Soon-to-be orphaned packages need a caring maintainer

[Eduardo Marcel Macan]

Due to severe time constraints and interest shifts I'm putting some
packages up to adoption. I considered taking a complete break from
debian until things get better but I am just not able to do so. I've
been a debian developer for 9 years now, that represents almost 1/3rd of
my life involved with this project on different levels.

That said I plan to reduce my packages to the two or three I use the
most nowadays. The following are the packages I'm orphaning next week if
nobody volunteers to maintain them:

Clara - GPL'd ocr software. I know the upstream developer in person, he
is very easy to deal with, but the package hasn't seen an update for
quite some time, its home page states that it will be updated soon
(http://www.geocities.com/claraocr/) The latest version available is
packaged, but has long standing bugs. It will be orphaned if nobody
steps forward to maintain it.

manpages-pt: manpages in Portuguese (mostly brazilian)

vertex: An OpenGL 3d modeller, it will be orphaned. I've not been
dealing with opengl in ages. And I'd even suggest its removal from the
archives since vertex would be mostly useful with a library to load its
models into a user program (libv3d - which I never packaged and nobody
ever complained about). The last upstream update was almost 2 years ago.

normalize-audio: This one is quite nice and it's used by several other
multimedia related packages. There are some open bugs and a new version
upstream to be packaged, this one is fun to deal with, and it is
probably the one which will find a new maintainer quicker.

mxml: This is a very simple library for dealing with "xml-like" files,
it is much smaller and simpler than libxml since it does not deal with
validation and DTDs and such. I'm just RFA'ing this one since
zynaddsubfx (which I'll keep maintaining) depends on it.

phat: This library is a set of useful gtk widgets designed for
multimedia apps. I'm just RFA'ing it since specimen (which I'll keep)
depends on it.

And I think that's all. I hope all those orphan packages will find a
caring maintainer before I need to assign their maintainership to the
already overloaded qa team and open new wnpp bugs.

Regards,

Eduardo (AKA error)

P.S. I'm not currently subscribed to debian-devel, so please, answer
directly to me.


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orphaning packages: clara and vertex

[Eduardo Marcel Macan]

I intend to orphan two of my packages: clara a GPLd OCR, designed for 
large digitalizations of books - and vertex, a 3d OpenGL
modeller.

I do not use them anymore, and I've  not  been giving these packages the 
attention they deserve for a while. I am sure someone else
will be able to do a much better job on them, so, from now on, they're 
up for adoption.

Regards
Eduardo
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Re: Not every package should enter Debian (was: Re: Who cares about NEW when there are bigger issues? (was Re: Is NEW processing on hold?

[Eduardo Marcel Macan]

Maybe new versions of packages already in the archive that depend upon 
packages which are NEW
could somehow signal or automatically raise the priority of those said 
packages waiting to get in.

I guess it's a common case, specially for new libraries, since it can 
potentially hold important new
features or fixes for packages that are already in the archive.

I think it wouldn't hurt, since it would give more flow to updating 
what's already in the archive,
without giving too much  incentive to unnecessary bloat :)

It's not a complete solution to anything but might help to  improve the 
process a bit. I currently have
a package wating for a new lib :D and it happened  about 2 months ago 
with another package of mine,
on that moment I  uploaded both at the same time by distraction and 
ended with a severe dependency
breakage.

Regards,
Eduardo
Joel Aelwyn wrote:
On Tue, Mar 08, 2005 at 06:50:05PM +, Andrew Suffield wrote:
 

On Tue, Mar 08, 2005 at 07:42:58PM +0100, Adrian von Bidder wrote:
   

IMHO, Debian has a serious double-problem here and needs to attack it.  
ftp-masters should, as I understand the role, be a purely administrative 
function: keep the archive running.  No policy decisions should be made by 
ftp-masters.

In that light, fully automatic NEW processing will not hurt at all (I agree 
that a delay of a few days is sensible to give us time to react to the 
worst problem cases.)
 

Unfortunately reality isn't so simple. In practice, the ftp-masters
have also become the review point for new packages. We *need* new
packages reviewing just to filter out some of the worst of the stupid
from the archive; frankly we need more than just new packages
reviewing. However, splitting that task out would probably be a good
idea.
   

I've had packages sent back based on reviews. And while I may be a grouchy
cuss at times, especially over some of the other issues I see with
ftpmaster, I have no complaint about having gotton one back, even when
I didn't agree with the reasoning. The ftpmaster member involved and I
discussed it, and (at least as far as I recall) I ended up resubmitting a
package that was somewhere in between, but closer to their preference than
my initial one.
Proposals have been made about splitting the task of package review from
the administrative tasks of running the archive proper, recently; they were
rejected. I consider that highly unfortunate, but if you really want to
see it, you're going to have to either convince the ftpmasters that the
proposal really does have merit enough, or convince the DPL that this is a
large enough problem that it's leading to a non-functional team.
I would suggest reading the archives on -project, for last month, where
most of this has already been thoroughly discussed, but I really don't
think that removing the filtering is a sane idea.
 


