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+ <!ENTITY cvs-rev "$Revision: 1.220 $">
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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
+For example, before you apply, you have 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
<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).
+additional files (such as documentation and installation disk images).
<p>
Here is an example directory tree of a complete Debian archive:
<p>
(<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 <file>main</file> area contains additional directories which hold
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.).
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
+also have ports underway to non-Linux kernels. 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>,
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
+Information for developers and users about the specific ports are
available at the <url id="&url-debian-ports;" name="Debian Ports web
pages">.
to make sure everything in this distribution is working properly, it is
sometimes literally unstable.
<p>
-<ref id="testing"> is generated automatically by taking
+<qref id="testing">"testing"</qref> 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.
+new packages have been installed. See <ref id="testing">.
<p>
After a period of development, once the release manager deems fit, the
<em>testing</em> distribution is frozen, meaning that the policies
<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);
+if they respect all the necessary criteria);
</list>
<p>
To find out whether a package is progressing into testing or not, see the
<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.
+for 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
+inter-relationship is too complicated and cannot 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>
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
+which uses a 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
<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
+In fact, some of the canonical servers aren't public — a first tier
+of mirrors balances the load instead. 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.
<sect id="incoming-system">
<heading>The Incoming system
<p>
-The Incoming system is responsible of collecting updated packages and
+The Incoming system is responsible for 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
+the <prgn>katie</prgn> script, which verifies the integrity of the uploaded
+packages and their 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
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
+The bug tracking system tracks 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
get the same emails that the package maintainer gets, simply by
subscribing to the package in the PTS.
<p>
-Each email sent through the PTS is classified and associated to one of
+Each email sent through the PTS is classified under one of
the keywords listed below. This will let you select the mails that
you want to receive.
<p>
<tag><tt>keyword [<email>] {+|-|=} <list of keywords></tt>
<item>
- Accept (+) or refuse (-) mails associated to the given keyword(s).
+ Accept (+) or refuse (-) mails classified under the given keyword(s).
Define the list (=) of accepted keywords.
<tag><tt>keyword <sourcepackage> [<email>] {+|-|=} <list of keywords></tt>
<item>something important will affect the package
</list>
<p>
-Both kind of news are generated in a similar manner: you just have to send
+Both kinds of news are generated in a similar manner: you just have to send
an email either to <email>pts-static-news@qa.debian.org</email> or to
<email>pts-news@qa.debian.org</email>. The mail should indicate which
package is concerned by having the name of the source package in a
<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.
+This includes closing bugs, sending followup messages, assigning severities
+and 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
<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!
+ <var>distribution</var>-proposed-updates or <tt>stable</tt>!
<item>Make descriptive, meaningful changelog entries. Others will
rely on them to determine whether a particular bug was fixed.
- Whenever possible, include an external reference, preferably a CVE
- identifier, so that it can be cross-referenced.
+ Always include an external reference, preferably a CVE
+ identifier, so that it can be cross-referenced. Include the same
+ information in the changelog for unstable, so that it is clear that
+ the same bug was fixed, as this is very helpful when verifying
+ that the bug is fixed in the next stable release. If a CVE
+ identifier has not yet been assigned, the security team will
+ request one so that it can be included in the package and in the advisory.
<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
+ --compare-versions</tt>. Be careful not to re-use a version
+ number that you have already used for a previous upload. 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.
<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"
+id="&url-debian-policy;ch-binary.html#s-descriptions"
name="Policy on package descriptions">.
<p>
The description of the package, as defined by the corresponding field
<example><var>package-name</var> are <var>synopsis</var>.</example>
-This way of forming a sentance from the package name and synopsis
+This way of forming a sentence 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.
+some cases where it doesn't make sense to try to form a sentence.
</sect1>
<sect1 id="bpp-pkg-desc">
~ianmdlvl / developers-reference.git / blobdiff