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- <!ENTITY cvs-rev "$Revision: 1.304 $">
+ <!ENTITY cvs-rev "$Revision: 1.332 $">
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<copyright>
<copyrightsummary>
-copyright © 2004—2006 Andreas Barth</copyrightsummary>
+copyright © 2004—2007 Andreas Barth</copyrightsummary>
<copyrightsummary>
copyright © 1998—2003 Adam Di Carlo</copyrightsummary>
<copyrightsummary>
Quality Assurance (QA) work you can join maintainers already working on
these tasks and submit patches and improvements.
+ <p>
+One pitfall could be a too-generic local part in your mailadress:
+Terms like mail, admin, root, master should be avoided, please
+see <url id="http://www.debian.org/MailingLists/"> for details.
+
<sect id="mentors">Debian mentors and sponsors
<p>
so this has nothing to do with GnuPG's question about "which kind
of key do you want: (1) DSA and Elgamal, (2) DSA (sign only), (5)
RSA (sign only)". If you don't have any special requirements just pick
-the defailt.
+the default.
<p>
The easiest way to tell whether an existing key is a v4 key or a v3
(or v2) key is to look at the fingerprint:
&email-debian-private;.
<item>
Notify the Debian key ring maintainers that you are leaving by
-emailing to &email-debian-keyring;.
+opening a ticket in Debian RT by sending a mail
+to keyring@rt.debian.org with the words 'Debian RT' somewhere in the subject
+line (case doesn't matter).
</enumlist>
posting messages.
<p>
Please read the <url name="code of conduct" id="&url-debian-lists;#codeofconduct">
-for more information.
+for more information. The <url name="Debian Community Guidelines" id="&url-dcg;">
+are also worth reading.
<sect1 id="core-devel-mailing-lists">Core development mailing lists
<p>
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
+<em>#debian-oo</em> (OpenOffice
package) ...
<p>
Some non-English developers' channels exist as well, for example
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,
+Some 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>
<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>.
+you can check the list of open issues in the DSA queue of our request
+tracker at <url id="&url-rt;"> (you can login with user "guest" and
+password "readonly"). To report a new problem, simply send a mail to
+<email>admin@rt.debian.org</email> and make sure to put the string
+"Debian RT" somewhere in the subject.
<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,
<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
+archive. Generally, package uploads
go to this server; see <ref id="upload">.
<p>
It is restricted; a mirror is available on <tt>merkel</tt>.
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>
-was discontinued with the release of sarge. The pseudo-package
-<package>nonus.debian.org</package>
-still exists for now.
-
<sect1 id="servers-www">The www-master server
<p>
The main web server is <tt>www-master.debian.org</tt>.
<tag><tt>summary</tt>
<item>
-(This is a planned expansion.)
-The regular summary emails about the package's status (bug statistics,
-porting overview, progression in <em>testing</em>, ...).
+Regular summary emails about the package's status.
+Currently, only progression in <em>testing</em> is sent.
+
</taglist>
<p>
"Closes: #nnnnn".
This is useful for the security team to track vulnerabilities.
If an upload is made to fix the bug before the advisory ID is known,
-it is encouraged to modify the historical changelog entry with the next upload;
-please include even in that case all pointers you have to your first
-changelog entry.
+it is encouraged to modify the historical changelog entry with the next upload.
+Even in this case, please include all available pointers to background
+information in the original changelog entry.
<p>
There are a number of reasons why we ask maintainers to announce their
The announcements give maintainers and other interested parties a
better feel of what is going on, and what is new, in the project.
</list>
-
+ <p>
+Please see <url id="http://ftp-master.debian.org/REJECT-FAQ.html">
+for common rejection reasons for a new package.
<sect id="changelog-entries">Recording changes in the package
<p>
<sect1 id="upload-stable">
<heading>Special case: uploads to the <em>stable</em> distribution</heading>
<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>.
+Uploading to <em>stable</em> means that the package will transfered to the
+<em>p-u-new</em>-queue for review by the stable release managers, and
+if approved will be installed in
+<file>stable-proposed-updates</file> directory of the Debian archive.
+From there, it will be included in <em>stable</em> with the next point release.
<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:
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
+regularly evaluate the uploads To <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
For removing packages, please see the README file in that ftp directory,
and the Debian package <ref id="dcut">.
- <sect1 id="upload-non-us">Uploading to <tt>non-US</tt>
- <p>
-<em>Note:</em> non-us was discontinued with the release of sarge.
