Hello Marco,

On Sat, Oct 08, 2022 at 10:42:59AM +0000, Marco wrote:
> which skills are exactly needed for package maintainers?

That is a rather broad question given the wide variety of packages and
their respective build systems and further implementation details. As
such, I'd have a hard time to pinpoint the "exactly" from your question.

But now on a more serious note, there are many resources available for
dealing with the technical and/or organizational aspects of packaging,
e.g.

https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debmake-doc/
https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/
https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMaintainer

that will also link to further resources. And of course there is quite
some overlap among these documents, and often not all details will be
needed.

As for the xskat package in particular, there most probably won't be all
too many exciting changes required (or much glory to be earned, to be
honest): no new upstream release for over 18 years, most of the
packaging already done with a rather simple structure (just as you
stated: it compiles easily and just works), so mostly keeping up with
the latest Debian standards and recommendations, as e.g. pointed out as
"action needed" on <https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/xskat>, which so far
I had done a whopping 6 times over the past 16 years.

> Are there people out there who can help newcomers if they encounter
> problems?

That would be the Debian Mentors with some more documentation at
<https://mentors.debian.net/intro-maintainers/> and a mailing list at
<https://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors/> (with a FAQ at
<https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMentorsFaq>).

JFTR, I personally most probably won't be available for any such help.

HTH,
Flo

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