the upstream developers so that
they can be fixed in a future release.  It's not your job to fix
non-Debian specific bugs.  However, if you are able to do so, you are
encouraged to contribute to upstream development of the package by
providing a fix for the bug.  Debian users and developers will often
submit patches to fix upstream bugs, and you should evaluate and
forward these patches upstream.
        <p>
If you need to modify the upstream sources in order to build a policy
compliant package, then you should propose a nice fix to the upstream
developers which can be included there, so that you won't have to
modify the sources of the next upstream version. Whatever changes you
need, always try not to fork from the upstream sources.


      <sect id="rc-bugs">Managing release-critical bugs
        <p>
Generally you should deal with bug reports on your packages as described in
<ref id="bug-handling">. 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 <em>critical</em>, <em>grave</em> or
<em>serious</em> are considered to have an impact on whether the package can
be released in the next stable release of Debian.
Those 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.
        <p>
Developers who are part of the <url id="&url-debian-qa;"
name="Quality Assurance"> group are following all such bugs, and trying
to help whenever possible. If, for any reason, you aren't able fix an
RC bug in a package of yours within 2 weeks, you should either ask for help
by sending a mail to the Quality Assurance (QA) group
&email-debian-qa;, or explain your difficulties and present a plan to fix
them by sending a mail to the bug report. Otherwise, people
from the QA group may want to do a Non-Maintainer Upload (see
<ref id="nmu">) after trying to contact you (they might not wait as long as
usual before they do their NMU if they have seen no recent activity from you
in the BTS).


      <sect>Retiring
        <p>
If you choose to leave the Debian project, you should make sure you do
the following steps:
<enumlist>
            <item>
Orphan all your packages, as described in <ref id="orphaning">.
            <item>
Send an email about why you are leaving the project to
&email-debian-private;.
            <item>
Notify the Debian key ring maintainers that you are leaving by
emailing to &email-debian-keyring;.
</enumlist>



   <chapt id="resources">Resources for Debian Developers
     <p>
In this chapter you will find a very brief road map of the Debian
mailing lists, the Debian machines
which may be available to you as a developer, and all the other
resources that are available to help you in your maintainer work.

      <sect id="mailing-lists">Mailing lists
        <p>
The mailing list server is at <tt>&lists-host;</tt>.
        <p>
Online archives of mailing lists are available at <url
id="&url-lists-archives;">.

        <sect1 id="core-devel-mailing-lists">Core development mailing lists
        <p>
The core Debian mailing lists that developers should use are:
<list>
  <item>&email-debian-devel-announce;, used to announce important things to
        developers.
        All developers are expected to be subscribed to this list.
  </item>
  <item>&email-debian-devel;, used to discuss various development related
        technical issues.
  </item>
  <item>&email-debian-policy;, where the Debian Policy is discussed and
        voted on.
  </item>
  <item>&email-debian-project;, used to discuss various non-technical
        issues related to the project.
  </item>
</list>
        <p>
There are
other mailing lists available for a variety of special topics; see
<url id="&url-debian-lists-subscribe;"> for a list.

        <sect1 id="mailing-lists-subunsub">Subscribing and unsubscribing
        <p>
To subscribe to or unsubscribe from any of the Debian mailing lists, email
<tt>debian-<var>foo</var>-REQUEST@&lists-host;</tt>, where
<tt>debian-<var>foo</var></tt> is the name of the list, with the word
<tt>subscribe</tt> in the <em>Subject</em> to subscribe to the list or
<tt>unsubscribe</tt> to unsubscribe.
        <p>
If you prefer to use a web page to subscribe to multiple mailing lists,
there's one at <url id="&url-debian-lists-subscribe;">.
        <p>
You can download the current list of mailing lists and basic usage
instructions from <url id="&url-debian-lists-txt;">
or install the <package>doc-debian</package> package and have it
locally in &file-mail-lists;.

        <sect1 id="mailing-lists-rules">Basic rules for use
        <p>
When replying to messages on the mailing list, please do not send a
carbon copy (<tt>CC</tt>) to the original poster unless they explicitly
request to be copied.  Anyone who posts to a mailing list should read
it to see the responses.
        <p>
Cross-posting (sending the same message to multiple lists) is discouraged.
As ever on the net, please trim down the quoting of articles you're
replying to.  In general, please adhere to the usual conventions for
posting messages.
        <p>
Please read the <url name="code of conduct" id="&url-debian-lists;">
for more information.

        <sect1 id="mailing-lists-special">Special lists
        <p>
&email-debian-private; is a special mailing list for private
discussions amongst Debian developers.  It is meant to be used for
posts which for whatever reason should not be published publicly.
As such, it is a low volume list, and users are urged not to use
&email-debian-private; unless it is really necessary.  Moreover, do
<em>not</em> forward email from that list to anyone.  Archives of this
list are not available on the web for obvious reasons, but you can see
them using your shell account on <tt>lists.debian.org</tt> and looking
in the <file>~debian/archive/debian-private</file> directory.
        <p>
&email-debian-email; is a special mailing list used as a grab-bag 
for Debian related correspondence such as contacting upstream authors
about licenses, bugs, etc. or discussing the project with others where it
might be useful to have the discussion archived somewhere.


      <sect id="irc-channels">IRC channels
        <p>
Several IRC channels are dedicated to Debian's development. They are mainly
hosted on the <url id="&url-openprojects;" name="freenode"> network
(previously known as Open Projects Network).
The <tt>irc.debian.org</tt> DNS entry is an alias to
<tt>irc.freenode.net</tt>.
        <p>
The main channel for Debian in general is <em>#debian</em>. This is a large,
general-purpose channel where users can find recent news in the topic and
served by bots. <em>#debian</em> is for English speakers; there are also
<em>#debian.de</em>, <em>#debian-fr</em>, <em>#debian-br</em> and other
similarly named channels for speakers of other languages.
        <p>
The main channel for Debian development is <em>#debian-devel</em>.
It is a very active channel since usually over 150 people are always
logged in. It's a channel for people who work
on Debian, it's not a support channel (there's <em>#debian</em> for that).
It is however open to anyone who wants to lurk (and learn). Its topic is
commonly full of interesting information for developers.
        <p>
Since <em>#debian-devel</em> it's an open channel, you
should not speak there of issues that are discussed in
&email-debian-private;. There's another channel for this purpose,
it's called <em>#debian-private</em> and it's protected by a key.
This key is available in the archives of debian-private in
<file>master.debian.org:&file-debian-private-archive;</file>,
just <prgn>zgrep</prgn> for <em>#debian-private</em> in
all the files.
        <p>
There are other additional channels dedicated to specific subjects.
<em>#debian-bugs</em> is used for coordinating bug squash parties.
<em>#debian-boot</em> is used to coordinate the work on the boot
floppies (i.e., the installer). <em>#debian-doc</em> is
occasionally used to talk about documentation, like the document you are
reading. Other channels are dedicated to an architecture or a set of
packages: <em>#debian-bsd</em>, <em>#debian-kde</em>, <em>#debian-jr</em>,
<em>#debian-edu</em>,
<em>#debian-sf</em> (SourceForge package), <em>#debian-oo</em> (OpenOffice
package) ...
        <p>
Some non-English developers' channels exist as well, for example
<em>#debian-devel-fr</em> for
French speaking people interested in Debian's development.
        <p>
Channels dedicated to Debian also exist on other IRC networks, notably on
the <url name="Open and free technology community (OFTC)"
id="http://www.oftc.net/"> IRC network.


      <sect id="doc-rsrcs">Documentation
        <p>
This document contains a lot of information very useful to Debian developers,
but it can not contain everything. Most of the other interesting documents
are linked from <url id="&url-devel-docs;" name="The Developers' Corner">.
Take the time to browse all the links, you will learn many more things.


      <sect id="server-machines">Debian machines
        <p>
Debian has several computers working as servers, most of which serve
critical functions in the Debian project. Most of the machines are used
for porting activities, and they all have a permanent connection to the
Internet.
        <p>
Most of the machines are available for individual developers to use,
as long as the developers follow the rules set forth in the
<url name="Debian Machine Usage Policies" id="&url-dmup;">.
        <p>
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.
        <p>
Please take care to protect your Debian passwords and SSH keys installed on
Debian machines. Avoid login or upload methods which send passwords over
the Internet in the clear, such as telnet, FTP, POP etc.
        <p>
Please do not put any material that doesn't relate to Debian on the Debian
servers, unless you have prior permission.
        <p>
The current list of Debian machines is available at
<url id="&url-devel-machines;">. That web page contains machine names,
contact information, information about who can log in, SSH keys etc.
        <p>
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
<email>debian-admin@lists.debian.org</email>.
        <p>
If you have a problem with a certain service, not related to the system
administration (such as packages to be removed from the archive,
suggestions for the web site, etc.),
generally you'll report a bug against a ``pseudo-package''.  See <ref
id="submit-bug"> for information on how to submit bugs.

      <sect1 id="servers-bugs">The bugs server
        <p>
<tt>&bugs-host;</tt> is the canonical location for the Bug Tracking
System (BTS).  If you plan on doing some statistical analysis or
processing of Debian bugs, this would be the place to do it.  Please
describe your plans on &email-debian-devel; before implementing
anything, however, to reduce unnecessary duplication of effort or
wasted processing time.
        <p>
All Debian developers have accounts on <tt>&bugs-host;</tt>.

      <sect1 id="servers-ftp-master">The ftp-master server
        <p>
The <tt>ftp-master.debian.org</tt> server holds the canonical copy of the Debian
archive (excluding the non-US packages). Generally, package uploads
go to this server; see <ref id="upload">.
        <p>
Problems with the Debian FTP archive generally need to be reported as
bugs against the <package>ftp.debian.org</package> pseudo-package or
an email to &email-ftpmaster;, but also see the procedures in
<ref id="archive-manip">.

      <sect1 id="servers-non-us">The non-US server
        <p>
The non-US server, <tt>non-us.debian.org</tt>,
holds the canonical copy of the non-US part of the Debian archive.
If you need to upload a package into one of the non-US sections, upload it
to this server; see <ref id="upload-non-us">.
        <p>
Problems with the non-US package archive should generally be submitted as
bugs against the <package>nonus.debian.org</package> pseudo-package (notice
the lack of hyphen between "non" and "us" in the pseudo-package name
&mdash; that's for backwards compatibility). Remember to check whether or
not someone else has already reported the problem on the
<url id="http://&bugs-host;/nonus.debian.org" name="Bug Tracking System">.

      <sect1 id="servers-www">The www-master server
        <p>
The main web server is <tt>www-master.debian.org</tt>.
It holds the official web pages, the face
of Debian for most newbies.
        <p>
If you find a problem with the Debian web server, you should generally
submit a bug against the pseudo-package,
<package>www.debian.org</package>. Remember to check whether or not someone
else has already reported the problem on the
<url id="http://&bugs-host;/www.debian.org" name="Bug Tracking System">.

      <sect1 id="servers-people">The people web server
        <p>
<tt>people.debian.org</tt> is the server used
for developers' own web pages about anything related to Debian.
        <p>
If you have some Debian-specific information which you want to serve
on the web, you can do this by putting material in the
<file>public_html</file> directory under your home directory on
<tt>people.debian.org</tt>.
This will be accessible at the URL
<tt>http://people.debian.org/~<var>your-user-id</var>/</tt>.
        <p>
You should only use this particular location because it will be backed up,
whereas on other hosts it won't.
        <p>
Usually the only reason to use a different host is when you need to publish
materials subject to the U.S. export restrictions, in which case you can use
one of the other servers located outside the United States, such as the
aforementioned <tt>non-us.debian.org</tt>.
        <p>
Send mail to &email-debian-devel; if you have any questions.

      <sect1 id="servers-cvs">The CVS server
        <p>
Our CVS server is located on <tt>cvs.debian.org</tt>.
        <p>
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.
          <p>
Generally, <tt>cvs.debian.org</tt> offers a combination of local CVS
access, anonymous client-server read-only access, and full
client-server access through <prgn>ssh</prgn>.  Also, the CVS area can
be accessed read-only via the Web at <url id="&url-cvsweb;">.
        <p>
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.


    <sect id="devel-db">The Developers Database
        <p>
The Developers Database, at <url id="&url-debian-db;">, is an LDAP
directory for managing Debian developer attributes.  You can use this
resource to search the list of Debian developers.
Part of this information is also available through
the finger service on Debian servers, try
<prgn>finger yourlogin@db.debian.org</prgn> to see what it reports.
        <p>
Developers can <url name="log into the database" id="&url-debian-db-login;">
to change various information about themselves, such as:
<list>
        <item>forwarding address for your debian.org email
        <item>subscription to debian-private
        <item>whether you are on vacation
        <item>personal information such as your address, country,
              the latitude and longitude of the place where you live
              for use in <url name="the world map of Debian developers"
              id="&url-worldmap;">, phone and fax numbers, IRC nickname
              and web page
        <item>password and preferred shell on Debian Project machines
</list>
        <p>
Most of the information is not accessible to the public, naturally.
For more information please read the online documentation that you can find
at <url id="&url-debian-db-doc;">.
        <p>
One can also submit their SSH keys to be used for authorization on the
official Debian machines, and even add new *.debian.net DNS entries.
Those features are documented at <url id="&url-debian-db-mail-gw;">.


    <sect id="archive">The Debian archive
        <p>
The &debian-formal; distribution consists of a lot of packages
(<file>.deb</file>'s, currently around &number-of-pkgs;) and a few
additional files (such documentation and installation disk images).
        <p>
Here is an example directory tree of a complete Debian archive:
        <p>
&sample-dist-dirtree;
        <p>
As you can see, the top-level directory contains two directories,
<file>dists/</file> and <file>pool/</file>. The latter is a &ldquo;pool&rdquo; in which the
packages actually are, and which is handled by the archive maintenance
database and the accompanying programs. The former contains the
distributions, <em>stable</em>, <em>testing</em> and <em>unstable</em>.
The <file>Packages</file> and <file>Sources</file> files in the
distribution subdirectories can reference files in the <file>pool/</file>
directory. The directory tree below each of the distributions is arranged
in an identical manner.  What we describe below for <em>stable</em> is
equally applicable to the <em>unstable</em> and <em>testing</em>
distributions. 
        <p>
<file>dists/stable</file> contains three directories, namely <file>main</file>,
<file>contrib</file>, and <file>non-free</file>. 
        <p>
In each of the areas, there is a directory for the source packages
(<file>source</file>) and a directory for each supported architecture
(<file>binary-i386</file>, <file>binary-m68k</file>, etc.).
        <p>
The <file>main</file> area contains additional directories which holds
the disk images and some essential pieces of documentation required
for installing the Debian distribution on a specific architecture
(<file>disks-i386</file>, <file>disks-m68k</file>, etc.).


      <sect1>Sections
        <p>
The <em>main</em> section of the Debian archive is what makes up the
<strong>official &debian-formal; distribution</strong>.  The
<em>main</em> section is official because it fully complies with all
our guidelines.  The other two sections do not, to different degrees;
as such, they are <strong>not</strong> officially part of
&debian-formal;.
        <p>
Every package in the main section must fully comply with the <url
id="&url-dfsg;" name="Debian Free Software Guidelines"> (DFSG) and
with all other policy requirements as described in the <url
id="&url-debian-policy;" name="Debian Policy Manual">.  The DFSG is
our definition of &ldquo;free software.&rdquo;  Check out the Debian Policy
Manual for details.
        <p>
Packages in the <em>contrib</em> section have to comply with the DFSG,
but may fail other requirements.  For instance, they may depend on
non-free packages.
        <p>
Packages which do not conform to the DFSG are placed in the
<em>non-free</em> section. These packages are not considered as part
of the Debian distribution, though we support their use, and we
provide infrastructure (such as our bug-tracking system and mailing
lists) for non-free software packages.
        <p>
The <url id="&url-debian-policy;" name="Debian Policy Manual">
contains a more exact definition of the three sections. The above
discussion is just an introduction.
        <p>
The separation of the three sections at the top-level of the archive
is important for all people who want to distribute Debian, either via
FTP servers on the Internet or on CD-ROMs: by distributing only the
<em>main</em> and <em>contrib</em> sections, one can avoid any legal
risks.  Some packages in the <em>non-free</em> section do not allow
commercial distribution, for example.
        <p>
On the other hand, a CD-ROM vendor could easily check the individual
package licenses of the packages in <em>non-free</em> and include as
many on the CD-ROMs as he's allowed to. (Since this varies greatly from
vendor to vendor, this job can't be done by the Debian developers.)
        <p>
Note also that the term "section" is also used to refer to categories
which simplify the organization and browsing of available packages, e.g.
<em>admin</em>, <em>net</em>, <em>utils</em> etc. Once upon a time, these
sections (subsections, rather) existed in the form of subdirectories within
the Debian archive. Nowadays, these exist only in the "Section" header
fields of packages.


      <sect1>Architectures
        <p>
In the first days, the Linux kernel was only available for the Intel
i386 (or greater) platforms, and so was Debian. But when Linux became
more and more popular, the kernel was ported to other architectures,
too.
        <p>
The Linux 2.0 kernel supports Intel x86, DEC Alpha, SPARC, Motorola
680x0 (like Atari, Amiga and Macintoshes), MIPS, and PowerPC.  The
Linux 2.2 kernel supports even more architectures, including ARM and
UltraSPARC.  Since Linux supports these platforms, Debian decided that
it should, too.  Therefore, Debian has ports underway; in fact, we
also have ports underway to non-Linux kernel.  Aside from
<em>i386</em> (our name for Intel x86), there is <em>m68k</em>,
<em>alpha</em>, <em>powerpc</em>, <em>sparc</em>, <em>hurd-i386</em>,
<em>arm</em>, <em>ia64</em>, <em>hppa</em>, <em>s390</em>, <em>mips</em>,
<em>mipsel</em> and <em>sh</em> as of this writing.
        <p>
&debian-formal; 1.3 is only available as <em>i386</em>.  Debian 2.0
shipped for <em>i386</em> and <em>m68k</em> architectures.  Debian 2.1
ships for the <em>i386</em>, <em>m68k</em>, <em>alpha</em>, and
<em>sparc</em> architectures.  Debian 2.2 added support for the
<em>powerpc</em> and <em>arm</em> architectures. Debian 3.0 adds
support of five new architectures: <em>ia64</em>, <em>hppa</em>,
<em>s390</em>, <em>mips</em> and <em>mipsel</em>.
        <p>
Information for developers or uses about the specific ports are
available at the <url id="&url-debian-ports;" name="Debian Ports web
pages">.