-
-
<sect1 id="delayed-incoming">Delayed uploads
<p>
Delayed uploads are done for the moment via the delayed queue at
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
+name="Debian Policy Manual"> for details).
+You must ensure that you include the <file>.orig.tar.gz</file> in your upload
+(even if you are not uploading a new upstream version),
+or it will not appear in the new section together with the rest of the package.
+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>
removed automatically after the package has been removed from
<em>unstable</em> and no package in <em>testing</em> depends on it.
<p>
-If you are simply restructuring a source package so that it no longer
-produces one or more binary packages, there is no need to explicitly ask
-for the packages that are no longer created to be removed. Such packages
-will be removed when the new package structure has been uploaded into
-<em>unstable</em> and when no package in <em>testing</em> depends on it.
+There is one exception when an explicit removal request is not necessary:
+If a (source or binary) package is an orphan, it will be removed
+semi-automatically.
+For a binary-package, this means if there is no longer any source package
+producing this binary package;
+if the binary package is just no longer produced on some architectures,
+a removal request is still necessary.
+For a source-package, this means that all binary packages it refers to
+have been taken over by another source package.
<p>
-You also have to detail the reasons justifying the request. This is to
+In your removal request, you have to detail the reasons justifying the request.
+This is to
avoid unwanted removals and to keep a trace of why a package has been
removed. For example, you can provide the name of the package that
supersedes the one to be removed.
If you want to remove another package, you have to get the approval
of its maintainer.
<p>
+Further information relating to these and other package removal related
+topics may be found at <url id="http://wiki.debian.org/ftpmaster_Removals"> and
+<url id="http://qa.debian.org/howto-remove.html">.
+ <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>
Other useful programs include
<tt>apt-cache rdepends</tt>,
<prgn>apt-rdepends</prgn> and
-<prgn>grep-dctrl>.
+<prgn>grep-dctrl</prgn>.
Removal of orphaned packages is discussed on &email-debian-qa;.
<p>
Once the package has been removed, the package's bugs should be handled.
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
+number then one should be created, starting at `0.1' (but in case
+of a debian native package still upload it as native package).
+If it is
absolutely necessary for someone other than the usual maintainer to
make a release based on a new upstream version then the person making
the release should start with the <var>debian-revision</var> value
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 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.
+Bugs fixed by source NMUs used to be tagged fixed instead of closed,
+but since version tracking is in place, such bugs are now also
+closed with the NMU version.
<p>
Also, after doing an NMU, you have to send
the information to the existing bugs that are fixed by your NMU,
including the unified diff.
-Alternatively you can open a new bug and include a
+Historically, it was custom to open a new bug and include a
patch showing all the changes you have made.
The normal maintainer will either apply the patch or employ an alternate
method of fixing the problem. Sometimes bugs are fixed independently
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>
+<prgn>Subversion</prgn>. Alioth (see <ref id="alioth">) provides such
+tools, amongst others.</p>
</item>
<item>
<p>
should subscribe themselves to the appropriate source package.</p>
</item>
</list></p>
- <p>
-Collaborative maintenance can often be further eased by the use of
-tools on Alioth (see <ref id="alioth">).
+ <p>
+Another form of collaborative maintenance is team maintenance, which is
+recommended if you maintain several packages with the same group of
+developers. In that case, the Maintainer and Uploaders field of each
+package must be managed with care. It is recommended to choose between
+one of the two following schemes:
+ <enumlist>
+ <item>
+ <p>
+Put the team member mainly responsible for the package in the Maintainer
+field. In the Uploaders, put the mailing list address, and the team members
+who care for the package.
+ </item>
+ <item>
+ <p>
+Put the mailing list address in the Maintainer field. In the Uploaders
+field, put the team members who care for the package.
+In this case, you must make sure the mailing list accept bug reports
+without any human interaction (like moderation for non-subscribers).
+ </item>
+ </enumlist>
+ <p>
+In any case, it is a bad idea to automatically put all team members in
+the Uploaders field. It clutters the Developer's Package Overview listing
+(see <ref id="ddpo">) with packages one doesn't really care for, and
+creates a false sense of good maintenance.
</sect>
<sect id="testing">
<tt>/^ Homepage: [^ ]*$/</tt>,
as this allows <file>packages.debian.org</file> to parse it correctly.</p>
</sect1>
+
+ <sect1 id="bpp-vcs">
+ <heading>Version Control System location</heading>
+ <p>
+There are additional fields for the location of the Version Control System
+in <file>debian/control</file>.
