From fa7c31ba31d084a39c41388e934e25bbea40e0ff Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Colin Watson Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2024 10:40:03 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] FLOSS activity in January/February 2024 --- content/activity-2024-02.md | 112 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 112 insertions(+) create mode 100644 content/activity-2024-02.md diff --git a/content/activity-2024-02.md b/content/activity-2024-02.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..f4b1abe1 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/activity-2024-02.md @@ -0,0 +1,112 @@ +Title: FLOSS activity in January/February 2024 +Slug: activity-2024-02 +Date: 2024-03-04 10:39:50 +00:00 +Category: columbiform +Tags: activity, columbiform, freexian, planet-debian, planet-ubuntu + +Two months into my [new gig]({filename}/going-freelance.md) and it's going +great! [Tracking my time]({filename}/task-management.md) has taken a bit of +getting used to, but having something that amounts to a queryable database +of everything I've done has also allowed some helpful introspection. + +Freexian [sponsors](https://www.freexian.com/about/debian-contributions/) up +to 20% of my time on Debian tasks of my choice. In fact I've been spending +the bulk of my time on +[debusine](https://freexian-team.pages.debian.net/debusine/) which is itself +intended to accelerate work on Debian, but more details on that later. +While I contribute to Freexian's +[summaries](https://www.freexian.com/tags/debian-contributions/) now, I've +also decided to start writing monthly posts about my free software activity +as many others do, to get into some more detail. + +## January 2024 + + * I [added Incus + support](https://salsa.debian.org/ci-team/autopkgtest/-/merge_requests/272) + to autopkgtest. [Incus](https://linuxcontainers.org/incus/) is a system + container and virtual machine manager, forked from [Canonical's + LXD](https://github.com/canonical/lxd). I switched my laptop over to it + and then quickly found that it was inconvenient not to be able to run + Debian package test suites using + [autopkgtest](https://manpages.debian.org/man/autopkgtest), so I tweaked + autopkgtest's existing LXD integration to support using either LXD or + Incus. + * I discovered [Perl::Critic](https://metacpan.org/dist/Perl-Critic) and + used it to tidy up some poor practices in several of my packages, + including debconf. Perl used to be my language of choice but I've been + mostly using Python for over a decade now, so I'm not as fluent as I used + to be and some mechanical assistance with spotting common errors is + helpful; besides, I'm generally a big fan of applying static analysis to + everything possible in the hope of reducing bug density. Of course, this + did result in a couple of regressions + ([1](https://salsa.debian.org/pkg-debconf/debconf/-/commit/4f8b9f969679fa4a38aca8da2702057ea861ffae), + [2](https://salsa.debian.org/pkg-debconf/debconf/-/commit/7274bf66e82b2557156813f93ed0592539a2ac1c)), + but at least we caught them fairly quickly. + * I did some overdue debconf maintenance, mainly around tidying up error + message handling in several places ([1](https://bugs.debian.org/797071), + [2](https://bugs.debian.org/754123), + [3](https://bugs.debian.org/682508)). + * I did some routine maintenance to move several of my upstream projects to + a new [Gnulib stable + branch](https://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/manual/html_node/Stable-Branches.html). + * [debmirror](https://salsa.debian.org/debian/debmirror) includes a [useful + summary](https://salsa.debian.org/debian/debmirror/-/blob/master/mirror_size) + of how big a Debian mirror is, but it hadn't been updated since 2010 and + the script to do so had bitrotted quite badly. I [fixed + that](https://salsa.debian.org/debian/debmirror/-/commit/7ae93742377d9205c57b7e47ef96d4663110f0ff) + and added a recurring task for myself to refresh this every six months. + +## February 2024 + + * Some time back I added AppArmor and seccomp confinement to man-db. This + was mainly motivated by a desire to [support manual pages in + snaps](https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/support-for-man-pages/2299/24) (which + is [still open](https://bugs.launchpad.net/snapd/+bug/1575593) several + years later ...), but since reading manual pages involves a [non-trivial + text processing toolchain mostly written in + C++](https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/), I thought it was reasonable to + assume that some day it might have a vulnerability even though its track + record has been good; so `man` now restricts the system calls that + `groff` can execute and the parts of the file system that it can access. + I stand by this, but it did cause some problems that have needed a + succession of small fixes over the years. This month I issued + [DLA-3731-1](https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2024/02/msg00001.html), + backporting some of those fixes to buster. + * I spent some time chasing a [console-setup build + failure](https://bugs.debian.org/1063413) following the removal of + kFreeBSD support, which was uploaded by mistake. I suggested a [set of + fixes](https://salsa.debian.org/holgerw/console-setup/-/merge_requests/1) + for this, but the author of the change to remove kFreeBSD support decided + to take a different approach (fair enough), so I've abandoned this. + * I updated the [Debian zope.testrunner + package](https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/zope.testrunner) to 6.3.1. + * openssh: + * A Freexian collaborator had a problem with automating installations + involving changes to `/etc/ssh/sshd_config`. This turned out to be + resolvable without any changes, but in the process of investigating I + noticed that my dodgy arrangements to avoid + [ucf](https://manpages.debian.org/man/ucf) prompts in certain cases + had bitrotted slightly, which meant that some people might be prompted + unnecessarily. I [fixed this and arranged for it not to happen + again](https://salsa.debian.org/ssh-team/openssh/-/commit/b9671cc74475922fa61e9ebdba56ec84446d19ac). + * Following a [recent debian-devel + discussion](https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2024/02/msg00239.html), + I realized that some particularly awkward code in the OpenSSH + packaging was now obsolete, and [removed + it](https://salsa.debian.org/ssh-team/openssh/-/commit/a6c7b9ef532489671e3a654ad38102cc30d94b5a). + * I backported a [python-channels-redis + fix](https://bugs.debian.org/1027387) to bookworm. I wasn't the first + person to run into this, but I rediscovered it while working on debusine + and it was confusing enough that it seemed worth fixing in stable. + * I fixed a [simple build failure in + storm](https://bugs.debian.org/1064699). + * I dug into a very confusing cluster of celery build failures + ([1](https://bugs.debian.org/1056232), + [2](https://bugs.debian.org/1058317), + [3](https://bugs.debian.org/1063345)), and tracked the hardest bit down + to a [Python 3.12 + regression](https://github.com/python/cpython/issues/115874), now fixed + in unstable thanks to Stefano Rivera. Getting celery back into testing + is blocked on the [64-bit `time_t` + transition](https://wiki.debian.org/ReleaseGoals/64bit-time) for now, but + once that's out of the way it should flow smoothly again. -- 2.30.2