      <sect1>Packages
        <p>
There are two types of Debian packages, namely <em>source</em> and
<em>binary</em> packages.
        <p>
Source packages consist of either two or three files: a <file>.dsc</file>
file, and either a <file>.tar.gz</file> file or both an
<file>.orig.tar.gz</file> and a <file>.diff.gz</file> file.
        <p>
If a package is developed specially for Debian and is not distributed
outside of Debian, there is just one <file>.tar.gz</file> file which
contains the sources of the program.  If a package is distributed
elsewhere too, the <file>.orig.tar.gz</file> file stores the so-called
<em>upstream source code</em>, that is the source code that's
distributed from the <em>upstream maintainer</em> (often the author of
the software). In this case, the <file>.diff.gz</file> contains the
changes made by the Debian maintainer.
        <p>
The <file>.dsc</file> file lists all the files in the source package together
with checksums (<prgn>md5sums</prgn>) and some additional info about
the package (maintainer, version, etc.).


      <sect1>Distribution directories
        <p>
The directory system described in the previous chapter is itself
contained within <em>distribution directories</em>.  Each
distribution is actually contained in the <file>pool</file> directory in the
top-level of the Debian archive itself.
        <p>
To summarize, the Debian archive has a root directory within an FTP
server.  For instance, at the mirror site,
<ftpsite>ftp.us.debian.org</ftpsite>, the Debian archive itself is
contained in <ftppath>/debian</ftppath>, which is a common location
(another is <file>/pub/debian</file>).
        <p>
A distribution is comprised of Debian source and binary packages, and the
respective <file>Sources</file> and <file>Packages</file> index files, containing
the header information from all those packages. The former are kept in the
<file>pool/</file> directory, while the latter are kept in the <file>dists/</file>
directory of the archive (for backwards compatibility).


        <sect2 id="sec-dists">Stable, testing, and unstable
        <p>
There are always distributions called <em>stable</em> (residing in
<file>dists/stable</file>), one called <em>testing</em> (residing in
<file>dists/testing</file>), and one called <em>unstable</em> (residing in
<file>dists/unstable</file>). This reflects the development process of the
Debian project.
        <p>
Active development is done in the <em>unstable</em> distribution
(that's why this distribution is sometimes called the <em>development
distribution</em>). Every Debian developer can update his or her
packages in this distribution at any time. Thus, the contents of this
distribution changes from day-to-day. Since no special effort is done
to make sure everything in this distribution is working properly, it is
sometimes literally unstable.
        <p>
<ref id="testing"> is generated automatically by taking
packages from unstable if they satisfy certain criteria. Those
criteria should ensure a good quality for packages within testing.
The update to testing is launched each day after the
new packages have been installed.
        <p>
After a period of development, once the release manager deems fit, the
<em>testing</em> distribution is frozen, meaning that the policies
which control how packages move from <em>unstable</em> to <em>testing</em> are
tightened.  Packages which are too buggy are removed.  No changes are
allowed into <em>testing</em> except for bug fixes.  After some time
has elapsed, depending on progress, the <em>testing</em> distribution
goes into a `deep freeze', when no changes are made to it except those
needed for the installation system.  This is called a &ldquo;test cycle&rdquo;,
and it can last up to two weeks. There can be several test cycles,
until the distribution is prepared for release, as decided by the
release manager.  At the end of the last test cycle, the
<em>testing</em> distribution is renamed to <em>stable</em>,
overriding the old <em>stable</em> distribution, which is removed at
that time (although it can be found at <tt>&archive-host;</tt>).
        <p>
This development cycle is based on the assumption that the
<em>unstable</em> distribution becomes <em>stable</em> after passing a
period of being in <em>testing</em>.  Even once a distribution is
considered stable, a few bugs inevitably remain &mdash; that's why the
stable distribution is updated every now and then. However, these
updates are tested very carefully and have to be introduced into the
archive individually to reduce the risk of introducing new bugs.  You
can find proposed additions to <em>stable</em> in the
<file>proposed-updates</file> directory.  Those packages in
<file>proposed-updates</file> that pass muster are periodically moved as a
batch into the stable distribution and the revision level of the
stable distribution is incremented (e.g., &lsquo;3.0&rsquo; becomes
&lsquo;3.0r1&rsquo;, &lsquo;2.2r4&rsquo; becomes &lsquo;2.2r5&rsquo;, and
so forth).
        <p>
Note that development under <em>unstable</em> continues during the
freeze period, since the <em>unstable</em> distribution remains in
place in parallel with <em>testing</em>.

        <sect2 id="experimental">Experimental
          <p>
The <em>experimental</em> distribution is a special distribution.
It is not a full distribution in the same sense as `stable' and
`unstable' are.  Instead, it is meant to be a temporary staging area
for highly experimental software where there's a good chance that the
software could break your system, or software that's just too unstable
even for the <em>unstable</em> distribution (but there is a reason to
package it nevertheless).  Users who download and install
packages from <em>experimental</em> are expected to have been duly
warned.  In short, all bets are off for the <em>experimental</em>
distribution.
          <p>
These are the <manref name="sources.list" section="5"> lines for
<em>experimental</em>:
<example>
deb http://ftp.<var>xy</var>.debian.org/debian/ ../project/experimental main
deb-src http://ftp.<var>xy</var>.debian.org/debian/ ../project/experimental main
</example>
          <p>
If there is a chance that the software could do grave damage to a system,
it is likely to be better to put it into <em>experimental</em>.
For instance, an experimental compressed file system should probably go
into <em>experimental</em>.
          <p>
Whenever there is a new upstream version of a package that introduces new
features but breaks a lot of old ones, it should either not be uploaded, or
be uploaded to <em>experimental</em>. A new, beta, version of some software
which uses completely different configuration can go into
<em>experimental</em>, at the maintainer's discretion. If you are working
on an incompatible or complex upgrade situation, you can also use
<em>experimental</em> as a staging area, so that testers can get early
access.
          <p>
Some experimental software can still go into <em>unstable</em>, with a few
warnings in the description, but that isn't recommended because packages
from <em>unstable</em> are expected to propagate to <em>testing</em> and
thus to <em>stable</em>. You should not be afraid to use
<em>experimental</em> since it does not cause any pain to the ftpmasters,
the experimental packages are automatically removed once you upload
the package in <em>unstable</em> with a higher version number.
          <p>
New software which isn't likely to damage your system can go directly into
<em>unstable</em>.
          <p>
An alternative to <em>experimental</em> is to use your personal web space
on <tt>people.debian.org</tt>.


      <sect1 id="codenames">Release code names
        <p>
Every released Debian distribution has a <em>code name</em>: Debian
1.1 is called `buzz'; Debian 1.2, `rex'; Debian 1.3, `bo'; Debian 2.0,
`hamm'; Debian 2.1, `slink'; Debian 2.2, `potato'; and Debian 3.0, `woody'.  There is also
a ``pseudo-distribution'', called `sid', which is the current
`unstable' distribution; since packages are moved from `unstable' to
`testing' as they approach stability, `sid' itself is never released.
As well as the usual contents of a Debian distribution, `sid' contains
packages for architectures which are not yet officially supported or
released by Debian.  These architectures are planned to be integrated
into the mainstream distribution at some future date.
        <p>
Since Debian has an open development model (i.e., everyone can
participate and follow the development) even the `unstable' and `testing'
distributions are distributed to the Internet through the Debian FTP and
HTTP server network. Thus, if we had called the directory which contains
the release candidate version `testing', then we would have to rename it
to `stable' when the version is released, which would cause all FTP
mirrors to re-retrieve the whole distribution (which is quite large).
        <p>
On the other hand, if we called the distribution directories
<em>Debian-x.y</em> from the beginning, people would think that Debian
release <em>x.y</em> is available. (This happened in the past, where a
CD-ROM vendor built a Debian 1.0 CD-ROM based on a pre-1.0 development
version. That's the reason why the first official Debian release was
1.1, and not 1.0.)
        <p>
Thus, the names of the distribution directories in the archive are
determined by their code names and not their release status (e.g.,
`slink').  These names stay the same during the development period and
after the release; symbolic links, which can be changed easily,
indicate the currently released stable distribution.  That's why the
real distribution directories use the <em>code names</em>, while
symbolic links for <em>stable</em>, <em>testing</em>, and
<em>unstable</em> point to the appropriate release directories.


    <sect id="mirrors">Debian mirrors
        <p>
The various download archives and the web site have several mirrors
available in order to relieve our canonical servers from heavy load.
In fact, some of the canonical servers aren't public, and instead a
first tier of mirrors balances the load. That way, users always access
the mirrors and get used to using them, which allows Debian to better
spread its bandwidth requirements over several servers and networks,
and basically makes users avoid hammering on one primary location.
Note that the first tier of mirrors is as up-to-date as it can be since
they update when triggered from the internal sites (we call this
"push mirroring").
        <p>
All the information on Debian mirrors, including a list of the available
public FTP/HTTP servers, can be found at <url id="&url-debian-mirrors;">.
This useful page also includes information and tools which can be helpful if
you are interested in setting up your own mirror, either for internal or
public access.
        <p>
Note that mirrors are generally run by third-parties who are
interested in helping Debian.  As such, developers generally do not
have accounts on these machines.


    <sect id="incoming-system">
        <heading>The Incoming system
        <p>
The Incoming system is responsible of collecting updated packages and
installing them in the Debian archive. It consists of a set of
directories and scripts that are installed both on <tt>&ftp-master-host;</tt>
and <tt>&non-us-host;</tt>.
        <p>
Packages are uploaded by all the maintainers into a directory called
<file>unchecked</file>. This directory is scanned every 15 minutes by
the <prgn>katie</prgn> script, which verifies the integrity of the uploaded packages and the cryptographic
signatures.  If the package is considered ready to be installed, it
is moved into the <file>accepted</file> directory. If this is the first upload of
the package, it is moved in the <file>new</file> directory, where it waits
for an approval of the ftpmasters. If the package contains files to be installed
"by-hand" it is moved in the <file>byhand</file> directory, where it waits
for a manual installation by the ftpmasters. Otherwise, if any error has been detected,
the package is refused and is moved in the <file>reject</file> directory.
        <p>
Once the package is accepted the system sends a confirmation
mail to the maintainer, closes all the bugs marked as fixed by the upload
and the auto-builders may start recompiling it. The package is now publicly
accessible at <url id="&url-incoming;"> (there is no
such URL for packages in the non-US archive) until it is really installed
in the Debian archive. 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
<file>Packages</file> and <file>Sources</file> index files for example) have been
made, a special script is called to ask all the primary mirrors to update
themselves.
        <p>
The archive maintenance software will also send the OpenPGP/GnuPG signed
<file>.changes</file> file that you uploaded to the appropriate mailing
lists. If a package is released with the <tt>Distribution:</tt> set to
`stable', the announcement is sent to &email-debian-changes;.
If a package is released with <tt>Distribution:</tt> set to `unstable'
or `experimental', the announcement will be posted to
&email-debian-devel-changes; instead.
        <p>
All Debian developers have write access to the <file>unchecked</file>
directory in order to upload their packages, they also have that access
to the <file>reject</file> directory in order to remove their bad uploads
or to move some files back in the <file>unchecked</file> directory. But
all the other directories are only writable by the ftpmasters, that is
why you can not remove an upload once it has been accepted.

      <sect1 id="delayed-incoming">Delayed incoming
        <p>
The <file>unchecked</file> directory has a special <file>DELAYED</file>
subdirectory. It is itself subdivided in nine directories
called <file>1-day</file> to <file>9-day</file>. Packages which are uploaded in
one of those directories will be moved in the real unchecked
directory after the corresponding number of days.
This is done by a script that is run each day and which moves the
packages between the directories. Those which are in "1-day" are
installed in <file>unchecked</file> while the others are moved in the 
adjacent directory (for example, a package in <file>5-day</file> will
be moved in <file>4-day</file>). This feature is particularly useful
for people who are doing non-maintainer uploads. Instead of
waiting before uploading a NMU, it is uploaded as soon as it is
ready but in one of those <file>DELAYED/<var>x</var>-day</file> directories.
That leaves the corresponding number of days for the maintainer
to react and upload another fix themselves if they are not
completely satisfied with the NMU. Alternatively they can remove
the NMU.
        <p>
The use of that delayed feature can be simplified with a bit
of integration with your upload tool.  For instance, if you use 
<prgn>dupload</prgn> (see <ref id="dupload">), you can add this
snippet to your configuration file:
<example>
$delay = ($ENV{DELAY} || 7);
$cfg{'delayed'} = {
         fqdn => "&ftp-master-host;",
         login => "yourdebianlogin",
         incoming => "/org/ftp.debian.org/incoming/DELAYED/$delay-day/",
         dinstall_runs => 1,
         method => "scpb"
};
</example>
Once you've made that change, <prgn>dupload</prgn> can be used to
easily upload a package in one of the delayed directories:
<example>DELAY=5 dupload --to delayed &lt;changes-file&gt;</example>


    <sect id="testing">
        <heading>The "testing" distribution</heading>
        <p>
The scripts that update the <em>testing</em> distribution are run each day
after the installation of the
updated packages. They generate the <file>Packages</file> files for
the <em>testing</em> distribution, but they do so in an intelligent manner
trying to avoid any inconsistency and trying to use only
non-buggy packages.
        <p>The inclusion of a package from <em>unstable</em> is conditional on the following:
<list>
    <item>
The package must have been available in <em>unstable</em> for several days;
the precise number depends on the upload's urgency field. It
is 10 days for low urgency, 5 days for medium urgency and 2 days for high
urgency. Those delays may be doubled during a freeze;
    <item>
It must have less release-critical bugs than the version available
in <em>testing</em>;
    <item>
It must be available on all architectures on which it has been
previously built. <ref id="madison"> may be of interest to
check that information;
    <item>
It must not break any dependency of a package that is already available
in <em>testing</em>;
    <item>
The packages on which it depends must either be available in <em>testing</em>
or they must be accepted into <em>testing</em> at the same time (and they will
if they respect themselves all the criteria);
</list>
        <p>
To find out whether a package is progressing into testing or not, see the
testing script output on the <url name="web page of the testing distribution"
id="&url-testing-maint;">, or use the program <prgn>grep-excuses</prgn>
which is in the <package>devscripts</package> package. This utility can
easily be used in a <manref name="crontab" section="5"> to keep one
informed of the progression of their packages into <em>testing</em>.
        <p>
The <file>update_excuses</file> file does not always give the precise reason
why the package is refused, one may have to find it on their own by looking
what would break with the inclusion of the package. The <url
id="&url-testing-maint;" name="testing web page"> gives some more information
about the usual problems which may be causing such troubles.
        <p>
Sometimes, some packages never enter <em>testing</em> because the set of
inter-relationship is too complicated and can not be sorted out
by the scripts. In that case, the release manager must be
contacted, and he will force the inclusion of the packages.
        <p>
In general, please refer to the <url name="testing web page"
id="&url-testing-maint;"> for more information. It also includes
answers to some of the frequently asked questions.


    <sect id="pkg-info">Package information
        <p>

      <sect1 id="pkg-info-web">On the web
        <p>
Each package has several dedicated web pages.
<tt>http://&packages-host;/<var>package-name</var></tt>
displays each version of the package
available in the various distributions.  Each version links to a page
which provides information, including the package description,
the dependencies and package download links.
        <p>
The bug tracking system track bugs for each package.  You can
view the bugs of a given package at the URL
<tt>http://&bugs-host;/<var>package-name</var></tt>.

      <sect1 id="madison">The <prgn>madison</prgn> utility
        <p>
<prgn>madison</prgn> is a command-line utility that is available
on both <tt>&ftp-master-host;</tt> and <tt>&non-us-host;</tt>. It
uses a single argument corresponding to a package name. In result
it displays which version of the package is available for each
architecture and distribution combination. An example will explain
it better.
        <p>
<example>
$ madison libdbd-mysql-perl
libdbd-mysql-perl |   1.2202-4 |        stable | source, alpha, arm, i386, m68k, powerpc, sparc
libdbd-mysql-perl |   1.2216-2 |       testing | source, arm, hppa, i386, ia64, m68k, mips, mipsel, powerpc, s390, sparc
libdbd-mysql-perl | 1.2216-2.0.1 |       testing | alpha
libdbd-mysql-perl |   1.2219-1 |      unstable | source, alpha, arm, hppa, i386, ia64, m68k, mips, mipsel, powerpc, s390, sparc
</example>
        <p>
In this example, you can see that the version in <em>unstable</em> differs from
the version in <em>testing</em> and that there has been a binary-only NMU of the
package for the alpha architecture. Each time the package has been
recompiled on most of the architectures.

    <sect id="pkg-tracking-system">The Package Tracking System
<!-- FIXME: talk about 
http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=aph@debian.org
http://packages.qa.debian.org/
http://packages.qa.debian.org/pkgname -->
        <p>
The Package Tracking System (PTS) is basically a tool to track by mail
the activity of a source package. You just have to subscribe
to a source package to start getting the mails related to it. 
You get the same mails as the maintainer. Each mail
sent through the PTS is classified and associated to one of
the keyword listed below. This will let you select the mails that
you want to receive.
        <p>
By default you will get:
<taglist>
    <tag><tt>bts</tt>
    <item>
All the bug reports and following discussions.

    <tag><tt>bts-control</tt>
    <item>
The control mails notifying a status change in one of the bugs.
    
    <tag><tt>upload-source</tt>
    <item>
The confirmation mail from <prgn>katie</prgn> when an uploaded source
package is accepted.

    <tag><tt>katie-other</tt>
    <item>
Other warning and error mails from <prgn>katie</prgn> (like the
override disparity for the section or priority field).

    <tag><tt>default</tt>
    <item>
Any non-automatic mail sent to the PTS by people who wanted to
contact the subscribers of the package.

    <tag><tt>summary</tt>
    <item>
In the future, you may receive regular summary mails to keep you
informed of the package's status (bug statistics, porting overview,
progression in <em>testing</em>, ...).
</taglist>
        <p>
You can also decide to receive some more information:
<taglist>
    <tag><tt>upload-binary</tt>
    <item>
The confirmation mail from <prgn>katie</prgn> when an uploaded binary
package is accepted (to check that your package is recompiled for all
architectures).

    <tag><tt>cvs</tt>
    <item>
CVS commits if the maintainer has setup a system to forward commit
notification to the PTS.

    <tag><tt>ddtp</tt>
    <item>
Translations of descriptions or debconf templates
submitted to the Debian Description Translation Project.
</taglist>

        <sect1 id="pts-commands">The PTS email interface
        <p>
You can control your subscription(s) to the PTS by sending
various commands to <email>pts@qa.debian.org</email>.

<taglist>

<tag><tt>subscribe &lt;srcpackage&gt; [&lt;email&gt;]</tt>
<item>
  Subscribes <var>email</var> to communications related to the source package
  <var>srcpackage</var>. Sender address is used if the second argument is
  not present. If <var>srcpackage</var> is not a valid source package,
  you'll get a warning. However if it's a valid binary package, the PTS
  will subscribe you to the corresponding source package.