+ <sect2><heading>XS-Vcs-Browser</heading>
+ <p>
+Value of this field should be a <tt>http://</tt> URL pointing to a
+web-browsable copy of the Version Control System repository used to
+maintain the given package, if available.
+ <p>
+The information is meant to be useful for the final user, willing to
+browse the latest work done on the package (e.g. when looking for the
+patch fixing a bug tagged as <tt>pending</tt> in the bug tracking
+system).
+ <sect2><heading>XS-Vcs-*</heading>
+ <p>
+Value of this field should be a string identifying unequivocally the
+location of the Version Control System repository used to maintain the
+given package, if available. <tt>*</tt> identify the Version Control
+System; currently the following systems are supported by the package
+tracking system: <tt>arch</tt>, <tt>bzr</tt> (Bazaar), <tt>cvs</tt>,
+<tt>darcs</tt>, <tt>git</tt>, <tt>hg</tt> (Mercurial), <tt>mtn</tt>
+(Monotone), <tt>svn</tt> (Subversion). It is allowed to specify different
+VCS fields for the same package: they will all be shown in the PTS web
+interface.
+ <p>
+The information is meant to be useful for a user knowledgeable in the
+given Version Control System and willing to build the current version of
+a package from the VCS sources. Other uses of this information might
+include automatic building of the latest VCS version of the given
+package. To this end the location pointed to by the field should better
+be version agnostic and point to the main branch (for VCSs supporting
+such a concept). Also, the location pointed to should be accessible to
+the final user; fulfilling this requirement might imply pointing to an
+anonymous access of the repository instead of pointing to an
+SSH-accessible version of the same.
+ <p>
+In the following example, an instance of the field for a Subversion
+repository of the <package>vim</package> package is shown. Note how the
+URL is in the <tt>svn://</tt> scheme (instead of <tt>svn+ssh://</tt>) and
+how it points to the <file>trunk/</file> branch. The use of the
+<tt>XS-Vcs-Browser</tt> field described above is also shown.
+<example>
+ Source: vim
+ Section: editors
+ Priority: optional
+ <snip>
+ XS-Vcs-Svn: svn://svn.debian.org/svn/pkg-vim/trunk/packages/vim
+ XS-Vcs-Browser: http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/pkg-vim/trunk/packages/vim
+</example>
+ </sect1>
</sect>
You should avoid the use of first person ("I will do this..." or "We
recommend..."). The computer is not a person and the Debconf templates
do not speak for the Debian developers. You should use neutral
-construction and often the passive form. Those of you who already
+construction. Those of you who already
wrote scientific publications, just write your templates like you
would write a scientific paper.
+However, try using action voice if still possible, like
+"Enable this if ..."
+instead of
+"This can be enabled if ...".
<sect2>Be gender neutral
<p>
The world is made of men and women. Please use gender-neutral
-constructions in your writing. This is not Political Correctness, this
-is showing respect to all humanity.
+constructions in your writing.
<sect1>Templates fields definition
<sect3>error:
<p>
-<strong>THIS TEMPLATE TYPE IS NOT HANDLED BY DEBCONF YET.</strong>
- <p>
-It has been added to cdebconf, the C version of debconf, first used in
-the Debian Installer.
- <p>
-Please do not use it unless debconf supports it.
- <p>
-This type is designed to handle error message. It is mostly similar to
+This type is designed to handle error messages. It is mostly similar to
the "note" type. Frontends may present it differently (for instance,
the dialog frontend of cdebconf draws a red screen instead of the
usual blue one).
+ <p>
+It is recommended to use this type for any message that needs user
+attention for a correction of any kind.
<sect2>Description: short and extended description
should be kept short for improved readability. Do not mix two ideas
in the same paragraph but rather use another paragraph.
<p>
-Don't be too verbose. Some debconf interfaces cannot deal very well
-with descriptions of more than about 20 lines, so try to keep it below
-this limit.
+Don't be too verbose. User tend to ignore too long screens.
+20 lines are by experience a border you shouldn't cross,
+because that means that in the classical dialog interface,
+people will need to scroll, and lot of people just don't do that.
+ <p>
+The extended description should <strong>never</strong> include a question.
<p>
For specific rules depending on templates type (string, boolean,
etc.), please read below.
question is rather long (remember that translations are often longer
than original versions)
-<item> The extended description should <strong>not</strong> include a question.
