Package: wnpp
Severity: normal
I'm currently the only active maintainer for the chromium package in
Debian. This really needs to be maintained by a team, especially since
it requires security updates for stable at least two times per month.
It is likely that chromium will not be included in the next stable
release (bookworm) unless there's an active team maintaining it, as
described in <https://bugs.debian.org/1004441>. I've done a lot of
simplification of the chromium patches and packaging in order to make
it easier for people to join the team.
There are lots of available tasks to do, depending on someone's skill
and hardware. I've listed some tasks/roles below, with the most urgent
at the top.
1) Security updates. These usually only require Debian packaging
knowledge, and be pretty simple. Most security updates can be built
without having to touch any of the chromium patches, with only a
debian/changelog entry update. However, builds take 3 hours on my 8
cpu/32gb build machine (45 mins at best with ccache, due to a lot of
python and node build stuff that can't be cached), so you'll want
access to some good hardware. These can also happen at any time;
holidays, weekends, even a day or two before a scheduled release.
Ideally several people would be available for packaging security
updates.
2) Fixing bugs. There's plenty of bugs at
<https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?repeatmerged=no&src=chromium>.
Some require simple follow-ups with the reporter to see if it's still
an issue, others require in-depth C++ or chromium knowledge or special
hardware, and still others require just testing out a build-argument to
see if some feature is safe to enable.
3) Getting patches upstream. When I took over the package 6mo ago,
there were around 70 or 80 debian patches. We're down to 43 patches.
Only about 10 of those are debian-specific; the rest are patches that
really belong upstream. If you want to actually hack on chromium, this
is probably a good way to get started.
4) Improving chromium's privacy, as described at
<https://salsa.debian.org/chromium-team/chromium/-/blob/master/ungoogled-chromium.md>.
It'd be really nice to not have chromium "phone home" to google.
Please consider helping out! There's surely more stuff that's needed to
do as well, that I've forgotten about.