<tag><tt>unsubscribe &lt;srcpackage&gt; [&lt;email&gt;]</tt>
<item>
  Removes a previous subscription to the source package <var>srcpackage</var>
  using the specified email address or the sender address if the second
  argument is left out. 

<tag><tt>which [&lt;email&gt;]</tt>
<item>
  Lists all subscriptions for the sender or the email address optionally 
  specified.

<tag><tt>keyword [&lt;email&gt;]</tt>
<item>
  Tells you the keywords that you are accepting. Each mail sent through
  the Package Tracking System is associated to a keyword and you receive
  only the mails associated to keywords that you are accepting. Here is
  the list of available keywords:
  <list>
  <item><tt>bts</tt>: mails coming from the Debian Bug Tracking System
  <item><tt>bts-control</tt>: reply to mails sent to &email-bts-control;
  <item><tt>summary</tt>: automatic summary mails about the state of a package
  <item><tt>cvs</tt>: notification of CVS commits
  <item><tt>ddtp</tt>: translations of descriptions and debconf templates
  <item><tt>upload-source</tt>: announce of a new source upload that
        has been accepted
  <item><tt>upload-binary</tt>: announce of a new binary-only upload (porting)
  <item><tt>katie-other</tt>: other mails from ftpmasters
        (override disparity, etc.)
  <item><tt>default</tt>: all the other mails (those which aren't "automatic")
  </list>

<tag><tt>keyword &lt;srcpackage&gt; [&lt;email&gt;]</tt>
<item>
  Same as previous item but for the given source package since
  you may select a different set of keywords for each source package.

<tag><tt>keyword [&lt;email&gt;] {+|-|=} &lt;list of keywords&gt;</tt>
<item>
  Accept (+) or refuse (-) mails associated to the given keyword(s).
  Define the list (=) of accepted keywords.

<tag><tt>keyword &lt;srcpackage&gt; [&lt;email&gt;] {+|-|=} &lt;list of keywords&gt;</tt>
<item>
  Same as previous item but overrides the keywords list for the
  indicated source package.
  
<tag><tt>quit | thanks | --</tt>
<item>
  Stops processing commands. All following lines are ignored by
  the bot.
</taglist>

        <sect1 id="pts-mail-filtering">Filtering PTS mails
        <p>
Once you are subscribed to a package, you will get the mails sent to
<tt><var>srcpackage</var>@packages.qa.debian.org</tt>. Those mails
have special headers appended to let you filter them in a special
mailbox with <prgn>procmail</prgn>. The added headers are
<tt>X-Loop</tt>, <tt>X-PTS-Package</tt>, <tt>X-PTS-Keyword</tt> and
<tt>X-Unsubscribe</tt>.
        <p>
Here is an example of added headers for a source upload notification
on the <package>dpkg</package> package:
<example>
X-Loop: dpkg@&pts-host;
X-PTS-Package: dpkg
X-PTS-Keyword: upload-source
X-Unsubscribe: echo 'unsubscribe dpkg' | mail pts@qa.debian.org
</example>

        <sect1 id="pts-cvs-commit">Forwarding CVS commits in the PTS
        <p>
If you use a publicly accessible CVS repository for maintaining
your Debian package you may want to forward the commit notification
to the PTS so that the subscribers (possible co-maintainers) can
closely follow the package's evolution.
        <p>
It's very easy to setup. Once your CVS repository generates commit
notifications, you just have to make sure it sends a copy of those mails
to <tt><var>srcpackage</var>_cvs@&pts-host;</tt>. Only people who
accepts the <em>cvs</em> keyword will receive the notifications.

    <sect id="ddpo">Developer's packages overview
        <p>
A QA (quality assurance) web portal is available at <url
            id="&url-ddpo;"> which displays a table listing all the packages
of a single developer (including those where the party is listed as
a co-maintainer). The table gives a good summary about the developer's 
packages: number of bugs by severity, list of available versions in each
distribution, testing status and much more including links to any other
useful information.
        <p>
It is a good idea to look up your own data regularly so that
you don't forget any open bug, and so that you don't forget which
packages are under your responsibility.


   <chapt id="pkgs">Managing Packages
        <p>
This chapter contains information related to creating, uploading,
maintaining, and porting packages.


    <sect id="newpackage">New packages
        <p>
If you want to create a new package for the Debian distribution, you
should first check the <url id="&url-wnpp;" name="Work-Needing and
Prospective Packages (WNPP)"> list. Checking the WNPP list ensures that
no one is already working on packaging that software, and that effort is
not duplicated. Read the <url id="&url-wnpp;" name="WNPP web pages"> for
more information.
        <p>
Assuming no one else is already working on your prospective package,
you must then submit a bug report (<ref id="submit-bug">) against the
pseudo-package <package>wnpp</package> 
describing your plan to create a new package, including, but not
limiting yourself to, a description of the package, the license of the
prospective package and the current URL where it can be downloaded
from.
        <p>
You should set the subject of the bug to ``ITP: <var>foo</var>
-- <var>short description</var>'', substituting the name of the new
package for <var>foo</var>.  The severity of the bug report must be set
to <em>wishlist</em>. If you feel it's necessary, send a copy to
&email-debian-devel; by putting the address in the <tt>X-Debbugs-CC:</tt> header
of the message (no, don't use <tt>CC:</tt>, because that way the message's subject
won't indicate the bug number).
        <p>
Please include a <tt>Closes: bug#<var>nnnnn</var></tt> entry on the
changelog of the new package in order for the bug report to be
automatically closed once the new package is installed on the archive
(<ref id="upload-bugfix">).
        <p>
There are a number of reasons why we ask maintainers to announce their
intentions:
          <list compact>
            <item>
It helps the (potentially new) maintainer to tap into the experience
of people on the list, and lets them know if anyone else is working
on it already.
            <item>
It lets other people thinking about working on the package know that
there already is a volunteer, so efforts may be shared.
            <item>
It lets the rest of the maintainers know more about the package than
the one line description and the usual changelog entry ``Initial release''
that gets posted to <tt>debian-devel-changes</tt>.
            <item>
It is helpful to the people who live off unstable (and form our first
line of testers).  We should encourage these people.
            <item>
The announcements give maintainers and other interested parties a
better feel of what is going on, and what is new, in the project.
          </list>


    <sect id="changelog-entries">Recording changes in the package
          <p>
Changes that you make to the package need to be recorded in the
<file>debian/changelog</file>.  These changes should provide a concise
description of what was changed, why (if it's in doubt), and note if
any bugs were closed.  They also record when the package was
completed.  This file will be installed in
<file>/usr/share/doc/<var>package</var>/changelog.Debian.gz</file>, or
<file>/usr/share/doc/<var>package</var>/changelog.gz</file> for native
packages.
          <p>
The <file>debian/changelog</file> file conforms to a certain structure,
with a number of different fields.  One field of note, the
<em>distribution</em>, is described in <ref id="distribution">.  More
information about the structure of this file can be found in
the Debian Policy section titled "<file>debian/changelog</file>".
          <p>
Changelog entries can be used to automatically close Debian bugs when
the package is installed into the archive.  See <ref
id="upload-bugfix">.
          <p>
It is conventional that the changelog entry notating of a package that
contains a new upstream version of the software looks like this:
<example>
  * new upstream version
</example>
          <p>
There are tools to help you create entries and finalize the
<file>changelog</file> for release &mdash; see <ref id="devscripts">
and <ref id="dpkg-dev-el">.
          <p>
See also <ref id="bpp-debian-changelog">.


    <sect id="sanitycheck">Testing the package
        <p>
Before you upload your package, you should do basic testing on it.  At
a minimum, you should try the following activities (you'll need to
have an older version of the same Debian package around):
<list>
              <item>
Install the package and make sure the software works, or upgrade the
package from an older version to your new version if a Debian package
for it already exists.
              <item>
Run <prgn>lintian</prgn> over the package.  You can run
<prgn>lintian</prgn> as follows: <tt>lintian -v
<var>package-version</var>.changes</tt>. This will check the source
package as well as the binary package.  If you don't understand the
output that <prgn>lintian</prgn> generates, try adding the <tt>-i</tt>
switch, which will cause <prgn>lintian</prgn> to output a very verbose
description of the problem.
                <p>
Normally, a package should <em>not</em> be uploaded if it causes lintian
to emit errors (they will start with <tt>E</tt>).
                <p>
For more information on <prgn>lintian</prgn>, see <ref id="lintian">.
              <item>
Optionally run <ref id="debdiff"> to analyze changes from an older version,
if one exists.
              <item>
Downgrade the package to the previous version (if one exists) &mdash; this
tests the <file>postrm</file> and <file>prerm</file> scripts.
              <item>
Remove the package, then reinstall it.
            </list>


    <sect id="sourcelayout">Layout of the source package
        <p>
There are two types of Debian source packages:
        <list>
          <item>the so-called <em>native</em> packages, where there is no
                distinction between the original sources and the patches
                applied for Debian
          <item>the (more common) packages where there's an original source
                tarball file accompanied by another file that contains the
                patches applied for Debian
        </list>
        <p>
For the native packages, the source package includes a Debian source control
file (<tt>.dsc</tt>) and the source tarball (<tt>.tar.gz</tt>). A source
package of a non-native package includes a Debian source control file, the
original source tarball (<tt>.orig.tar.gz</tt>) and the Debian patches
(<tt>.diff.gz</tt>).
        <p>
Whether a package is native or not is determined when it is built by
<manref name="dpkg-buildpackage" section="1">. The rest of this section
relates only to non-native packages.
        <p>
The first time a version is uploaded which corresponds to a particular
upstream version, the original source tar file should be uploaded and
included in the <file>.changes</file> file.  Subsequently, this very same
tar file should be used to build the new diffs and <file>.dsc</file>
files, and will not need to be re-uploaded.
        <p>
By default, <prgn>dpkg-genchanges</prgn> and
<prgn>dpkg-buildpackage</prgn> will include the original source tar
file if and only if the Debian revision part of the source version
number is 0 or 1, indicating a new upstream version.  This behavior
may be modified by using <tt>-sa</tt> to always include it or
<tt>-sd</tt> to always leave it out.
        <p>
If no original source is included in the upload, the original
source tar-file used by <prgn>dpkg-source</prgn> when constructing the
<file>.dsc</file> file and diff to be uploaded <em>must</em> be
byte-for-byte identical with the one already in the archive.


    <sect id="distribution">Picking a distribution
        <p>
Each upload needs to specify which distribution the package is intended
for. The package build process extracts this information from the first
line of the <file>debian/changelog</file> file and places it in the
<tt>Distribution</tt> field of the <tt>.changes</tt> file.
        <p>
There are several possible values for this field: `stable', `unstable',
`testing-proposed-updates' and `experimental'. Normally, packages are
uploaded into <em>unstable</em>.
        <p>
Actually, there are two other possible distributions: `stable-security' and
`testing-security', but read <ref id="bug-security"> for more information on
those.
        <p>
It is technically possible to upload a package into several distributions
at the same time but it usually doesn't make sense to use that feature
because the dependencies of the package may vary with the distribution.
In particular, it never makes sense to combine the <em>experimental</em>
distribution with anything else (see <ref id="experimental">).

        <sect1 id="upload-stable">Uploads to <em>stable</em>
          <p>
Uploading to <em>stable</em> means that the package will be placed into the
<file>stable-proposed-updates</file> directory of the Debian archive for further
testing before it is actually included in <em>stable</em>.
          <p>
Extra care should be taken when uploading to <em>stable</em>. Basically, a
package should only be uploaded to stable if one of the following happens:
<list>
        <item>a security problem (e.g. a Debian security advisory)
        <item>a truly critical functionality problem
        <item>the package becomes uninstallable
        <item>a released architecture lacks the package
</list>
          <p>
It is discouraged to change anything else in the package that isn't
important, because even trivial fixes can cause bugs later on. Uploading
new upstream versions to fix security problems is deprecated; applying the
specific patch from the new upstream version to the old one ("back-porting"
the patch) is the right thing to do in most cases.
          <p>
Packages uploaded to <em>stable</em> need to be compiled on systems running
<em>stable</em>, so that their dependencies are limited to the libraries
(and other packages) available in <em>stable</em>; for example, a package
uploaded to <em>stable</em> that depends on a library package that only
exists in unstable will be rejected. Making changes to dependencies of other
packages (by messing with <tt>Provides</tt> or shlibs files), possibly making
those other packages uninstallable, is strongly discouraged.
          <p>
The Release Team (which can be reached at &email-debian-release;) will
regularly evaluate the uploads in <em>stable-proposed-updates</em> and decide if
your package can be included in <em>stable</em>. Please be clear (and
verbose, if necessary) in your changelog entries for uploads to
<em>stable</em>, because otherwise the package won't be considered for
inclusion.

        <sect1 id="upload-t-p-u">Uploads to <em>testing-proposed-updates</em>
          <p>
The testing distribution is fed with packages from unstable according to the rules
explained in <ref id="testing">. 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 <em>testing-proposed-updates</em> to provide fixed packages during the freeze.
          <p>
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;.
          <p>
You should not upload to <em>testing-proposed-updates</em> when you can update your
packages through <em>unstable</em>. 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.


    <sect id="upload">Uploading a package

        <sect1 id="upload-ftp-master">Uploading to <tt>ftp-master</tt>
          <p>
To upload a package, you need a personal account on
<ftpsite>&ftp-master-host;</ftpsite>, which you should have as an
official maintainer. If you use <prgn>scp</prgn> or <prgn>rsync</prgn>
to transfer the files, place them into &us-upload-dir;;
if you use anonymous FTP to upload, place them into
&upload-queue;.
          <p>
Please note that you should transfer
the changes file last.  Otherwise, your upload may be rejected because the
archive maintenance software will parse the changes file and see that not
all files have been uploaded.  If you don't want to bother with transferring
the changes file last, you can simply copy your files to a temporary
directory on <tt>ftp-master</tt> and then move them to
&us-upload-dir;.
          <p>
<em>Note:</em> Do not upload to <tt>ftp-master</tt> cryptographic
packages which belong to <em>contrib</em> or <em>non-free</em>. Uploads of
such software should go to <tt>non-us</tt> (see <ref
id="upload-non-us">). Furthermore packages containing code that is
patent-restricted by the United States government can not be uploaded to
<tt>ftp-master</tt>; depending on the case they may still be uploaded to
<file>non-US/non-free</file> (it's in non-free because of distribution issues
and not because of the license of the software). If you can't upload it to
<tt>ftp-master</tt>, then neither can you upload it to the overseas upload
queues on <tt>chiark</tt> or <tt>erlangen</tt>. If you are not sure
whether U.S. patent controls or cryptographic controls apply to your
package, post a message to &email-debian-devel; and ask.
          <p>
You may also find the Debian packages <ref id="dupload"> or
<ref id="dput"> useful
when uploading packages.  These handy programs help automate the
process of uploading packages into Debian.
          <p>
After uploading your package, you can check how the archive
maintenance software will process it by running <prgn>dinstall</prgn>
on your changes file:
<example>dinstall -n foo.changes</example>
          <p>
Note that <prgn>dput</prgn> can do this for you automatically.

        <sect1 id="upload-non-us">Uploading to <tt>non-US</tt>
          <p>
As discussed above, export controlled software should not be uploaded
to <tt>ftp-master</tt>.  Instead, upload the package to
<ftpsite>non-us.debian.org</ftpsite>, placing the files in
&non-us-upload-dir; (again, both <ref id="dupload"> and <ref
id="dput"> can do this for you if invoked properly). By default,
you can use the same account/password that works on
<tt>ftp-master</tt>.  If you use anonymous FTP to upload, place the
files into &upload-queue;.
          <p>
You can check your upload the same way it's done on <tt>ftp-master</tt>,
with:
<example>dinstall -n foo.changes</example>
          <p>
Note that U.S. residents or citizens are subject to restrictions on
export of cryptographic software. As of this writing, U.S. citizens
are allowed to export some cryptographic software, subject to
notification rules by the U.S. Department of Commerce.  However, this
restriction has been waived for software which is already available
outside the U.S.  Therefore, any cryptographic software which belongs
in the <em>main</em> section of the Debian archive and does not depend
on any package outside of <em>main</em> (e.g., does not depend on
anything in <em>non-US/main</em>) can be uploaded to <tt>ftp-master</tt>
or its queues, described above.
          <p>
Debian policy does not prevent upload to non-US by U.S. residents or
citizens, but care should be taken in doing so. It is recommended that
developers take all necessary steps to ensure that they are not
breaking current US law by doing an upload to non-US, <em>including
consulting a lawyer</em>.
          <p>
For packages in <em>non-US/main</em>, <em>non-US/contrib</em>,
developers should at least follow the <url id="&url-u.s.-export;"
name="procedure outlined by the US Government">.  Maintainers of
<em>non-US/non-free</em> packages should further consult the <url
id="&url-notification-of-export;" name="rules on notification of
export"> of non-free software.
          <p>
This section is for information only and does not constitute legal
advice. Again, it is strongly recommended that U.S. citizens and
residents consult a lawyer before doing uploads to non-US.


        <sect1>Uploads via <tt>chiark</tt>
          <p>
If you have a slow network connection to <tt>ftp-master</tt>, there are
alternatives.  One is to upload files to <file>Incoming</file> via a
upload queue in Europe on <tt>chiark</tt>. For details connect to
<url id="&url-chiark-readme;">.
          <p>
<em>Note:</em> Do not upload packages containing software that is
export-controlled by the United States government to the queue on
<tt>chiark</tt>.  Since this upload queue goes to <tt>ftp-master</tt>, the
prescription found in <ref id="upload-ftp-master"> applies here as well.
          <p>
The program <prgn>dupload</prgn> comes with support for uploading to
<tt>chiark</tt>; please refer to the documentation that comes with the
program for details.


        <sect1>Uploads via <tt>erlangen</tt>
          <p>
Another upload queue is available in Germany: just upload the files
via anonymous FTP to <url id="&url-upload-erlangen;">.
          <p>
The upload must be a complete Debian upload, as you would put it into
<tt>ftp-master</tt>'s <file>Incoming</file>, i.e., a <file>.changes</file> files
along with the other files mentioned in the <file>.changes</file>. The
queue daemon also checks that the <file>.changes</file> is correctly
signed with GnuPG or OpenPGP by a Debian developer, so that no bogus files can find
their way to <tt>ftp-master</tt> via this queue. Please also make sure that
the <tt>Maintainer</tt> field in the <file>.changes</file> contains
<em>your</em> e-mail address. The address found there is used for all
replies, just as on <tt>ftp-master</tt>.
          <p>
There's no need to move your files into a second directory after the
upload, as on <tt>chiark</tt>. And, in any case, you should get a
mail reply from the queue daemon explaining what happened to your
upload. Hopefully it should have been moved to <tt>ftp-master</tt>, but in
case of errors you're notified, too.
          <p>
<em>Note:</em> Do not upload packages containing software that is
export-controlled by the United States government to the queue on
<tt>erlangen</tt>.  Since this upload queue goes to <tt>ftp-master</tt>, the
prescription found in <ref id="upload-ftp-master"> applies here as well.
          <p>
The program <prgn>dupload</prgn> comes with support for uploading to
<tt>erlangen</tt>; please refer to the documentation that comes with
the program for details.