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Re: Bug#287839: ITP: mxml -- small XML parsing library

[Eduardo Marcel Macan]

Sorry, I quoted the upstream description, I have a preliminary package 
ready and it will be
uploaded as soon as I make it clean. The upstream author provides only a 
static version of
the library, so I'm having to check lots of things I never had to deal 
with in order to do it
right (It seems I'll have to take care of sonames and the like myself 
and that's something
I'd prefer to avoid, but anyway...) I know the basics of XML and don't 
really have
any experience using XML libraries myself,  I'm packaging it  because 
zynaddsubfx
uses it to implement an "xml-like" instrument definition, and zyn is one 
of my main
interests.

I think that I'd be a better "comaintainer" of this package than the 
only one
responsible. The ITP seems to have attracted attention, I won't mind if 
someone
offers his help to maintain, or even adopt it. Really :)

Up to now, thank you guys for the comments on the description I attached 
to the
ITP,  they'll be incorporated into my package description.

Roger Leigh wrote:
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1
Henning Makholm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
 

Scripsit Roger Leigh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
   

"Marcelo E. Magallon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
 

After reading your post I wonder if "without requiring large
non-standard libraries" actually was meant to be read as "without
requiring libxml2" (i.e. the "large non-standard library" meant here is
libxml2).
   

Yes, you would be correct.  It was explicitly intended as a drop-in
replacement.  All it required was a few regexes to change the prefix
on the function and datatype names.
 

If the rationale for the package is to avoid having libxml2 on the
system, and it is a a partial drop-in replacement, wouldn't it make
sense to let the package
 1. provide libxml.so.2 with the *same* function names as the real thing
 2. conflict with libxml2
 3. contain a shlibdeps file that make client packages depend on
libmxml2 | libxml2
(Predicted response: Of course not. That would lead to madness).
   

:-)
Any program that used the full features of libxml2 would break.  They
are not so similar as to be binary-compatible; they just have a
similar API for the libxml2 "tree" interface.
- -- 
Roger Leigh
   Printing on GNU/Linux?  http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/
   Debian GNU/Linuxhttp://www.debian.org/
   GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848.  Please sign and encrypt your mail.
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lkhJGZkSj6D2b4D1ntF3ecE=
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Debian Workshop in São Paulo - Brazil

[Eduardo Marcel Macan]

For the news: :)

The local Debian User Group in São Paulo is organizing a one-day
Debian Workshop to happen on Oct 25. The presentations were selected
by a group which reviewed the proposals collected after a Call 
For Papers was issued last month.

The english version of the press release is included in this mail,
further details on the speakers and their presentations is available
at http://www.debian-sp.org/oficina2003 , unfortunately, the details
are available only in Portuguese.

Regards!

Eduardo

   II Debian Workshop in São Paulo
   São Paulo - SP - Brazil
  10/25/2003


The Debian-BR[1] project  through the São Paulo State Debian User Group 
 - Debian-SP[2] and IBTA[3] (Brazilian Advanced Technologies Institute) 
invite you to the II Debian Workshop in São Paulo, on October 25, 2003.
The workshop consists of four presentations with hands-on demonstrations
of concepts, tutorials and practices using the Debian GNU/Linux
distribution.

The presentations will be of interest not only to Debian professionals 
or enthusiasts, but also to people who want to know more about the use 
and admnistration of free (as in speech) operating systems in general.

Schedule:
8:40h  - Welcome Coffee
9:00h  - Workshop:  Debian Kernel Maintainance 
 Speaker: Gustavo Noronha e Silva<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

10:20h - Break

10:40h - Workshop: Software QoS, a cheap and effective way to
   control bandwidth on IP networks using Debian
   GNU/Linux
 Speaker:  Alessandro O. Ungaro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12:00h - Lunch
14:00h - Workshop: Making Music with Debian GNU/Linux
 Speaker: Eduardo Marcel Maçan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15:20h - Coffee Break
15:40h - Workshop: High Performance e-mail servers  
 Speaker: Michelle Ribeiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17:00h - Reserved for keysigning.
18:00h - End

Attendance is free of charge, but the number of participants is
restricted.
Reservations by phone +55-11-5081-9700

Address:
   IBTA - Instituto Brasileiro de Tecnologia Avançada
   Rua Vergueiro 1759 (next to Paraíso subway station)
   Vila Mariana - São Paulo - SP
   Tel: (11) 5081-9700
 
[1] http://www.debian-br.org
[2] http://sp.debian-br.org
[3] http://www.ibta.edu.br