-
<item> Again, please avoid referring to specific interface widgets. A common
mistake for such templates is "if you answer Yes"-type
constructions.
<item>
<p>
<strong>must</strong> contain detailed information how
-the repackaged source was obtained, and how this can be reproduced, in
-<file>README.Debian-source</file> or a similar file. This file should
-be in the <file>diff.gz</file> part of the Debian source package,
-usually in the <file>debian</file> directory, <em>not</em> in the
-repackaged <file>orig.tar.gz</file>. It is also a good idea to provide a
+the repackaged source was obtained, and how this can be reproduced
+in the <file>debian/copyright</file>.
+It is also a good idea to provide a
<tt>get-orig-source</tt> target in your <file>debian/rules</file> file
that repeats the process, as described in the Policy Manual, <url
id="&url-debian-policy;ch-source.html#s-debianrules" name="Main
The file should have a name that makes it clear which binary file it
encodes. Usually, some postfix indicating the encoding should be
appended to the original filename.
+Note that you don't need to depend on <package>sharutils</package> to get
+the <prgn>uudecode</prgn> program if you use <prgn>perl</prgn>'s
+<tt>pack</tt> function.
+The code could look like
+<example>
+uuencode-file:
+ perl -ne 'print(pack "u", $$_);' $(file) > $(file).uuencoded
+
+uudecode-file:
+ perl -ne 'print(unpack "u", $$_);' $(file).uuencoded > $(file)
+</example>
</footnote>.
The file would then be decoded and copied to its place during the
build process. Thus the change will be visible quite easy.
</p>
</sect2>
</sect1>
+ <sect1 id="bpp-dbg">
+ <heading>Best practices for debug packages</heading>
+ <p>
+A debug package is a package with a name ending in "-dbg", that contains
+additional information that gdb can use. Since Debian binaries are
+stripped by default, debugging information, including function names and
+line numbers, is otherwise not available when running gdb on Debian binaries.
+Debug packages allow users who need this additional debugging information to
+install it, without bloating a regular system with the information.
+ <p>
+It is up to a package's maintainer whether to create a debug package or
+not. Maintainers are encouraged to create debug packages for library
+packages, since this can aid in debugging many programs linked to a
+library. In general, debug packages do not need to be added for all
+programs; doing so would bloat the archive. But if a maintainer finds
+that users often need a debugging version of a program, it can be
+worthwhile to make a debug package for it. Programs that are core
+infrastructure, such as apache and the X server are also good candidates
+for debug packages.
+ <p>
+Some debug packages may contain an entire special debugging build of a
+library or other binary, but most of them can save space and build time
+by instead containing separated debugging symbols that gdb can find and
+load on the fly when debugging a program or library. The convention in
+Debian is to keep these symbols in <file>/usr/lib/debug/<em>path</em></file>,
+where <em>path</em> is the path to the executable or library. For example,
+debugging symbols for <file>/usr/bin/foo</file> go in
+<file>/usr/lib/debug/usr/bin/foo</file>, and
+debugging symbols for <file>/usr/lib/libfoo.so.1</file> go in
+<file>/usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/libfoo.so.1</file>.
+ <p>
+The debugging symbols can be extracted from an object file using
+"objcopy --only-keep-debug". Then the object file can be stripped, and
+"objcopy --add-gnu-debuglink" used to specify the path to the debugging
+symbol file. <manref name="objcopy" section="1"> explains in detail how this
+works.
+ <p>
+The dh_strip command in debhelper supports creating debug packages, and
+can take care of using objcopy to separate out the debugging symbols for
+you. If your package uses debhelper, all you need to do is call
+"dh_strip --dbg-package=libfoo-dbg", and add an entry to debian/control
+for the debug package.
+ <p>
+Note that the Debian package should depend on the package that it
+provides debugging symbols for, and this dependency should be versioned.
+For example:
+
+<example>
+Depends: libfoo-dbg (= ${binary:Version})
+</example>
</sect>
will help prevent a situation in which several maintainers start
filing the same bug report simultaneously.
<p>
+Please use the programms <prgn>dd-list</prgn> and
+if appropriate <prgn>whodepends</prgn>
+(from the package devscripts)
+to generate a list of all affected packages, and include the
+output in your mail to &email-debian-devel;.
+ <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
~ianmdlvl / developers-reference.git / blobdiff