        <sect1>Other upload queues
          <p>
Another upload queue is available which is based in the US, and is a
good backup when there are problems reaching <tt>ftp-master</tt>.  You can
upload files, just as in <tt>erlangen</tt>, to <url
id="&url-upload-samosa;">.
          <p>
An upload queue is available in Japan: just upload the files via
anonymous FTP to <url id="&url-upload-jp;">.


      <sect1 id="upload-notification">
        <heading>Notification that a new package has been installed</heading>
        <p>
The Debian archive maintainers are responsible for handling package
uploads.  For the most part, uploads are automatically handled on a
daily basis by the archive maintenance tools, <prgn>katie</prgn>.
Specifically, updates to existing packages to
the `unstable' distribution are handled automatically. In other cases,
notably new packages, placing the uploaded package into the
distribution is handled manually. When uploads are handled manually,
the change to the archive may take up to a month to occur. Please be
patient.
        <p>
In any case, you will receive an email notification indicating that the
package has been added to the archive, which also indicates which bugs will
be closed by the upload.  Please examine this notification carefully,
checking if any bugs you meant to close didn't get triggered.
        <p>
The installation notification also includes information on what
section the package was inserted into.  If there is a disparity, you
will receive a separate email notifying you of that.  Read on below.
        <p>
Note also that if you upload via queues, the queue daemon software will
also send you a notification by email.

    <sect id="override-file">Determining section and priority of a package
        <p>
The <file>debian/control</file> file's <tt>Section</tt> and
<tt>Priority</tt> fields do not actually specify where the file will
be placed in the archive, nor its priority.  In order to retain the
overall integrity of the archive, it is the archive maintainers who
have control over these fields.  The values in the
<file>debian/control</file> file are actually just hints.
        <p>
The archive maintainers keep track of the canonical sections and
priorities for packages in the <em>override file</em>.  If there is a
disparity between the <em>override file</em> and the package's fields
as indicated in <file>debian/control</file>, then you will receive an
email noting the divergence when the package is installed into the
archive.  You can either correct your <file>debian/control</file> file
for your next upload, or else you may wish to make a change in the
<em>override file</em>.
        <p>
To alter the actual section that a package is put in, you need to
first make sure that the <file>debian/control</file> in your package
is accurate.  Next, send an email &email-override; or submit a bug
against <package>ftp.debian.org</package> requesting that the section
or priority for your package be changed from the old section or
priority to the new one.  Be sure to explain your reasoning.
        <p>
For more information about <em>override files</em>, see <manref
name="dpkg-scanpackages" section="8"> and
<url id="&url-bts-devel;#maintincorrect">.
        <p>
Note also that the term "section" is used for the separation of packages
according to their licensing, e.g. <em>main</em>, <em>contrib</em> and
<em>non-free</em>. This is described in another section, <ref id="archive">.


    <sect id="bug-handling">Handling bugs
        <p>
Every developer has to be able to work with the Debian <url name="bug
tracking system" id="&url-bts;">. This includes knowing how to file bug
reports properly (see <ref id="submit-bug">), how to update them and
reorder them, and how to process and close them.
        <p>
The bug tracking system's features interesting to developers are described
in the <url id="&url-bts-devel;" name="BTS documentation for developers">.
This includes closing bugs, sending followup messages, assigning severities,
tags, marking bugs as forwarded and other issues.
        <p>
Operations such as reassigning bugs to other packages, merging separate
bug reports about the same issue, or reopening bugs when they are
prematurely closed, are handled using the so-called control mail server.
All of the commands available in this server are described in the
<url id="&url-bts-control;" name="BTS control server documentation">.

      <sect1 id="bug-monitoring">Monitoring bugs
        <p>
If you want to be a good maintainer, you should periodically check the
<url id="&url-bts;" name="Debian bug tracking system (BTS)"> for your
packages.  The BTS contains all the open bugs against your packages.
You can check them by browsing this page:
<tt>http://&bugs-host;/<var>yourlogin</var>@debian.org</tt>.
        <p>
Maintainers interact with the BTS via email addresses at
<tt>&bugs-host;</tt>.  Documentation on available commands can be
found at <url id="&url-bts;">, or, if you have installed the
<package>doc-debian</package> package, you can look at the local files
&file-bts-docs;.
        <p>
Some find it useful to get periodic reports on open bugs.  You can add
a cron job such as the following if you want to get a weekly email
outlining all the open bugs against your packages:
<example>
# ask for weekly reports of bugs in my packages
&cron-bug-report;
</example>
Replace <var>address</var> with your official Debian
maintainer address.

      <sect1 id="bug-answering">Responding to bugs
        <p>
Make sure that any discussion you have about bugs are sent both to
the original submitter of the bug, and the bug itself (e.g.,
<email>123@&bugs-host;</email>). If you're writing a new
mail and you don't remember the submitter email address, you can
use the <email>123-submitter@&bugs-host;</email> email to
contact the submitter <em>and</em> to record your mail within the
bug log (that means you don't need to send a copy of the mail to
<email>123@&bugs-host;</email>).
        <p>
Once you've dealt with a bug report (e.g. fixed it), mark it as
<em>done</em> (close it) by sending an explanation message to
<email>123-done@&bugs-host;</email>. If you're fixing a bug by
changing and uploading the package, you can automate bug closing as
described in <ref id="upload-bugfix">.
        <p>
You should <em>never</em> close bugs via the bug server <tt>close</tt>
command sent to &email-bts-control;.  If you do so, the original
submitter will not receive any information about why the bug was
closed.

      <sect1 id="bug-housekeeping">Bug housekeeping
        <p>
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 bug tracking system's features interesting to developers
are described in the <url id="&url-bts-devel;" name="BTS documentation for
Debian developers">. Operations such as reassigning, merging, and tagging
bug reports are described in the <url id="&url-bts-control;" name="BTS
control server documentation">. This section contains
some guidelines for managing your own bugs, based on the collective
Debian developer experience.
        <p>
Filing bugs for problems that  you find in other packages is one of
the "civic obligations" of maintainership, see <ref id="submit-bug">
for details. However, handling the bugs in your own packages is
even more important.
        <p>
Here's a list of steps that you may follow to handle a bug report:
<enumlist>
    <item>
Decide whether the report corresponds to a real bug or not. Sometimes
users are just calling a program in the wrong way because they haven't
read the documentation. If you diagnose this, just close the bug with
enough information to let the user correct his problem (give pointers
to the good documentation and so on). If the same report comes up
again and again you may ask yourself if the documentation is good
enough or if the program shouldn't detect its misuse in order to
give an informative error message. This is an issue that may need
to be brought to the upstream author.
    <p>
If the bug submitter disagree with your decision to close the bug,
they may reopen it until you find an agreement on how to handle it.
If you don't find any, you may want to tag the bug <tt>wontfix</tt>
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 <package>tech-ctte</package> (you may use the clone command of
the BTS if you wish to keep it reported against your package). Before
doing so, please read the <url id="&url-tech-ctte;" name="recommended procedure">.
    <item>
If the bug is real but it's caused by another package, just reassign
the bug the right package. If you don't know which package it should
be reassigned to, you may either ask for help on &email-debian-devel; or
reassign it to <package>debian-policy</package> to let them decide which
package is in fault.
    <p>
Sometimes you also have to adjust the severity of the bug so that it
matches our definition of the severity. That's because people tend to
inflate the severity of bugs to make sure their bugs are fixed quickly.
Some bugs may even be dropped to wishlist severity when the requested
change is just cosmetic.
    <item>
The bug submitter may have forgotten to provide some information, in that
case you have to ask him the information required. You may use the
<tt>moreinfo</tt> tag to mark the bug as such. Moreover if you can't
reproduce the bug, you tag it <tt>unreproducible</tt>. Anyone who
can reproduce the bug is then invited to provide more information
on how to reproduce it. After a few months, if this information has not
been sent by someone, the bug may be closed.
    <item>
If the bug is related to the packaging, you just fix it. If you are not
able to fix it yourself, then tag the bug as <tt>help</tt>. You can
also ask for help on &email-debian-devel; or &email-debian-qa;. If it's an
upstream problem, you have to forward it to the upstream author.
Forwarding a bug is not enough, you have to check at each release if
the bug has been fixed or not. If it has, you just close it, otherwise
you have to remind the author about it. If you have the required skills
you can prepare a patch that fixes the bug and that you send at the
same time to the author. Make sure to send the patch in the BTS and to
tag the bug as <tt>patch</tt>.
    <item>
If you have fixed a bug in your local copy, or if a fix has been
committed to the CVS repository, you may tag the bug as
<tt>pending</tt> to let people know that the bug is corrected and that
it will be closed with the next upload (add the <tt>closes:</tt> in
the <file>changelog</file>). This is particularly useful if you
are several developers working on the same package.
    <item>
Once a corrected package is available in the <em>unstable</em>
distribution, you can close the bug. This can be done automatically,
read <ref id="upload-bugfix">.
</enumlist>

      <sect1 id="upload-bugfix">When bugs are closed by new uploads
        <p>
As bugs and problems are fixed your packages, it is your
responsibility as the package maintainer to close the bug.  However,
you should not close the bug until the package which fixes the bug has
been accepted into the Debian archive.  Therefore, once you get
notification that your updated package has been installed into the
archive, you can and should close the bug in the BTS.
        <p>
However, it's possible to avoid having to manually close bugs after the
upload &mdash; just list the fixed bugs in your <file>debian/changelog</file>
file, following a certain syntax, and the archive maintenance software
will close the bugs for you. For example:

<example>
acme-cannon (3.1415) unstable; urgency=low

  * Frobbed with options (closes: Bug#98339)
  * Added safety to prevent operator dismemberment, closes: bug#98765,
    bug#98713, #98714.
  * Added man page. Closes: #98725.
</example>

Technically speaking, the following Perl regular expression describes
how bug closing changelogs are identified:
<example>
  /closes:\s*(?:bug)?\#\s*\d+(?:,\s*(?:bug)?\#\s*\d+)*/ig
</example>

We prefer the <tt>closes: #<var>XXX</var></tt> syntax, as it is the
most concise entry and the easiest to integrate with the text of the
<file>changelog</file>.
        <p>
If you happen to mistype a bug number or forget a bug in the changelog
entries, don't hesitate to undo any damage the error caused. To reopen
wrongly closed bugs, send an <tt>reopen <var>XXX</var></tt> command to
the bug tracking system's control address, &email-bts-control;.  To
close any remaining bugs that were fixed by your upload, email the
<file>.changes</file> file to <email>XXX-done@&bugs-host;</email>,
where <var>XXX</var> is your bug number.
        <p>
Bear in mind that it is not obligatory to close bugs using the
changelog as described above.  If you simply want to close bugs that
don't have anything to do with an upload you made, do it by emailing
an explanation to <email>XXX-done@&bugs-host;</email>.  Do
<strong>not</strong> close bugs in the changelog entry of a version if
the changes in that version of the package doesn't have any bearing on
the bug.
          <p>
For general information on how to write your changelog entries, see
<ref id="bpp-debian-changelog">.


      <sect1 id="bug-security">Handling security-related bugs
        <p>
Due to their sensitive nature, security-related bugs must be handled
carefully.  The Debian Security Team exists to coordinate this
activity, keeping track of outstanding security problems, helping
maintainers with security problems or fix them themselves, sending
security advisories, and maintaining security.debian.org.

<!-- information about the security database goes here once it's ready -->
<!-- (mdz) -->

        <sect2 id="bug-security-you">What to do when you learn of a
        security problem
          <p>
When you become aware of a security-related bug in a Debian package,
whether or not you are the maintainer, collect pertinent information
about the problem, and promptly contact the security team at 
&email-security-team;.
Useful information includes, for example:

<list compact>
  <item>What versions of the package are known to be affected by the
  bug.  Check each version that is present in a supported Debian
  release, as well as testing and unstable.

  <item>The nature of the fix, if any is available (patches are
  especially helpful)

  <item>Any fixed packages that you have prepared yourself (send only
  the <tt>.diff.gz</tt> and <tt>.dsc</tt> files)

  <item>Any information needed for the advisory (see <ref
  id="bug-security-advisories">)

</list>

        <sect2 id="bug-security-confidentiality">Confidentiality
          <p>
Unlike most other activities within Debian, information about security
issues must sometimes be kept private for a time.  Whether this is the
case depends on the nature of the problem and corresponding fix, and
whether it is already a matter of public knowledge.
<p>
There are a few ways a developer can learn of a security problem:

<list compact>
    <item>he notices it on a public forum (mailing list, web site, etc.)
    <item>someone files a bug report
    <item>someone informs him via private email
</list>

 In the first two cases, the information is public and it is important
 to have a fix as soon as possible. In the last case, however, it
 might not be public information. In that case there are a few
 possible options for dealing with the problem:

<list>
  <item>if it is a trivial problem (like insecure temporary files)
  there is no need to keep the problem a secret and a fix should be
  made and released.

  <item>if the problem is severe (remotely exploitable, possibility to
  gain root privileges) it is preferable to share the information with
  other vendors and coordinate a release. The security team keeps
  contacts with the various organizations and individuals and can take
  care of that.
</list>

<p>
 In all cases if the person who reports the problem asks to not
 disclose the information that should be respected, with the obvious
 exception of informing the security team (make sure you tell the
 security team that the information can not be disclosed).

<p>
Please note that if secrecy is needed you can also not upload a fix to
unstable (or anywhere else), since the changelog and diff information
for unstable is public.

<p>
There are two reasons for releasing information even though secrecy is
requested: the problem has been known for a while, or that the problem
or exploit has become public.

        <sect2 id="bug-security-advisories">Security Advisories
          <p>
Security advisories are only issued for the current, released stable
distribution, not for testing or unstable.  When released, advisories
are sent to the &email-debian-security-announce;
mailing list and posted on <url
id="&url-debian-security-advisories;" name="the security web page">.
Security advisories are written and posted by the security
team. However they certainly do not mind if a maintainer can supply
some of the information for them, or write part of the
text. Information that should be in an advisory includes:

<list compact>
  <item>A description of the problem and its scope, including:
    <list>
       <item>The type of problem (privilege escalation, denial of
  service, etc.)
       <item>How it can be exploited
       <item>Whether it is remotely or locally exploitable
       <item>How the problem was fixed
    </list>
  <item>Version numbers of affected packages
  <item>Version numbers of fixed packages
  <item>Information on where to obtain the updated packages
  <item>References to upstream advisories, <url
  id="http://cve.mitre.org" name="CVE"> identifiers, and any other
  information useful in cross-referencing the vulnerability
</list>

         <sect2 id="bug-security-building">
            <heading>Preparing packages to address security issues</heading>
         <p>
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.
         <p>
 When an update is made to the stable release, care must be taken 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 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.
<p>
This means that moving to a new upstream version is not a good
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.
<p>
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.
<p>
Related to this is another important guideline: always test your
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.
<p>
Review and test your changes as much as possible.  Check the
differences from the previous version repeatedly
(<prgn>interdiff</prgn> from the <package>patchutils</package> package
and <prgn>debdiff</prgn> from <package>devscripts</package> are useful
tools for this, see <ref id="debdiff">).
<p>
When packaging the fix, keep the following points in mind:

<list>
    <item>Make sure you target the right distribution in your
    <file>debian/changelog</file>. For stable this is <tt>stable-security</tt> and for
    testing this is <tt>testing-security</tt>, and for the previous
    stable release, this is <tt>oldstable-security</tt>. Do not target
    <var>distribution</var>-proposed-updates!

    <item>Make sure the version number is proper. It must be greater
    than the current package, but less than package versions in later
    distributions.  If in doubt, test it with <tt>dpkg
    --compare-versions</tt>.  For <em>testing</em>, there must be
    a higher version in <em>unstable</em>. If there is none yet (for example,
    if <em>testing</em> and <em>unstable</em> have the same version) you must upload a
    new version to unstable first.

    <item>Do not make source-only uploads if your package has any
    binary-all packages (do not use the <tt>-S</tt> option to
    <prgn>dpkg-buildpackage</prgn>).  The <prgn>buildd</prgn> infrastructure will
    not build those. This point applies to normal package uploads as
    well.

    <item>If the upstream source has been uploaded to
    security.debian.org before (by a previous security update), build
    the upload without the upstream source (<tt>dpkg-buildpackage
    -sd</tt>).  Otherwise, build with full source
    (<tt>dpkg-buildpackage -sa</tt>).

    <item>Be sure to use the exact same <file>*.orig.tar.gz</file> as used in the
    normal archive, otherwise it is not possible to move the security
    fix into the main archives later.

    <item>Be sure, when compiling a package, to compile on a clean
    system which only has packages installed from the distribution you
    are building for. If you do not have such a system yourself, you
    can use a debian.org machine (see <ref id="server-machines">)
    or setup a chroot (see <ref id="pbuilder"> and
    <ref id="debootstrap">).
</list>

      <sect2 id="bug-security-upload">Uploading the fixed package
<p>
<em>DO NOT</em> upload a package to the security upload queue without
prior authorization from the security team.  If the package does not
exactly meet the team's requirements, it will cause many problems and
delays in dealing with the unwanted upload.
<p>
<em>DO NOT</em> 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.
<p>
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
<tt>ftp://security.debian.org/pub/SecurityUploadQueue/</tt> .

<p>
Once an upload to the security queue has been accepted, the package
will automatically be rebuilt for all architectures and stored for
verification by the security team.

<p>
Uploads which are waiting for acceptance or verification are only
accessible by the security team. This is necessary since there might
be fixes for security problems that cannot be disclosed yet.

<p>
If a member of the security team accepts a package, it will be
installed on security.debian.org as well as the proper
<var>distribution</var>-proposed-updates on ftp-master or in the non-US
archive.


    <sect id="archive-manip">
      <heading>Moving, removing, renaming, adopting, and orphaning
      packages</heading>
      <p>
Some archive manipulation operations are not automated in the Debian
upload process.  These procedures should be manually followed by
maintainers.  This chapter gives guidelines in what to do in these
cases.