-- 
"If you have an apple and I have  an apple and we  exchange apples then
you and I will still each have  one apple. But  if you have an idea and I
have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two
ideas." -- George Bernard Shaw  macan at debian dot org

Bug#198082: ITP: zynaddsubfx -- realtime software synthesizer with many features

[Eduardo Marcel Macan]

Package: wnpp
Version: unavailable; reported 2003-06-19
Severity: wishlist

* Package name: zynaddsubfx
  Version : x.y.z
  Upstream Author : Nasca Otavian Paul <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
* URL : http://zynaddsubfx.sourceforge.net
* License : GPL
  Description : realtime software synthesizer with many features

Real-time software synthesizer for Linux and Windows with many
features including  polyphony, multi-timbral and microtonal
capabilities. It includes randomness of some parameters,which 
makes warm sounds, like analogue synthesizers. The program has 
system/insertion effects, and much more.

Re: ITP: Rhythm Composer TK-707 (And suggestions for sound in debian)

[Eduardo Marcel Macan]

Oooops, sorry, I forgot telling it in my ITP.

It is covered by the GPL and its page is at:

http://www.vislab.usyd.edu.au/staff/chris/tk707/


On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 11:19:20AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 04, 2001 at 10:04:55AM -0200, Eduardo Marcel Macan wrote:
> > I'd like to have Tk707 packaged. Tk707 is a software clone of the
> > Roland TR-707 rhythm composer, a drum machine.



> 
> Great, but what's the license?
> 
> If this is free software I'll be all over it; I've been needing something
> like this for a long time.  So I'm perfectly willing to help; just email me
> privately when you have something ready.

ITP: Rhythm Composer TK-707 (And suggestions for sound in debian)

[Eduardo Marcel Macan]

Yes, I've been in a packaging mood lately :)

I'd like to have Tk707 packaged. Tk707 is a software clone of the
Roland TR-707 rhythm composer, a drum machine.

It is written in C and Tk and it uses the alsa sequencer. I am using
it together with the latest alsa modules and lib (compiled from source)
so I'd need someone who uses the alsa drivers provided in woody to help
me get dependencies right and test it.

I am also using timidity++ as an alsa server doing software wavetable
synthesis compiled from sources, the debian package was not compiled
with this option. It would be nice if we had this option enabled in
timidity++ or a timidity-alsa package. (I haven't checked to see if
this was done lately).

alsa + timidity makes it possible do create really good sounding music
without having an expensive sound card. Jazz++ can also use alsa and 
timidity.  If we had alsa, timidity and jazz++ into debian enabled to
work together we would provide an almost complete MIDI music composition
environtment.

Someone tried to get jazz++ packaged (again) a while ago but I
have not seen it in unstable nor any news from the person trying to
do it...

Regards,

Eduardo.

Re: Using normalize from another program [was Re: ITP: normalize]

[Eduardo Marcel Macan]

On Wed, Jan 03, 2001 at 10:59:18AM -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Hey, this looks spiffy. I have something of a usage question though, in
> regards to the 'gender' (distributed ripper/encoder) program I'm
> scripting. I'd LIKE to add audio normalisation as an option, but since
> ripping and encoding tasks happen concurrently and asynchronously (but
> with file locking) I'm not at all sure how to handle a sane
> normalisation default, or even if there IS such a beast.

Normalization has to take into account the maximum amplitude each 
wave reaches before scaling each value down or up to the desired level.

normalize computes the power of each small block of the the sound file
in RMS (Richard Matthew Stallmans , sorry, I couldn't resist :) :) :) )
looking for the highest value so all blocks can be proportionally scaled.

So, there is no way to have normalization ocurring concurrently
to acquisition of the sound and encoding. You'll have to record everything
first, then normalize everything and then encode the normalized file.
It is not possible to do normalization through a pipe, for an
example.

You can normalize each file to a predefined aplitude value so you can
do it once each file was "ripped" instead of doing normalization in batch
mode. The author of normalize chose from his experience 0.25 dB to be a
good power default.

I use this default to record my CDs (made out of my own midi files and 
mods mostly) and I am glad with it.

> 
> -- Ferret
> 

ITP: normalize

[Eduardo Marcel Macan]

Normalize is a nice program that adjusts volume levels of a bunch
of wav files, it is very useful when you want to make audio CDs from 
audio recorded from multiple sources for an example. sox provides volume 
level adjusting , but normalize presents us with an easier to use interface,
and can adjust levels based on the average level of a set of wav files 
among other useful characteristics.

.deb is ready and if no one objects I'll upload it as soon as I can.

normalize home page is at:

http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~cvaill/normalize/

Regards,

Eduardo
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Is someone working on Jazz++ ?