      <sect1 id="moving-pkgs">Moving packages
        <p>
Sometimes a package will change its section.  For instance, a
package from the `non-free' section might be GPL'd in a later version,
in which case, the package should be moved to `main' or
`contrib'.<footnote> See the <url id="&url-debian-policy;"
name="Debian Policy Manual"> for guidelines on what section a package
belongs in.
          </footnote>
        <p>
If you need to change the section for one of your packages, change the
package control information to place the package in the desired
section, and re-upload the package (see the <url id="&url-debian-policy;"
name="Debian Policy Manual"> for details). If your new section is
valid, it will be moved automatically. If it does not, then contact
the ftpmasters in order to understand what happened.
        <p>
If, on the other hand, you need to change the <em>subsection</em> of
one of your packages (e.g., ``devel'', ``admin''), the procedure is
slightly different.  Correct the subsection as found in the control
file of the package, and re-upload that.  Also, you'll need to get the
override file updated, as described in <ref id="override-file">.


      <sect1 id="removing-pkgs">Removing packages
        <p>
If for some reason you want to completely remove a package (say, if it
is an old compatibility library which is no longer required), you
need to file a bug against <tt>ftp.debian.org</tt> asking that the
package be removed.  Make sure you indicate which distribution the
package should be removed from. Normally, you can only have packages
removed from <em>unstable</em> and <em>experimental</em>.  Packages
are not removed from <em>testing</em> directly. Rather, they will be
removed automatically after the package has been removed from
<em>unstable</em> and no package in <em>testing</em> depends on it.
        <p>
You also have to detail the reasons justifying that 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.
        <p>
Usually you only ask the removal of a package maintained by yourself.
If you want to remove another package, you have to get the approval
of its last maintainer.
        <p>
If in doubt concerning whether a package is disposable, email
&email-debian-devel; asking for opinions.  Also of interest is the
<prgn>apt-cache</prgn> program from the <package>apt</package>
package.  When invoked as <tt>apt-cache showpkg
<var>package</var></tt>, the program will show details for
<var>package</var>, including reverse depends.
        <p>
Once the package has been removed, the package's bugs should be handled.
They should either be reassigned to another package in the case where
the actual code has evolved into another package (e.g. <tt>libfoo12</tt>
was removed because <tt>libfoo13</tt> supersedes it) or closed if the
software is simply no more part of Debian.

        <sect2>Removing packages from <file>Incoming</file>
          <p>
In the past, it was possible to remove packages from <file>incoming</file>.
However, with the introduction of the new incoming system, this is no longer
possible.  Instead, you have to upload a new revision of your package with
a higher version as the package you want to replace.  Both versions will be
installed in the archive but only the higher version will actually be
available in <em>unstable</em> since the previous version will immediately
be replaced by the higher.  However, if you do proper testing of your
packages, the need to replace a package should not occur too often anyway.

      <sect1>Replacing or renaming packages
        <p>
Sometimes you made a mistake naming the package and you need to rename
it.  In this case, you need to follow a two-step process.  First, set
your <file>debian/control</file> file to replace and conflict with the
obsolete name of the package (see the <url id="&url-debian-policy;"
name="Debian Policy Manual"> for details).  Once you've uploaded
the package and the package has moved into the archive, file a bug
against <tt>ftp.debian.org</tt> asking to remove the package with the
obsolete name. Do not forget to properly reassign the package's bugs
at the same time.
        <p>
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 <file>foo_1.00.orig.tar.gz</file> with
<file>foo_1.00+0.orig.tar.gz</file>. This restriction gives each file
on the ftp site a unique name, which helps to ensure consistency across the
mirror network.

      <sect1 id="orphaning">Orphaning a package
        <p>
If you can no longer maintain a package, you need to inform the others
about that, and see that the package is marked as orphaned.
You should set the package maintainer to <tt>Debian QA Group
&orphan-address;</tt> and submit a bug report
against the pseudo package <package>wnpp</package>.  The bug report should be
titled <tt>O: <var>package</var> -- <var>short description</var></tt>
indicating that the package is now orphaned.  The severity of the bug
should be set to <em>normal</em>. 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).
        <p>
If the package is especially crucial to Debian, you should instead submit
a bug against <package>wnpp</package> and title it <tt>RFA: <var>package</var> --
<var>short description</var></tt> and set its severity to
<em>important</em>. <tt>RFA</tt> stands for <em>Request For Adoption</em>.
Definitely copy the message to debian-devel in this case, as described
above.
        <p>
Read instructions on the <url id="&url-wnpp;" name="WNPP web pages">
for more information.

      <sect1 id="adopting">Adopting a package
        <p>
A list of packages in need of a new maintainer is available at in the
<url name="Work-Needing and Prospective Packages list (WNPP)"
id="&url-wnpp;">. If you wish to take over maintenance of any of the
packages listed in the WNPP, please take a look at the aforementioned
page for information and procedures.
        <p>
It is not OK to simply take over a package that you feel is neglected
&mdash; that would be package hijacking.  You can, of course, contact the
current maintainer and ask them if you may take over the package.
If you have reason to believe a maintainer has gone AWOL
(absent without leave), see <ref id="mia-qa">.
        <p>
Generally, you may not take over the package without the assent of the
current maintainer. Even if they ignore you, that is still not grounds to
take over a package. Complaints about maintainers should be brought up on
the developers' mailing list. If the discussion doesn't end with a positive
conclusion, and the issue is of a technical nature, consider bringing it to
the attention of the technical committee (see the <url name="technical
committee web page" id="&url-tech-ctte;"> for more information).
        <p>
If you take over an old package, you probably want to be listed as the
package's official maintainer in the bug system. This will happen
automatically once you upload a new version with an updated
<tt>Maintainer:</tt> field, although it can take a few hours after the
upload is done. If you do not expect to upload a new version for a while,
you can use <ref id="pkg-tracking-system"> to get the bug reports. However,
make sure that the old maintainer has no problem with the fact that
they will continue to receive the bugs during that time.


    <sect id="porting">Porting and being ported
      <p>
Debian supports an ever-increasing number of architectures.  Even if
you are not a porter, and you don't use any architecture but one, it
is part of your duty as a maintainer to be aware of issues of
portability.  Therefore, even if you are not a porter, you should read
most of this chapter.
      <p>
Porting is the act of building Debian packages for architectures that
is different from the original architecture of the package
maintainer's binary package.  It is a unique and essential activity.
In fact, porters do most of the actual compiling of Debian packages.
For instance, for a single <em>i386</em> binary package, there must be
a recompile for each architecture, which amounts to
&number-of-arches; more builds.


      <sect1 id="kind-to-porters">Being kind to porters
        <p>
Porters have a difficult and unique task, since they are required to
deal with a large volume of packages.  Ideally, every source package
should build right out of the box.  Unfortunately, this is often not
the case.  This section contains a checklist of ``gotchas'' often
committed by Debian maintainers &mdash; common problems which often stymie
porters, and make their jobs unnecessarily difficult.
        <p>
The first and most important watchword is to respond quickly to bug or
issues raised by porters.  Please treat porters with courtesy, as if
they were in fact co-maintainers of your package (which in a way, they
are).  Please be tolerant of succinct or even unclear bug reports,
doing your best to hunt down whatever the problem is.
        <p>
By far, most of the problems encountered by porters are caused by
<em>packaging bugs</em> in the source packages.  Here is a checklist
of things you should check or be aware of.

<enumlist>
            <item>
Make sure that your <tt>Build-Depends</tt> and
<tt>Build-Depends-Indep</tt> settings in <file>debian/control</file>
are set properly.  The best way to validate this is to use the
<package>debootstrap</package> package to create an unstable chroot
environment (see <ref id="debootstrap">).
Within that chrooted environment, install the
<package>build-essential</package> package and any package
dependencies mentioned in <tt>Build-Depends</tt> and/or
<tt>Build-Depends-Indep</tt>.  Finally, try building your package
within that chrooted environment.  These steps can be automated
by the use of the <prgn>pbuilder</prgn> program which is provided by
the package of the same name (see <ref id="pbuilder">).
                <p>
If you can't set up a proper chroot, <prgn>dpkg-depcheck</prgn> may be
of assistance (see <ref id="dpkg-depcheck">).
                <p>
See the <url id="&url-debian-policy;" name="Debian Policy
Manual"> for instructions on setting build dependencies.
            <item>
Don't set architecture to a value other than ``all'' or ``any'' unless
you really mean it.  In too many cases, maintainers don't follow the
instructions in the <url id="&url-debian-policy;" name="Debian Policy
Manual">.  Setting your architecture to ``i386'' is usually incorrect.
            <item>
Make sure your source package is correct.  Do <tt>dpkg-source -x
<var>package</var>.dsc</tt> to make sure your source package unpacks
properly.  Then, in there, try building your package from scratch with
<prgn>dpkg-buildpackage</prgn>.
            <item>
Make sure you don't ship your source package with the
<file>debian/files</file> or <file>debian/substvars</file> files.
They should be removed by the `clean' target of
<file>debian/rules</file>.
            <item>
Make sure you don't rely on locally installed or hacked configurations
or programs.  For instance, you should never be calling programs in
<file>/usr/local/bin</file> or the like.  Try not to rely on programs
be setup in a special way.  Try building your package on another
machine, even if it's the same architecture.
            <item>
Don't depend on the package you're building already being installed (a
sub-case of the above issue).
            <item>
Don't rely on the compiler being a certain version, if possible.  If
not, then make sure your build dependencies reflect the restrictions,
although you are probably asking for trouble, since different
architectures sometimes standardize on different compilers.
            <item>
Make sure your debian/rules contains separate ``binary-arch'' and
``binary-indep'' targets, as the Debian Policy Manual requires.
Make sure that both targets work independently, that is, that you can
call the target without having called the other before. To test this,
try to run <tt>dpkg-buildpackage -b</tt>.
          </enumlist>


      <sect1 id="porter-guidelines">Guidelines for porter uploads
        <p>
If the package builds out of the box for the architecture to be ported
to, you are in luck and your job is easy.  This section applies to
that case; it describes how to build and upload your binary package so
that it is properly installed into the archive.  If you do have to
patch the package in order to get it to compile for the other
architecture, you are actually doing a source NMU, so consult <ref
id="nmu-guidelines"> instead.
        <p>
For a porter upload, no changes are being made to the source.  You do
not need to touch any of the files in the source package.  This
includes <file>debian/changelog</file>.
        <p>
The way to invoke <prgn>dpkg-buildpackage</prgn> is as
<tt>dpkg-buildpackage -B -m<var>porter-email</var></tt>.  Of course,
set <var>porter-email</var> to your email address.  This will do a
binary-only build of only the architecture-dependent portions of the
package, using the `binary-arch' target in <file>debian/rules</file>.

        <sect2 id="binary-only-nmu">
          <heading>Recompilation or binary-only NMU</heading>
        <p>
Sometimes the initial porter upload is problematic because the environment
in which the package was built was not good enough (outdated or obsolete
library, bad compiler, ...). Then you may just need to recompile it in
an updated environment. However, you have to bump the version number in
this case, so that the old bad package can be replaced in the Debian archive
(<prgn>katie</prgn> refuses to install new packages if they don't have a
version number greater than the currently available one).  Despite the
required modification of the changelog, these are called binary-only NMUs
&mdash; there is no need in this case to trigger all other architectures
to consider themselves out of date or requiring recompilation.
        <p>
Such recompilations require special ``magic'' version numbering, so that
the archive maintenance tools recognize that, even though there is a
new Debian version, there is no corresponding source update.  If you
get this wrong, the archive maintainers will reject your upload (due
to lack of corresponding source code).
        <p>
The ``magic'' for a recompilation-only NMU is triggered by using the
third-level number on the Debian part of the version.  For instance,
if the latest version you are recompiling against was version
``2.9-3'', your NMU should carry a version of ``2.9-3.0.1''.  If the
latest version was ``3.4-2.1'', your NMU should have a version number
of ``3.4-2.1.1''.


        <sect2 id="source-nmu-when-porter">
          <heading>When to do a source NMU if you are a porter</heading>
          <p>
Porters doing a source NMU generally follow the guidelines found in
<ref id="nmu">, just like non-porters.  However, it is expected that
the wait cycle for a porter's source NMU is smaller than for a
non-porter, since porters have to cope with a large quantity of
packages.
Again, the situation varies depending on the distribution they are
uploading to.

<!-- 
FIXME: commented out until I can work out how to upload to testing directly

  Crucial fixes (i.e., changes need to get a source
package to compile for a released-targeted architecture) can be
uploaded with <em>no</em> waiting period for the `frozen' distribution.
 -->
          <p>
However, if you are a porter doing an NMU for `unstable', the above
guidelines for porting should be followed, with two variations.
Firstly, the acceptable waiting period &mdash; the time between when the
bug is submitted to the BTS and when it is OK to do an NMU &mdash; is seven
days for porters working on the unstable distribution.  This period
can be shortened if the problem is critical and imposes hardship on
the porting effort, at the discretion of the porter group.  (Remember,
none of this is Policy, just mutually agreed upon guidelines.)
          <p>
Secondly, porters doing source NMUs should make sure that the bug they
submit to the BTS should be of severity `serious' or greater.  This
ensures that a single source package can be used to compile every
supported Debian architecture by release time.  It is very important
that we have one version of the binary and source package for all
architecture in order to comply with many licenses.
          <p>
Porters should try to avoid patches which simply kludge around bugs in
the current version of the compile environment, kernel, or libc.
Sometimes such kludges can't be helped.  If you have to kludge around
compilers bugs and the like, make sure you <tt>#ifdef</tt> your work
properly; also, document your kludge so that people know to remove it
once the external problems have been fixed.
          <p>
Porters may also have an unofficial location where they can put the
results of their work during the waiting period.  This helps others
running the port have the benefit of the porter's work, even during
the waiting period.  Of course, such locations have no official
blessing or status, so buyer, beware.


      <sect1 id="porter-automation">
          <heading>Porting infrastructure and automation</heading>
          <p>
There is infrastructure and several tools to help automate the package
porting. This section contains a brief overview of this automation and
porting to these tools; see the package documentation or references for
full information.</p>

          <sect2>
            <heading>Mailing lists and web pages</heading>
            <p>
Web pages containing the status of each port can be found at <url
id="&url-debian-ports;">.
            <p>
Each port of Debian has a mailing list.  The list of porting mailing
lists can be found at <url id="&url-debian-port-lists;">.  These lists
are used to coordinate porters, and to connect the users of a given
port with the porters.</p>
          </sect2>

          <sect2>
            <heading>Porter tools</heading>
            <p>
Descriptions of several porting tools can be found in <ref
id="tools-porting">.</p>
          </sect2>

          <sect2 id="buildd">
            <heading><package>buildd</package></heading>
            <p>
The <package>buildd</package> system is used as a distributed,
client-server build distribution system.  It is usually used in
conjunction with <em>auto-builders</em>, which are ``slave'' hosts
which simply check out and attempt to auto-build packages which need
to be ported.  There is also an email interface to the system, which
allows porters to ``check out'' a source package (usually one which
cannot yet be auto-built) and work on it.
          <p>
<package>buildd</package> is not yet available as a package; however,
most porting efforts are either using it currently or planning to use
it in the near future.  The actual automated builder is packaged as
<package>sbuild</package>, see its description in <ref id="sbuild">.
The complete <package>buildd</package> system also collects a number of as yet unpackaged
components which are currently very useful and in use continually,
such as <prgn>andrea</prgn> and
<prgn>wanna-build</prgn>.
          <p>
Some of the data produced by <package>buildd</package> which is
generally useful to porters is available on the web at <url
id="&url-buildd;">.  This data includes nightly updated information
from <prgn>andrea</prgn> (source dependencies) and
<package>quinn-diff</package> (packages needing recompilation).
          <p>
We are quite proud of this system, since it has so
many possible uses.  Independent development groups can use the system for
different sub-flavors of Debian, which may or may not really be of
general interest (for instance, a flavor of Debian built with <prgn>gcc</prgn>
bounds checking).  It will also enable Debian to recompile entire
distributions quickly.
          </sect2>


    <sect id="nmu">Non-Maintainer Uploads (NMUs)
      <p>
Under certain circumstances it is necessary for someone other than the
official package maintainer to make a release of a package.  This is
called a non-maintainer upload, or NMU.
       <p>
Debian porters, who compile packages for different architectures,
occasionally do binary-only NMUs as part of their porting activity
(see <ref id="porting">).  Another reason why NMUs are done is when a
Debian developers needs to fix another developers' packages in order to
address serious security problems or crippling bugs, especially during
the freeze, or when the package maintainer is unable to release a fix
in a timely fashion.
      <p>
This chapter contains information providing guidelines for when and
how NMUs should be done.  A fundamental distinction is made between
source and binary-only NMUs, which is explained in the next section.

      <sect1 id="nmu-terms">Terminology
        <p>
There are two new terms used throughout this section: ``binary-only NMU''
and ``source NMU''.  These terms are used with specific technical
meaning throughout this document.  Both binary-only and source NMUs are
similar, since they involve an upload of a package by a developer who
is not the official maintainer of that package.  That is why it's a
<em>non-maintainer</em> upload.
        <p>
A source NMU is an upload of a package by a developer who is not the
official maintainer, for the purposes of fixing a bug in the package.
Source NMUs always involves changes to the source (even if it is just
a change to <file>debian/changelog</file>).  This can be either a
change to the upstream source, or a change to the Debian bits of the
source.  Note, however, that source NMUs may also include
architecture-dependent packages, as well as an updated Debian diff.
        <p>
A binary-only NMU is a recompilation and upload of a binary package
for a given architecture.  As such, it is usually part of a porting
effort.  A binary-only NMU is a non-maintainer uploaded binary version
of a package, with no source changes required.  There are many cases
where porters must fix problems in the source in order to get them to
compile for their target architecture; that would be considered a
source NMU rather than a binary-only NMU.  As you can see, we don't
distinguish in terminology between porter NMUs and non-porter NMUs.
        <p>
Both classes of NMUs, source and binary-only, can be lumped by the
term ``NMU''.  However, this often leads to confusion, since most
people think ``source NMU'' when they think ``NMU''.  So it's best to
be careful.  In this chapter, if we use the unqualified term ``NMU'',
we refer to any type of non-maintainer upload NMUs, whether source and
binary, or binary-only.


      <sect1 id="nmu-who">Who can do an NMU
        <p>
Only official, registered Debian maintainers can do binary or source
NMUs.  An official maintainer is someone who has their key in the
Debian key ring.  Non-developers, however, are encouraged to download
the source package and start hacking on it to fix problems; however,
rather than doing an NMU, they should just submit worthwhile patches
to the Bug Tracking System.  Maintainers almost always appreciate
quality patches and bug reports.


      <sect1 id="nmu-when">When to do a source NMU
        <p>
Guidelines for when to do a source NMU depend on the target
distribution, i.e., stable, unstable, or experimental.  Porters have
slightly different rules than non-porters, due to their unique
circumstances (see <ref id="source-nmu-when-porter">).
        <p>
When a security bug is detected, the security team may do an NMU.
Please refer to <ref id="bug-security"> for more information.
        <p>
During the release cycle (see <ref id="sec-dists">), 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 <ref
id="nmu-guidelines"> need to be followed. Special exceptions are made
for <ref id="qa-bsp">.
        <p>
Uploading bug fixes to unstable by non-maintainers should only be done
by following this protocol:
        <p>
<list>
            <item>
Make sure that the package's bugs that the NMU is meant to address are all
filed in the Debian Bug Tracking System (BTS).
If they are not, submit them immediately.
            <item>
Wait a few days the response from the maintainer. If you don't get
any response, you may want to help him by sending the patch that fixes
the bug. Don't forget to tag the bug with the "patch" keyword.
            <item>
Wait a few more days. If you still haven't got an answer from the
maintainer, send him a mail announcing your intent to NMU the package.
Prepare an NMU as described in <ref id="nmu-guidelines">, test it
carefully on your machine (cf. <ref id="sanitycheck">).
Double check that your patch doesn't have any unexpected side effects.
Make sure your patch is as small and as non-disruptive as it can be.  
            <item>
Upload your package to incoming in <file>DELAYED/7-day</file> (cf.
<ref id="delayed-incoming">), send the final patch to the maintainer via
the BTS, and explain to them that they have 7 days to react if they want
to cancel the NMU.
            <item>
Follow what happens, you're responsible for any bug that you introduced
with your NMU. You should probably use <ref id="pkg-tracking-system"> (PTS)
to stay informed of the state of the package after your NMU.
</list>
        <p>
At times, the release manager or an organized group of developers can
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 NMU'er has to file bugs and contact the developer first,
and act later.

      <sect1 id="nmu-guidelines">How to do a source NMU
        <p>
The following applies to porters insofar as they are playing the dual
role of being both package bug-fixers and package porters.  If a
porter has to change the Debian source archive, automatically their
upload is a source NMU and is subject to its rules.  If a porter is
simply uploading a recompiled binary package, the rules are different;
see <ref id="porter-guidelines">.
        <p>
First and foremost, it is critical that NMU patches to source should
be as non-disruptive as possible.  Do not do housekeeping tasks, do
not change the name of modules or files, do not move directories; in
general, do not fix things which are not broken.  Keep the patch as
small as possible.  If things bother you aesthetically, talk to the
Debian maintainer, talk to the upstream maintainer, or submit a bug.
However, aesthetic changes must <em>not</em> be made in a non-maintainer
upload.


        <sect2 id="nmu-version">Source NMU version numbering
          <p>
Whenever you have made a change to a package, no matter how trivial,
the version number needs to change.  This enables our packing system
to function.
          <p>
If you are doing a non-maintainer upload (NMU), you should add a new
minor version number to the <var>debian-revision</var> part of the
version number (the portion after the last hyphen).  This extra minor
number will start at `1'.  For example, consider the package `foo',
which is at version 1.1-3.  In the archive, the source package control
file would be <file>foo_1.1-3.dsc</file>.  The upstream version is
`1.1' and the Debian revision is `3'.  The next NMU would add a new
minor number `.1' to the Debian revision; the new source control file
would be <file>foo_1.1-3.1.dsc</file>.
          <p>
The Debian revision minor number is needed to avoid stealing one of
the package maintainer's version numbers, which might disrupt their
work.  It also has the benefit of making it visually clear that a
package in the archive was not made by the official maintainer.
          <p>
If there is no <var>debian-revision</var> component in the version
number then one should be created, starting at `0.1'.  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 <var>debian-revision</var> value
`0.1'.  The usual maintainer of a package should start their
<var>debian-revision</var> numbering at `1'. 


        <sect2 id="nmu-changelog">
          <heading>Source NMUs must have a new changelog entry</heading>
          <p>
A non-maintainer doing a source NMU must create a changelog entry,
describing which bugs are fixed by the NMU, and generally why the NMU
was required and what it fixed.  The changelog entry will have the
non-maintainer's email address in the log entry and the NMU version
number in it.
          <p>
By convention, source NMU changelog entries start with the line
<example>
  * Non-maintainer upload
</example>


        <sect2 id="nmu-patch">Source NMUs and the Bug Tracking System
          <p>
Maintainers other than the official package maintainer should make as
few changes to the package as possible, and they should always send a
patch as a unified context diff (<tt>diff -u</tt>) detailing their
changes to the Bug Tracking System.
          <p>
What if you are simply recompiling the package? If you just need to
recompile it for a single architecture, then you may do a binary-only
NMU as described in <ref id="binary-only-nmu"> which doesn't require any
patch to be sent. If you want the package to be recompiled for all
architectures, then you do a source NMU as usual and you will have to
send a patch.
          <p>
If the source NMU (non-maintainer upload) fixes some existing bugs,
these bugs should be tagged <em>fixed</em> in the Bug Tracking
System rather than closed.  By convention, only the official package
maintainer or the original bug submitter are allowed to close bugs.
Fortunately, Debian's archive system recognizes NMUs and thus marks
the bugs fixed in the NMU appropriately if the person doing the NMU
has listed all bugs in the changelog with the <tt>Closes:
bug#<var>nnnnn</var></tt> syntax (see <ref id="upload-bugfix"> for
more information describing how to close bugs via the changelog).
Tagging the bugs <em>fixed</em> ensures that everyone knows that the
bug was fixed in an NMU; however the bug is left open until the
changes in the NMU are incorporated officially into the package by
the official package maintainer.
          <p>
Also, after doing an NMU, you have to open a new bug and include a
patch showing all the changes you have made. Alternatively you can send
that information to the existing bugs that are fixed by your NMU.
The normal maintainer will either apply the patch or employ an alternate
method of fixing the problem.  Sometimes bugs are fixed independently
upstream, which is another good reason to back out an NMU's patch.
If the maintainer decides not to apply the NMU's patch but to release a
new version, the maintainer needs to ensure that the new upstream version
really fixes each problem that was fixed in the non-maintainer release.
          <p>
In addition, the normal maintainer should <em>always</em> retain the
entry in the changelog file documenting the non-maintainer upload.


        <sect2 id="nmu-build">Building source NMUs
          <p>
Source NMU packages are built normally.  Pick a distribution using the
same rules as found in <ref id="distribution">, follow the other
prescriptions in <ref id="upload">.
          <p>
Make sure you do <em>not</em> change the value of the maintainer in
the <file>debian/control</file> file.  Your name as given in the NMU entry of
the <file>debian/changelog</file> file will be used for signing the
changes file.

      <sect1 id="ack-nmu">Acknowledging an NMU
        <p>
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
can either close them manually by sending the required mails to the
BTS or by adding the required <tt>closes: #nnnn</tt> in the changelog
entry of your next upload.
        <p>
In any case, you should not be upset by the NMU. An NMU is not a
personal attack against the maintainer. It is a proof that
someone cares enough about the package and that they were willing to help
you in your work, so you should be thankful. You may also want to
ask them if they would be interested to help you on a more frequent
basis as co-maintainer or backup maintainer
(see <ref id="collaborative-maint">).


    <sect id="collaborative-maint">
        <heading>Collaborative maintenance</heading>
        <p>
"Collaborative maintenance" is a term describing the sharing of Debian
package maintenance duties by several people.  This collaboration is
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 <tt>Standard</tt> or which are part of
the base set have co-maintainers.</p>
        <p>
Generally there is a primary maintainer and one or more
co-maintainers.  The primary maintainer is the whose name is listed in
the <tt>Maintainer</tt> field of the <file>debian/control</file> file.
Co-maintainers are all the other maintainers.</p>
        <p>
In its most basic form, the process of adding a new co-maintainer is
quite easy:<list>
            <item>
              <p>
Setup the co-maintainer with access to the sources you build the
package from.  Generally this implies you are using a network-capable
version control system, such as <prgn>CVS</prgn> or
<prgn>Subversion</prgn>.</p>
            </item>
            <item>
              <p>
Add the co-maintainer's correct maintainer name and address to the
<tt>Uploaders</tt> field in the global part of the
<file>debian/control</file> file.
<example>
Uploaders: John Buzz &lt;jbuzz@debian.org&gt;, Adam Rex &lt;arex@debian.org&gt;
</example>
</p>
            </item>
            <item>
              <p>
Using the PTS (<ref id="pkg-tracking-system">), the co-maintainers
should subscribe themselves to the appropriate source package.</p>
            </item>
          </list></p>
      </sect>



  <chapt id="best-pkging-practices">
    <heading>Best Packaging Practices</heading>
    <p>
Debian's quality is largely due to the <url id="&url-debian-policy;"
name="Debian Policy">, which defines explicit baseline requirements
which all Debian packages must fulfill.  Yet there is also a shared
history of experience which goes beyond the Debian Policy, an
accumulation of years of experience in packaging.  Many very
talented people have created great tools, tools which help you, the
Debian maintainer, create and maintain excellent packages.
    <p>
This chapter provides some best practices for Debian developers.  All
recommendations are merely that, and are not requirements or policy.
These are just some subjective hints, advice and pointers collected
from Debian developers.  Feel free to pick and choose whatever works
best for you.

    <sect id="bpp-debian-rules">
        <heading>Best practices for <file>debian/rules</file></heading>
        <p>
The following recommendations apply to the <file>debian/rules</file>
file.  Since <file>debian/rules</file> controls the build process and
selects the files which go into the package (directly or indirectly),
it's usually the file maintainers spend the most time on.

        <sect1 id="helper-scripts">Helper scripts
        <p>
The rationale for using helper scripts in <file>debian/rules</file> is
that lets maintainers use and share common logic among many packages.
Take for instance the question of installing menu entries: you need to
put the file into <file>/usr/lib/menu</file>, and add commands to the
maintainer scripts to register and unregister the menu entries.  Since
this is a very common thing for packages to do, why should each
maintainer rewrite all this on their own, sometimes with bugs?  Also,
supposing the menu directory changed, every package would have to be
changed.
        <p>
Helper scripts take care of these issues.  Assuming you comply with
the conventions expected by the helper script, the helper takes care
of all the details.  Changes in policy can be made in the helper
script, then packages just need to be rebuilt with the new version of
the helper and no other changes.
        <p>
<ref id="tools"> contains a couple of different helpers. The most
common and best (in our opinion) helper system is
<package>debhelper</package>.  Previous helper systems, such as
<package>debmake</package>, were "monolithic": you couldn't pick and
choose which part of the helper you found useful, but had to use the
helper to do everything.  <package>debhelper</package>, however, is a
number of separate little <prgn>dh_*</prgn> programs.  For instance,
<prgn>dh_installman</prgn> installs and compresses man pages,
<prgn>dh_installmenu</prgn> installs menu files, and so on.  Thus, it
offers enough flexibility to be able to use the little helper scripts,
where useful, in conjunction with hand-crafted commands in
<file>debian/rules</file>.
        <p>
You can get started with <package>debhelper</package> by reading
<manref name="debhelper" section="1">, and looking at the examples
that come with the package.  <prgn>dh_make</prgn>, from the
<package>dh-make</package> package (see <ref id="dh-make">), can be
used to convert a "vanilla" source package to a
<package>debhelper</package>ized package.  This shortcut, though,
should not convince you that you do not need to bother understanding
the individual <prgn>dh_*</prgn> helpers.  If you are going to use a
helper, you do need to take the time to learn to use that helper, to
learn its expectations and behavior.
        <p>
Some people feel that vanilla <file>debian/rules</file> files are
better, since you don't have to learn the intricacies of any helper
system.  This decision is completely up to you.  Use what works for
you.  Many examples of vanilla <file>debian/rules</file> files are
available at <url id="&url-rules-files;">.


        <sect1 id="multiple-patches">
          <heading>Separating your patches into multiple files</heading>
          <p>
Big, complex packages may have many bugs that you need to deal with.
If you correct a number of bug directly in the source, if you're not
careful, it can get hard to differentiate the various patches that you
applied.  It can get quite messy when you have to update the package
to a new upstream version which integrates some of the fixes (but not
all).  You can't take the total set of diffs (e.g., from
<file>.diff.gz</file>) and work out which patch sets to back out as a
unit as bugs are fixed upstream.
        <p>
Unfortunately, the packaging system as such currently doesn't provide for
separating the patches into several files. Nevertheless, there are ways to
separate patches: the patch files are shipped within the Debian patch file
(<file>.diff.gz</file>), usually within the <file>debian/</file> directory.
The only difference is that they aren't applied immediately by dpkg-source,
but by the <tt>build</tt> rule of <file>debian/rules</file>. Conversely,
they are reverted in the <tt>clean</tt> rule.
        <p>
<prgn>dbs</prgn> is one of the more popular approaches to this. It does all
of the above, and provides a facility for creating new and updating old
patches. See the package <package>dbs</package> for more information and
<package>hello-dbs</package> for an example.
        <p>
<prgn>dpatch</prgn> also provides these facilities, but it's intented to be
even easier to use. See the package <package>dpatch</package> for
documentation and examples (in <file>/usr/share/doc/dpatch</file>).


        <sect1 id="multiple-binary">Multiple binary packages
        <p>
A single source package will often build several binary packages,
either to provide several flavors of the same software (e.g.,
the <package>vim</package> source package) or to make several small
packages instead of a big one (e.g., if the user can install only the
subset she needs, and thus save some disk space).
        <p>
The second case can be easily managed in <file>debian/rules</file>.
You just need to move the appropriate files from the build directory
into the package's temporary trees.  You can do this using
<prgn>install</prgn> or <prgn>dh_install</prgn>
from <package>debhelper</package>.  Be sure to check the different
permutations of the various packages, ensuring that you have the
inter-package dependencies set right in <file>debian/control</file>.
        <p>
The first case is a bit more difficult since it involves multiple
recompiles of the same software but with different configuration
options. The <package>vim</package> source package is an example of how to manage
this using an hand-crafted <file>debian/rules</file> file.

<!-- &FIXME; Find a good debhelper example with multiple configure/make
     cycles -->
        </sect1>
      </sect>


      <sect id="bpp-debian-control">
        <heading>Best practices for <file>debian/control</file></heading>
        <p>
The following practices are relevant to the
<file>debian/control</file> file.  They supplement the <url
id="&url-debian-policy;ch-miscellaneous.html#s-descriptions"
name="Policy on package descriptions">.
        <p>
The description of the package, as defined by the corresponding field
in the <file>control</file> file, contains both the package synopsis
and the long description for the package.  <ref id="bpp-desc-basics">
describes common guidelines for both parts of the package description.
Following that, <ref id="bpp-pkg-synopsis"> provides guidelines
specific to the synopsis, and <ref id="bpp-pkg-desc"> contains
guidelines specific to the description.

        <sect1 id="bpp-desc-basics">
          <heading>General guidelines for package descriptions</heading>
          <p>
The package description should be written for the average likely user,
the average person who will use and benefit from the package.  For
instance, development packages are for developers, and can be
technical in their language.  More general-purpose applications, such
as editors, should be written for a less technical user.
          <p>
Our review of package descriptions lead us to conclude that most
package descriptions are technical, that is, are not written to make
sense for non-technical users.  Unless your package really is only for
technical users, this is a problem.
          <p>
How do you write for non-technical users?  Avoid jargon.  Avoid
referring to other applications or frameworks that the user might not
be familiar with &mdash; "GNOME" or "KDE" is fine, since users are
probably familiar with these terms, but "GTK+" is
probably not.  Try not to assume any knowledge at all.  If you must
use technical terms, introduce them.
            <p>
Be objective.  Package descriptions are not the place for advocating
your package, no matter how much you love it.  Remember that the
reader may not care about the same things you care about.
          <p>
References to the names of any other software packages, protocol names,
standards, or specifications should use their canonical forms, if one
exists.  For example, use "X Window System", "X11", or "X"; not "X
Windows", "X-Windows", or "X Window". Use "GTK+", not "GTK" or "gtk".
Use "GNOME", not "Gnome".  Use "PostScript", not "Postscript" or
"postscript".
          <p>
If you are having problems writing your description, you may wish to
send it along to &email-debian-l10n-english; and request feedback.
        </sect1>


        <sect1 id="bpp-pkg-synopsis">
          <heading>The package synopsis, or short description</heading>
            <p>
The synopsis line (the short description) should be concise.  It
must not repeat the package's name (this is policy).
            <p>
It's a good idea to think of the synopsis as an appositive clause, not
a full sentence.  An appositive clause is defined in WordNet as a
grammatical relation between a word and a noun phrase that follows,
e.g., "Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer".  The appositive clause here is
"red-nosed reindeer".  Since the synopsis is a clause, rather than a
full sentence, we recommend that it neither start with a capital nor
end with a full stop (period).  It should also not begin with an
article, either definite ("the") or indefinite ("a" or "an").
            <p>
It might help to imagine that the synopsis is combined with the
package name in the following way:

<example><var>package-name</var> is a <var>synopsis</var>.</example>

Alternatively, it might make sense to think of it as

<example><var>package-name</var> is <var>synopsis</var>.</example>

or, if the package name itself is a plural (such as
"developers-tools")

<example><var>package-name</var> are <var>synopsis</var>.</example>

This way of forming a sentance from the package name and synopsis
should be considered as a heuristic and not a strict rule.  There are
some cases where it doesn't make sense to try to form a sentance.
        </sect1>

        <sect1 id="bpp-pkg-desc">
          <heading>The long description</heading>
            <p>
The long description is the primary information available to the user
about a package before they install it.  It should provide all the
information needed to let the user decide whether to install the
package.  Assume that the user has already read the package synopsis.
            <p>
The long description should consist of full and complete sentences.
            <p>
The first paragraph of the long description should answer the
following questions: what does the package do?  what task does it help
the user accomplish?  It is important to describe this in a
non-technical way, unless of course the audience for the package is
necessarily technical.
            <p>
The following paragraphs should answer the following questions: Why do
I as a user need this package?  What other features does the package
have?  What outstanding features and deficiencies are there compared
to other packages (e.g., "if you need X, use Y instead")?  Is this
package related to other packages in some way that is not handled by
the package manager (e.g., "this is the client to the foo server")?
            <p>
Be careful to avoid spelling and grammar mistakes. Ensure that you
spell-check it.  <prgn>ispell</prgn> has a special <tt>-g</tt> option
for <file>debian/control</file> files:

<example>ispell -d american -g debian/control</example>
        </sect1>


        <sect1 id="bpp-upstream-info">
          <heading>Upstream home page</heading>
          <p>
We recommend that you add the URL for the package's home page to the
package description in <file>debian/control</file>.  This information
should be added at the
end of description, using the following format:

<example> .
  Homepage: http://some-project.some-place.org/</example>

Note the spaces prepending the line, which serves to break the lines
correctly.  To see an example of how this displays, see <url
id="&url-eg-desc-upstream-info;">.
          <p>
If there is no home page for the software, this should naturally be
left out.
          <p>
Note that we expect this field will eventually be replaced by a proper
<file>debian/control</file> field understood by <prgn>dpkg</prgn> and
<tt>&packages-host;</tt>.  If you don't want to bother migrating the
home page from the description to this field, you should probably wait
until that is available.</p>
        </sect1>
      </sect>


      <sect id="bpp-debian-changelog">
        <heading>Best practices for <file>debian/changelog</file></heading>
        <p>
The following practices supplement the <url name="Policy on changelog
files" id="&url-debian-policy;ch-docs.html#s-changelogs">.</p>

        <sect1 id="bpp-changelog-do">
          <heading>Writing useful changelog entries</heading>
          <p>
The changelog entry for a package revision documents changes in that
revision, and only them. Concentrate on describing significant and
user-visible changes that were made since the last version.
          <p>
Focus on <em>what</em> was changed &mdash; who, how and when are
usually less important.  Having said that, remember to politely
attribute people who have provided notable help in making the package
(e.g., those who have sent in patches).
          <p>
There's no need to elaborate the trivial and obvious changes. You can
also aggregate several changes in one entry.  On the other hand, don't
be overly terse if you have undertaken a major change.  Be especially
clear if there are changes that affect the behaviour of the program.
For further explanations, use the <file>README.Debian</file> file.
          <p>
Use common English so that the majority of readers can comprehend it.
Avoid abbreviations, "tech-speak" and jargon when explaining changes
that close bugs, especially for bugs filed by users that did not
strike you as particularly technically savvy.  Be polite, don't swear.
          <p>
It is sometimes desirable to prefix changelog entries with the names
of the files that were changed.  However, there's no need to
explicitly list each and every last one of the changed files,
especially if the change was small or repetitive.  You may use
wildcards.
          <p>
When referring to bugs, don't assume anything.  Say what the problem
was, how it was fixed, and append the "closes: #nnnnn" string.  See
<ref id="upload-bugfix"> for more information.