[Eduardo Marcel Macan]

Hello, I noticed Jazz++ (www.jazzware.com) is now released under
the GPL, is there anyone working on it? Unfortunately I don't have the time
to do it, but I'd like to see it packaged. It is the best linux midi sequencer
nowadays.

Regards,

-- 
Eduardo Marcel Maçan<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Colégio Bandeiranteshttp://www.colband.com.br

bootpd/tftpd bug

[Eduardo Marcel Macan]

I have only noticed it on a slink machine, I ask someone who has 
potatoes to test it too...

I am configuring one machine as a boot server in order to install
Debian in a PowerPC (IBM 43P) I have here, but one strange thing is happening.

bootpd gets the request and sends the machine an IP number ok, and
tells it that the file to get is "/rescue2200prep.bin" (notice the slash).
but when it asks tftp to send "/rescue2200prep.bin" it gets an "access
violation", if I manually invoke a tftp session and ask for 
"rescue2200prep.bin" it comes right.

The problem is that there is no way of preventing bootpd from adding 
the slash to the bootfile name, neither making tftpd accept the slash (it
does not accept it for security reasons I think).

I looked at the bug database and it seems that noone reported 
such thing before, maybe it can be in potato too. If so, I can file 
a bug report (against netstd).

Regards,

--macan

Re: Some developers still using slink?

[Eduardo Marcel Macan]

On Tue, Oct 05, 1999 at 11:00:46AM +0100, Edward Betts wrote:
> Santiago Vila <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > As a general rule, as long as you can run the result in potato without
> > using oldlibs packages, it should be fine. [ Personal note: Most of the
> > packages I maintain depend on libc6 and nothing more. For this reason I
> > have not upgraded to potato yet. This way my uploads are usable by both
> > slink and potato users ].

The same happening to me.

> So how many other developers are not using unstable? Is everybody have going
> to produced glibc 2.1 packages by the time potato ships? When do people plan
> to change? During the freeze? Just before?
> 

I used to have two partitions, one with stable (for my daily work)
and another with unstable (for developer work) but my daily work demanded
the other partition :(

Since I do not have a spare computer/disk at the moment, I plan on
upgrading just after the release. If I get a new disk/computer berfore that,
It will use potato from scratch. Wait, I just received a used PowerPC, an
IBM 43P, hmmm...  can I install Debian for ppc there? :) (it arrived while
I was writing this messsage :D )

Regards,

--macan

Re: Funding for a Crazy Idea

[Eduardo Marcel Macan]

On Fri, Sep 24, 1999 at 01:31:58PM -0700, Joey Hess wrote:
> Helen McCall wrote:
> > In the meanwhile; If you are prepared to accept funding from such a
> > source, there is always NATO. They fund many such things if they are
> > giving good participation to what NATO calls "Sensitive Areas".
> 
> Weird.
> 
> > Such areas include Portugal, Greece, Turkey, etc. Do you have any
> > developers in these countries? A full list of such countries can be
> > obtained from the NATO web site (forgotten the address).
> 
> I'd be suprised if we don't, but I don't really know offhand. Anyone?

Well I live in Brazil, its not Portugal, but we speak portuguese
too :)

--macan

FreeHow to check for free space in perl?

[Eduardo Marcel Macan]

I am trying to  write a perl script that needs to make some
calculation based on free space in several partitions. What's the best
method for checking the free space in a file system using perl? Without
using backticks and unix commands, is there any better mean to do it?

--
Eduardo Marcel MacanCore Technologies Informatica LTDA
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   Suporte e Desenvolvimento Unix/Linux. 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   Debian GNU/Linux Developer
Visite-nos em http://thecore.com.br

Where does 'www-data' come from?

[Eduardo Marcel Macan]

We seem to have a ever-standing bug against postgresql saying we
cannot have a user called www-data accessing databases (postgresql
complains about the '-' in the name, it looks like it is not a valid char
for postgresql usernames at all). Since I have been making kludges in
several scripts a client of mine has for them to work on debian+Pg I
started to wonder... Where does the name "www-data" come from? IS there any
argument against 'www' ?

See, I am not suggesting that we change the username to solve the
postgres problem, this would solve this problem, but not THE problem with
postgres. I am just wondering why it is not called just 'www'.

--
Eduardo Marcel MacanCore Technologies Informatica LTDA
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   Suporte e Desenvolvimento Unix/Linux. 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   Debian GNU/Linux Developer
Visite-nos em http://thecore.com.br

Who's root on Master?

[Eduardo Marcel Macan]

Hello, I need to have my password changed in master, who is in
charge of maintaining the user accounts there?

thanks,
-- 
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'
  +---Eduardo-Marcel-Macan---+   these opinions 
+---+
 /  [EMAIL PROTECTED] /   are mine, not   /  ,,umop apisdn w,I,, 
/ 
+--+   my employer's   +---+


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