        <sect1 id="bpp-changelog-misconceptions">
          <heading>Common misconceptions about changelog entries</heading>
          <p>
The changelog entries should <strong>not</strong> document generic
packaging issues ("Hey, if you're looking for foo.conf, it's in
/etc/blah/."), since administrators and users are supposed to be at
least remotely acquainted with how such things are generally arranged
on Debian systems.  Do, however, mention if you change the location of
a configuration file.
          <p>
The only bugs closed with a changelog entry should be those that are
actually fixed in the same package revision.  Closing unrelated bugs
in the changelog is bad practice. See <ref id="upload-bugfix">.
          <p>
The changelog entries should <strong>not</strong> be used for random
discussion with bug reporters ("I don't see segfaults when starting
foo with option bar; send in more info"), general statements on life,
the universe and everything ("sorry this upload took me so long, but I
caught the flu"), or pleas for help ("the bug list on this package is
huge, please lend me a hand").  Such things usually won't be noticed
by their target audience, but may annoy people who wish to read
information about actual changes in the package.  See <ref
id="bug-answering"> for more information on how to use the bug
tracking system.
          <p>
It is an old tradition to acknowledge bugs fixed in non-maintainer
uploads in the first changelog entry of the proper maintainer upload,
for instance, in a changelog entry like this:
<example>
  * Maintainer upload, closes: #42345, #44484, #42444.
</example>
This will close the NMU bugs tagged "fixed" when the package makes
it into the archive. The bug for the fact that an NMU was done can be
closed the same way. Of course, it's also perfectly acceptable to
close NMU-fixed bugs by other means; see <ref id="bug-answering">.
        </sect1>

        <sect1 id="bpp-changelog-errors">
          <heading>Common errors in changelog entries</heading>
          <p>
The following examples demonstrate some common errors or example of
bad style in changelog entries.

          <p>
<example>
  * Fixed all outstanding bugs.
</example>
This doesn't tell readers anything too useful, obviously.

          <p>
<example>
  * Applied patch from Jane Random.
</example>
What was the patch about?

            <p>
<example>
  * Late night install target overhaul.
</example>
Overhaul which accomplished what?  Is the mention of late night
supposed to remind us that we shouldn't trust that code?

            <p>
<example>
  * Fix vsync FU w/ ancient CRTs.
</example>
Too many acronyms, and it's not overly clear what the, uh, fsckup (oops,
a curse word!) was actually about, or how it was fixed.

            <p>
<example>
  * This is not a bug, closes: #nnnnnn.
</example>
First of all, there's absolutely no need to upload the package to
convey this information; instead, use the bug tracking system.
Secondly, there's no explanation as to why the report is not a bug.

            <p>
<example>
  * Has been fixed for ages, but I forgot to close; closes: #54321.
</example>
If for some reason you didn't mention the bug number in a previous changelog
entry, there's no problem, just close the bug normally in the BTS. There's
no need to touch the changelog file, presuming the description of the fix is
already in (this applies to the fixes by the upstream authors/maintainers as
well, you don't have to track bugs that they fixed ages ago in your
changelog).

            <p>
<example>
  * Closes: #12345, #12346, #15432
</example>
Where's the description?  If you can't think of a descriptive message,
start by inserting the title of each different bug.
        </sect1>
      </sect>

<!--
        <sect1 id="pkg-mgmt-cvs">Managing a package with CVS
        <p>
        &FIXME; presentation of cvs-buildpackage, updating sources
        via CVS (debian/rules refresh).
        <url id="http://www.debian.org/devel/cvs_packages">
-->


      <sect id="bpp-debian-maint-scripts">
        <heading>Best practices for maintainer scripts</heading>
        <p>
Maintainer scripts include the files <file>debian/postinst</file>,
<file>debian/preinst</file>, <file>debian/prerm</file> and
<file>debian/postrm</file>.  These scripts take care of any package
installation or deinstallation setup which isn't handled merely by the
creation or removal of files and directories.  The following
instructions supplement the <url id="&url-debian-policy;" name="Debian
Policy">.
        <p>
Maintainer scripts must be idempotent.  That means that you need to
make sure nothing bad will happen if the script is called twice where
it would usually be called once.
        <p>
Standard input and output may be redirected (e.g. into pipes) for
logging purposes, so don't rely on them being a tty.
        <p>
All prompting or interactive configuration should be kept to a
minimum.  When it is necessary, you should use the
<package>debconf</package> package for the interface.  Remember that
prompting in any case can only be in the <tt>configure</tt> stage of
the <file>postinst</file> script.
        <p>
Keep the maintainer scripts as simple as possible.  We suggest you use
pure POSIX shell scripts.  Remember, if you do need any bash features,
the maintainer script must have a bash sh-bang line.  POSIX shell or
Bash are preferred to Perl, since they enable
<package>debhelper</package> to easily add bits to the scripts.
        <p>
If you change your maintainer scripts, be sure to test package
removal, double installation, and purging.  Be sure that a purged
package is completely gone, that is, it must remove any files created,
directly or indirectly, in any maintainer script.
        <p>
If you need to check for the existence of a command, you should use
something like
<example>if [ -x /usr/sbin/install-docs ]; then ...</example>

If you don't wish to hard-code the path of the command in your
maintainer script, the following POSIX-compliant shell function may
help:

&example-pathfind;

You can use this function to search <tt>$PATH</tt> for a command name,
passed as an argument.  It returns true (zero) if the command was
found, and false if not.  This is really the most portable way, since
<tt>command -v</tt>, <prgn>type</prgn>, and <prgn>which</prgn> are not
POSIX.
        <p>
While <prgn>which</prgn> is an acceptable alternative, since
it is from the required <package>debianutils</package> package, it's
not on the root partition. That is, it's in <file>/usr/bin</file> rather
than <file>/bin</file>, so one can't use it in scripts which are run
before the <file>/usr</file> partition is mounted. Most scripts won't have
this problem, though.
      </sect>


      <sect id="bpp-config-mgmt">
        <heading>Configuration management with <package>debconf</package></heading>
        <p>
<package>Debconf</package> is a configuration management system which
can be used by all the various packaging scripts
(<file>postinst</file> mainly) to request feedback from the user
concerning how to configure the package. Direct user interactions must
now be avoided in favor of <package>debconf</package>
interaction. This will enable non-interactive installations in the
future.
        <p>
Debconf is a great tool but it is often poorly used.   Many common mistakes
are listed in the <manref name="debconf-devel" section="8"> man page. 
It is something that you must read if you decide to use debconf.
      </sect>


      <sect id="bpp-i18n">
        <heading>Internationalization</heading>

        <sect1 id="bpp-i18n-debconf">
          <heading>Handling debconf translations</heading>
          <p>
Like porters, translators have a difficult task.  They work on many
packages and must collaborate with many different
maintainers. Moreover, most of the time, they are not native English
speakers, so you may need to be particularly patient with them.
        <p>
The goal of <package>debconf</package> was to make packages
configuration easier for maintainers and for users.  Originally,
translation of debconf templates was handled with
<prgn>debconf-mergetemplate</prgn>.  However, that technique is now
deprecated; the best way to accomplish <package>debconf</package>
internationalization is by using the <package>po-debconf</package>
package.  This method is easier both for maintainer and translators;
transition scripts are provided.
        <p>
Using <package>po-debconf</package>, the translation is stored in
<file>po</file> files (drawing from <prgn>gettext</prgn> translation
techniques).  Special template files contain the original messages and
mark which fields are translatable.  When you change the value of a
translatable field, by calling <prgn>debconf-updatepo</prgn>, the
translation is marked as needing attention from the translators. Then,
at build time, the <prgn>dh_installdebconf</prgn> program takes care
of all the needed magic to add the template along with the up-to-date
translations into the binary packages.  Refer to the <manref
name="po-debconf" section="7"> manual page for details.
        </sect1>

        <sect1 id="bpp-i18n-docs">
          <heading>Internationalized documentation</heading>
          <p>
Internationalizing documentation is crucial for users, but a lot of
labor.  There's no way to eliminate all that work, but you can make things
easier for translators.
          <p>
If you maintain documentation of any size, its easier for translators
if they have access to a source control system.  That lets translators
see the differences between two versions of the documentation, so, for
instance, they can see what needs to be retranslated.  It is
recommended that the translated documentation maintain a note about
what source control revision the translation is based on.  An
interesting system is provided by <url id="&url-i18n-doc-check;"
name="doc-check"> in the <package>boot-floppies</package> package,
which shows an overview of the translation status for any given
language, using structured comments for the current revision of the
file to be translated and, for a translated file, the revision of the
original file the translation is based on.  You might wish to adapt
and provide that in your CVS area.
          <p>
If you maintain XML or SGML documentation, we suggest that you isolate
any language-independent information and define those as entities in a
separate file which is included by all the different
translations. This makes it much easier, for instance, to keep URLs
up-to-date across multiple files.
        </sect1>
      </sect>

      <sect id="bpp-common-situations">
        <heading>Common packaging situations</heading>

<!--
        <sect1 id="bpp-kernel">Kernel modules/patches
        <p>
        &FIXME; Heavy use of kernel-package. provide files in
        /etc/modutils/ for module configuration.
-->

        <sect1 id="bpp-autotools">
          <heading>Packages using
          <prgn>autoconf</prgn>/<prgn>automake</prgn></heading>
          <p>
Keeping <prgn>autoconf</prgn>'s <file>config.sub</file> and
<file>config.guess</file> files up-to-date is critical for porters,
especially on more volatile architectures.  Some very good packaging
practices for any package using <prgn>autoconf</prgn> and/or
<prgn>automake</prgn> have been synthesized in
&file-bpp-autotools; from the <package>autotools-dev</package>
package. You're strongly encouraged to read this file and
to follow the given recommendations.


        <sect1 id="bpp-libraries">Libraries
        <p>
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
breaking.
        <p>
Good practices for library packaging have been grouped in
<url id="&url-libpkg-guide;" name="the library packaging guide">.
        

        <sect1 id="bpp-docs">Documentation
           <p>
Be sure to follow the <url id="&url-debian-policy;ch-docs.html"
            name="Policy on documentation">.</p>
          <p>
If your package contains documentation built from XML or SGML, we
recommend you not ship the XML or SGML source in the binary
package(s).  If users want the source of the documentation, they
should retrieve the source package.</p>
          <p>
Policy specifies that documentation should be shipped in HTML format.
We also recommend shipping documentation in PDF and plain text format if
convenient and quality output is possible.  However, it is generally
not appropriate to ship plain text versions of documentation whose source
format is HTML.</p>
          <p>
Major shipped manuals should register themselves with
<package>doc-base</package> on installation.  See the
<package>doc-base</package> package documentation for more
information.</p>


        <sect1 id="bpp-other">Specific types of packages
        <p>
Several specific types of packages have special sub-policies and
corresponding packaging rules and practices:
<list>
    <item>
Perl related packages have a <url name="Perl policy"
id="&url-perl-policy;">, some examples of packages following that
policy are <package>libdbd-pg-perl</package> (binary perl module) or
<package>libmldbm-perl</package> (arch independent perl module).
    <item>
Python related packages have their python policy; see
&file-python-policy; in the <package>python</package> package.
    <item>
Emacs related packages have the <url id="&url-emacs-policy;"
name="emacs policy">.
    <item>
Java related packages have their <url id="&url-java-policy;"
name="java policy">.
    <item>
Ocaml related packages have their own policy, found in
&file-ocaml-policy; from the <package>ocaml</package> package. A good
example is the <package>camlzip</package> source package.
    <item>
Packages providing XML or SGML DTDs should conform to the
recommendations found in the <package>sgml-base-doc</package>
package.
    <item>
Lisp packages should register themselves with
<package>common-lisp-controller</package>, about which see
&file-lisp-controller;.
</list>
        </sect1>

<!--
        <sect1 id="custom-config-files">Custom configuration files
        <p>
        &FIXME; speak of "ucf", explain solution with a template,
        explain conf.d directories

        <sect1 id="config-with-db">Use of an external database
        <p>
        &FIXME; The software may require a database that you need to setup.
        But the database may be local or distant. Thus you can't depend
        on a database server but just on the corresponding library.

        sympa may be an example package
-->     

        <sect1 id="bpp-archindepdata">
          <heading>Architecture-independent data</heading>
          <p>
It is not uncommon to have a large amount of architecture-independent
data packaged with a program.  For example, audio files, a collection
of icons, wallpaper patterns, or other graphic files.  If the size of
this data is negligible compared to the size of the rest of the
package, it's probably best to keep it all in a single package.
          <p>
However, if the size of the data is considerable, consider splitting
it out into a separate, architecture-independent package ("_all.deb").
By doing this, you avoid needless duplication of the same data into
eleven or more .debs, one per each architecture.  While this
adds some extra overhead into the <file>Packages</file> files, it
saves a lot of disk space on Debian mirrors.  Separating out
architecture-independent data also reduces processing time of
<prgn>lintian</prgn> or <prgn>linda</prgn> (see <ref id="tools-lint">)
when run over the entire Debian archive.
        </sect1>
      </sect>

    </chapt>


  <chapt id="beyond-pkging">
    <heading>Beyond Packaging</heading>
    <p>
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.
    <p>
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.

    <sect id="submit-bug">
      <heading>Bug reporting</heading>
        <p>
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.
        <p>
Read the <url name="instructions for reporting bugs"
id="&url-bts-report;"> in the Debian <url name="bug tracking system"
id="&url-bts;">.
        <p>
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.
        <p>
You can use a tool like <manref name="reportbug" section="1"> to
submit bugs. It can automate and generally ease the process.
        <p>
Make sure the bug is not already filed against a package.
Each package has a bug list easily reachable at
<tt>http://&bugs-host;/<var>packagename</var></tt>
Utilities like <manref name="querybts" section="1"> can also
provide you with this information (and <prgn>reportbug</prgn>
will usually invoke <prgn>querybts</prgn> before sending, too).
        <p>
Try to direct your bugs to the proper location. When for example
your bug is about a package that overwrites files from another package,
check the bug lists for <em>both</em> of those packages in order to
avoid filing duplicate bug reports.
        <p>
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).
        <p>
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
<tt>http://&bugs-host;/from:<var>&lt;your-email-addr&gt;</var></tt>.

      <sect1 id="submit-many-bugs">Reporting lots of bugs at once
        <p>
Reporting a great number of bugs for the same problem on a great
number of different packages &mdash; i.e., more than 10 &mdash; 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 <package>lintian</package> so that an error or warning
is emitted.
        <p>
If you report more than 10 bugs on the same topic at once, it is
recommended that you send a message to &email-debian-devel; describing
your intention before submitting the report. 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.
        <p>
Note that when sending lots of bugs on the same subject, you should
send the bug report to <email>maintonly@&bugs-host;</email> so
that the bug report is not forwarded to the bug distribution mailing
list.


      <sect id="qa-effort">Quality Assurance effort
        
        <sect1 id="qa-daily-work">Daily work
        <p>
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 <ref id="lintian">) as
possible. If you do not find that possible, then you should consider
orphaning some of your packages (see <ref
id="orphaning">). 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;). At the same
time, you can look for co-maintainers (see <ref id="collaborative-maint">).
        
        <sect1 id="qa-bsp">Bug squashing parties
        <p>
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).
        <p>
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.
        <p>
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.
        <p>
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.


    <sect id="contacting-maintainers">Contacting other maintainers
      <p>
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.
      <p>
Looking up the email address of the maintainer for the package can be
distracting. Fortunately, there is a simple email alias,
<tt>&lt;package&gt;@&packages-host;</tt>, which provides a way to
email the maintainer, whatever their individual email address (or
addresses) may be.  Replace <tt>&lt;package&gt;</tt> with the name of
a source or a binary package.
      <p>
You may also be interested in contacting the persons who are
subscribed to a given source package via <ref id="pkg-tracking-system">.
You can do so by using the <tt>&lt;package-name&gt;@&pts-host;</tt>
email address.


    <sect id="mia-qa">Dealing with inactive and/or unreachable maintainers
      <p>
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.
      <p>
The first step is to politely contact the maintainer, and wait for a
response, for a reasonable time. 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 send a reminder after two
weeks.
      <p>
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:
      <p>
      <list>
        <item>The "echelon" information available through the 
              <url id="&url-debian-db;" name="developers' LDAP database">,
              which indicates when's the last time a developer has 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.

        <item>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?

        <item>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.
      </list>
      <p>
One big 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 should know what
happened to the person they sponsored.
      <p>
It is also allowed to post a query to &email-debian-devel;, asking if anyone
is aware of the whereabouts of the missing maintainer.
      <p>
Once you have gathered all of this, you can contact &email-debian-qa;.
People on this alias will use the information you provided in order to
decide how to proceed. For example, they might orphan one or all of the
packages of the maintainer. If a packages 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.
      <p>
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 had 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!)
      <p>
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.


    <sect id="newmaint">
      <heading>Interacting with prospective Debian developers</heading>
      <p>
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.


      <sect1 id="sponsoring">Sponsoring packages
        <p>
Sponsoring a package means uploading a package for a maintainer who is not
able to do it on their own, a new maintainer applicant. Sponsoring a package
also means accepting responsibility for it.
        <p>
If you wish to volunteer as a sponsor, you can sign up at <url
id="&url-sponsors;">.
        <p>
New maintainers usually have certain difficulties creating Debian packages
&mdash; 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.)
        <p>
Sponsoring merely by signing the upload or just recompiling is
<strong>definitely not recommended</strong>. You need to build the source
package just like you would build a package of your own. Remember that it
doesn't matter that you left the prospective developer's name both in the
changelog and the control file, the upload can still be traced to you.
        <p>
If you are an application manager for a prospective developer, you can also
be their sponsor. That way you can also verify how the applicant is
handling the 'Tasks and Skills' part of their application.

      <sect1>Managing sponsored packages
        <p>
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.
        <p>
You can not simply upload a binary <file>.deb</file> 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 <file>.orig.tar.gz</file> file that
they're providing.
        <p>
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.
        <p>
Once the package meets Debian standards, build the package with
<example>dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc</example> and sign it
with <example>debsign -m"<var>FULLNAME</var> <var>email-addr</var>" <var>changes-file</var></example>
before uploading it to the incoming directory.
        <p>
The Maintainer field of the <file>control</file> file and the
<file>changelog</file> should list the person who did the packaging, i.e., the
sponsoree. The sponsoree will therefore get all the BTS mail about the
package. 
        <p>
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.
       <p>
You are encouraged to keep tabs on the package you sponsor using 
<ref id="pkg-tracking-system">.

      <sect1>Advocating new developers
        <p>
See the page about <url id="&url-newmaint-advocate;"
name="advocating a prospective developer"> at the Debian web site.

      <sect1>Handling new maintainer applications
        <p>
Please see <url id="&url-newmaint-amchecklist;" name="Checklist for
Application Managers"> at the Debian web site.



    <appendix id="tools">Overview of Debian Maintainer Tools
      <p>
This section contains a rough overview of the tools available to
maintainers.  The following is by no means complete or definitive, but
just a guide to some of the more popular tools.
      <p>
Debian maintainer tools are meant to help convenience developers and 
free their time for critical tasks.  As Larry Wall says, there's more
than one way to do it.
      <p>
Some people prefer to use high-level package maintenance tools and
some do not.  Debian is officially agnostic on this issue; any tool
which gets the job done is fine.  Therefore, this section is not meant
to stipulate to anyone which tools they should use or how they should
go about with their duties of maintainership.  Nor is it meant to
endorse any particular tool to the exclusion of a competing tool.
      <p>
Most of the descriptions of these packages come from the actual
package descriptions themselves.  Further information can be found in
the package documentation itself.  You can also see more info with the
command <tt>apt-cache show &lt;package-name&gt;</tt>.</p>

      <sect id="tools-core">
        <heading>Core tools</heading>
        <p>
The following tools are pretty much required for any maintainer.</p>

      <sect1 id="dpkg-dev">
        <heading><package>dpkg-dev</package>
        <p>
<package>dpkg-dev</package> contains the tools (including
<prgn>dpkg-source</prgn>) required to unpack, build and upload Debian
source packages.  These utilities contain the fundamental, low-level
functionality required to create and manipulated packages; as such,
they are required for any Debian maintainer.

      <sect1 id="debconf">
        <heading><package>debconf</package></heading>
        <p>
<package>debconf</package> provides a consistent interface to
configuring packages interactively.  It is user interface
independent, allowing end-users to configure packages with a
text-only interface, an HTML interface, or a dialog interface.  New
interfaces can be added modularly.
        <p>
You can find documentation for this package in the
<package>debconf-doc</package> package.
        <p>
Many feel that this system should be used for all packages requiring
interactive configuration; see <ref id="bpp-config-mgmt">.
<package>debconf</package> is not currently required by Debian Policy,
but that may change in the future.
        </sect1>

      <sect1 id="fakeroot">
        <heading><package>fakeroot</package>
        <p>
<package>fakeroot</package> simulates root privileges.  This enables
you to build packages without being root (packages usually want to
install files with root ownership).  If you have
<package>fakeroot</package> installed, you can build packages as a
user: <tt>dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot</tt>.
        </sect1>
      </sect>

      <sect id="tools-lint">
        <heading>Package lint tools</heading>
        <p>
According to the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (FOLDOC), `lint'
is "a Unix C language processor which carries out more thorough checks
on the code than is usual with C compilers."  Package lint tools help
package maintainers by automatically finding common problems and
policy violations with their packages.</p>

        <sect1 id="lintian">
          <heading><package>lintian</package></heading>
          <p>
<package>lintian</package> dissects Debian packages and emits
information on bugs
and policy violations. It contains automated checks for many aspects
of Debian policy as well as some checks for common errors.
        <p>
You should periodically get the newest <package>lintian</package> from
`unstable' and check over all your packages. Notice that the <tt>-i</tt>
option provides detailed explanations of what each error or warning means,
what is its basis in Policy, and commonly how you can fix the problem.
        <p>
Refer to <ref id="sanitycheck"> for more information on how and when
to use Lintian.
        <p>
You can also see a summary of all problems reported by Lintian on your
packages at <url id="&url-lintian;">. Those reports contain the latest
<prgn>lintian</prgn> output on the whole development distribution
("unstable").
        </sect1>

        <sect1 id="linda">
          <heading><package>linda</package></heading>
          <p>
<package>linda</package> is another package linter.  It is similar to
<package>lintian</package> but has a different set of checks.  Its
written in Python rather than Perl.</p>
        </sect1>

        <sect1 id="debdiff">
          <heading><package>debdiff</package></heading>
          <p>
<prgn>debdiff</prgn> (from the <package>devscripts</package> package, <ref id="devscripts">)
compares file lists and control files of two packages. It is a simple
regression test, as it will help you notice if the number of binary
packages has changed since the last upload, or if something's changed
in the control file. Of course, some of the changes it reports will be
all right, but it can help you prevent various accidents.
          <p>
You can run it over a pair of binary packages:
<example>
debdiff package_1-1_arch.deb package_2-1_arch.deb
</example>
          <p>
Or even a pair of changes files:
<example>
debdiff package_1-1_arch.changes package_2-1_arch.changes
</example>
          <p>
For more information please see <manref name="debdiff" section="1">.
        </sect1>

      </sect>


      <sect id="tools-helpers">
        <heading>Helpers for <file>debian/rules</file></heading>
        <p>
Package building tools make the process of writing
<file>debian/rules</file> files easier.  See <ref id="helper-scripts">
for more information on why these might or might not be desired.

        <sect1 id="debhelper">
          <heading><package>debhelper</package></heading>
        <p>
<package>debhelper</package> is a collection of programs that can be
used in <file>debian/rules</file> to automate common tasks related to
building binary Debian packages. Programs are included to install
various files into your package, compress files, fix file permissions,
integrate your package with the Debian menu system.
        <p>
Unlike some approaches, <package>debhelper</package> is broken into
several small, granular commands which act in a consistent manner.  As
such, it allows a greater granularity of control than some of the
other "debian/rules tools".
        <p>
There are a number of little <package>debhelper</package> add-on
packages, too transient to document.  You can see the list of most of
them by doing <tt>apt-cache search ^dh-</tt>.
        </sect1>

        <sect1 id="debmake">
          <heading><package>debmake</package>
        <p>
<package>debmake</package>, a pre-cursor to
<package>debhelper</package>, is a less granular
<file>debian/rules</file> assistant. It includes two main programs:
<prgn>deb-make</prgn>, which can be used to help a maintainer convert
a regular (non-Debian) source archive into a Debian source package;
and <prgn>debstd</prgn>, which incorporates in one big shot the same
sort of automated functions that one finds in
<package>debhelper</package>.
        <p>
The consensus is that <package>debmake</package> is now deprecated in
favor of <package>debhelper</package>.  However, it's not a bug to use
<package>debmake</package>.
        </sect1>

        <sect1 id="dh-make">
          <heading><package>dh-make</package>
        <p>
The <package/dh-make/ package contains <prgn/dh_make/, a program that
creates a skeleton of files necessary to build a Debian package out of
a source tree. As the name suggests, <prgn/dh_make/ is a rewrite of
<package/debmake/ and its template files use dh_* programs from
<package/debhelper/.
        <p>
While the rules files generated by <prgn/dh_make/ are in general a
sufficient basis for a working package, they are still just the groundwork:
the burden still lies on the maintainer to finely tune the generated files
and make the package entirely functional and Policy-compliant.
        </sect1>

        <sect1 id="yada">
          <heading><package>yada</package>
        <p>
<package>yada</package> is another packaging helper tool.  It uses a
<file>debian/packages</file> file to auto-generate
<file>debian/rules</file> and other necessary files in the
<file>debian/</file> subdirectory.
        <p>
Note that <package>yada</package> is called "essentially unmaintained"
by it's own maintainer, Charles Briscoe-Smith.  As such, it can be
considered deprecated.
        </sect1>

        <sect1 id="equivs">
          <heading><package>equivs</package>
        <p>
<package>equivs</package> is another package for making packages.  It
is often suggested for local use if you need to make a package simply
to fulfill dependencies.  It is also sometimes used when making
``meta-packages'', which are packages whose only purpose is to depend
on other packages.</p>
        </sect1>
      </sect>



      <sect id="tools-builders">
        <heading>Package builders</heading>
        <p>
The following packages help with the package building process, general
driving <prgn>dpkg-buildpackage</prgn> as well as handling supporting
tasks.</p>

        <sect1 id="cvs-buildpackage">
          <heading><package>cvs-buildpackage</package>
        <p>
<package>cvs-buildpackage</package> provides the capability to inject
or import Debian source packages into a CVS repository, build a Debian
package from the CVS repository, and helps in integrating upstream
changes into the repository.
        <p>
These utilities provide an infrastructure to facilitate the use of CVS
by Debian maintainers. This allows one to keep separate CVS branches
of a package for <em>stable</em>, <em>unstable</em> and possibly
<em>experimental</em> distributions, along with the other benefits of
a version control system.
        </sect1>

        <sect1 id="debootstrap">
          <heading><package>debootstrap</package></heading>
          <p>
The <package>debootstrap</package> package and script allows you to
"bootstrap" a Debian base system into any part of your file-system.
By "base system", we mean the bare minimum of packages required to
operate and install the rest of the system.
        <p>
Having a system like this can be useful in many ways. For instance,
you can <prgn>chroot</prgn> into it if you want to test your build
depends.  Or, you can test how your package behaves when installed
into a bare base system.  Chroot builders use this package, see below.
        </sect1>

        <sect1 id="pbuilder">
          <heading><package>pbuilder</package></heading>
          <p>
<package>pbuilder</package> constructs a chrooted system, and builds a
package inside the chroot. It is very useful to check that a package's
build-dependencies are correct, and to be sure that unnecessary and
wrong build dependencies will not exist in the resulting package.</p>
          <p>
A related package is <package>pbuilder-uml</package>, which goes even
further build doing the build within User-mode-linux.</p>
        </sect1>

      <sect1 id="sbuild">
        <heading><package>sbuild</package></heading>
          <p>
<package>sbuild</package> is another automated builder.  It can use
chrooted environments as well.  It can be used stand-alone, or as part
of a networked, distributed build environment.  As the latter, it is
part of the system used by porters to build binary packages for all
the available architectures.  See <ref id="buildd"> for more
information, and <url id="&url-buildd;"> to see the system in
action.</p>
        </sect1>
      </sect>

      <sect id="uploaders">
        <heading>Package uploaders</heading>
        <p>
The following packages help automate or simplify the process of
uploading packages into the official archive.</p>

        <sect1 id="dupload">
          <heading><package>dupload</package></heading>
          <p>
<package>dupload</package> is a package and a script to automatically
upload Debian packages to the Debian archive, to log the upload, and
to send mail about the upload of a package.  You can configure it for
new upload locations or methods.
        </sect1>

        <sect1 id="dput">
          <heading><package>dput</package></heading>
          <p>
The <package>dput</package> package and script does much the same
thing as <package>dupload</package>, but in a different way.  It has
some features over <package>dupload</package>, such as the ability to
check the GnuPG signature and checksums before uploading, and the
possibility of running <prgn>dinstall</prgn> in dry-run mode after the
upload.
        </sect1>
      </sect>

      <sect id="tools-maint-automate">
        <heading>Maintenance automation</heading>
        <p>
The following tools help automate different maintenance tasks, from
adding changelog entries or signature lines, looking up bugs in Emacs,
to making use of the newest and official use of
<file>config.sub</file>.</p>

        <sect1 id="devscripts">
          <heading><package>devscripts</package></heading>
          <p>
<package>devscripts</package> is a package containing wrappers
and tools which are very helpful for maintaining your Debian
packages.  Example scripts include <prgn>debchange</prgn> and
<prgn>dch</prgn>, which manipulate your <file>debian/changelog</file>
file from the command-line, and <prgn>debuild</prgn>, which is a
wrapper around <prgn>dpkg-buildpackage</prgn>. The <prgn>bts</prgn>
utility is also very helpful to update the state of bug reports on the
command line.  <prgn>uscan</prgn> can be used to watch for new upstream
versions of your packages.  The <prgn>debrsign</prgn> can be used to
remotely sign a package prior to upload, which is nice when the
machine you build the package on is different from where your GPG keys
are.</p>
          <p>
See the <manref name="devscripts" section="1"> manual page for a
complete list of available scripts.</p>
        </sect1>

        <sect1 id="autotools-dev">
          <heading><package>autotools-dev</package></heading>
          <p>
Contains best practices for people maintaining packages that use
<prgn>autoconf</prgn> and/or <prgn>automake</prgn>.  Also contains
canonical <file>config.sub</file> and <file>config.guess</file> files
which are known to work on all Debian ports.</p>
        </sect1>

        <sect1 id="dpkg-repack">
          <heading><package>dpkg-repack</package></heading>
          <p>
<prgn>dpkg-repack</prgn> creates Debian package file out of a package
that has already been installed. If any changes have been made to the
package while it was unpacked (e.g., files in <file>/etc</file> were
modified), the new package will inherit the changes.</p>
          <p>
This utility can make it easy to copy packages from one computer to
another, or to recreate packages that are installed on your system
but no longer available elsewhere, or to store the current state of a
package before you upgrade it.</p>
        </sect1>

        <sect1 id="alien">
          <heading><package>alien</package></heading>
          <p>
<prgn>alien</prgn> converts binary packages between various packaging
formats, including Debian, RPM (RedHat), LSB (Linux Standard Base),
Solaris and Slackware packages.</p>
        </sect1>

        <sect1 id="debsums">
          <heading><package>debsums</package></heading>
          <p>
<prgn>debsums</prgn> checks installed packages against their MD5 sums.
Note that not all packages have MD5 sums, since they aren't required
by Policy.</p>
        </sect1>

        <sect1 id="dpkg-dev-el">
          <heading><package>dpkg-dev-el</package></heading>
          <p>
<package>dpkg-dev-el</package> is an Emacs lisp package which provides
assistance when editing some of the files in the <file>debian</file>
directory of your package.  For instance, when editing
<file>debian/changelog</file>, there are handy functions for
finalizing a version and listing the package's current bugs.</p>
        </sect1>

        <sect1 id="dpkg-depcheck">
          <heading><package>dpkg-depcheck</package></heading>
          <p>
<prgn>dpkg-depcheck</prgn> (from the <package>devscripts</package> 
package, <ref id="devscripts">)
runs a command under <prgn>strace</prgn> to determine all the packages that
were used by the said command.
          <p>
For Debian packages, this is useful when you have to compose a
<tt>Build-Depends</tt> line for your new package: running the build
process through <prgn>dpkg-depcheck</prgn> will provide you with a
good first approximation of the build-dependencies. For example:
<example>
dpkg-depcheck -b debian/rules build
</example>
          <p>
<prgn>dpkg-depcheck</prgn> can also be used to check for run-time
dependencies, especially if your package uses exec(2) to run other
programs.
          <p>
For more information please see <manref name="dpkg-depcheck" section="1">.
        </sect1>

      </sect>


      <sect id="tools-porting">
        <heading>Porting tools</heading>
        <p>
The following tools are helpful for porters and for
cross-compilation.</p>

        <sect1 id="quinn-diff">
          <heading><package>quinn-diff</package>
          <p>
<package>quinn-diff</package> is used to locate the differences from
one architecture to another.  For instance, it could tell you which
packages need to be ported for architecture <var>Y</var>, based on
architecture <var>X</var>.

        <sect1 id="dpkg-cross">
          <heading><package>dpkg-cross</package>
          <p>
<package>dpkg-cross</package> is a tool for installing libraries and
headers for cross-compiling in a way similar to
<package>dpkg</package>. Furthermore, the functionality of
<prgn>dpkg-buildpackage</prgn> and <prgn>dpkg-shlibdeps</prgn> is
enhanced to support cross-compiling.
        </sect1>


      <sect id="tools-doc">
        <heading>Documentation and information</heading>
        <p>
The following packages provide information for maintainers or help
with building documentation.

        <sect1 id="debiandoc-sgml">
          <heading><package>debiandoc-sgml</package></heading>
          <p>
<package>debiandoc-sgml</package> provides the DebianDoc SGML DTD,
which is commonly used for Debian documentation.  This manual, for
instance, is written in DebianDoc.  It also provides scripts for
building and styling the source to various output formats.</p>
          <p>
Documentation for the DTD can be found in the
<package>debiandoc-sgml-doc</package> package.</p>
        </sect1>

        <sect1 id="debian-keyring">
          <heading><package>debian-keyring</package></heading>
          <p>
Contains the public GPG and PGP keys of Debian developers.  See <ref
id="key-maint"> and the package documentation for more
information.</p>
        </sect1>

        <sect1 id="debview">
          <heading><package>debview</package></heading>
          <p>
<package>debview</package> provides an Emacs mode for viewing Debian
binary packages.  This lets you examine a package without unpacking
it.</p>
        </sect1>
      </sect>

<!-- FIXME: add the following

questionable:
  dbs (referred to above)
  dpatch (referred to above)
  debarchiver
  ucf
  dpkg-awk
  grep-dctrl
  d-shlibs
  wajig
  magpie
  apt-dpkg-ref
  apt-show-source
  apt-show-versions
  pdbv
  epm
  apt-src
  apt-build

rejected:
  debaux: too new, unmaintained?
  dh-make-perl: too new, unmaintained?
-->

    </appendix>
  </book>
</debiandoc>

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