Re: multi-tarball packages in version control

[Jon Dowland]

On Sat, Feb 16, 2013 at 09:57:16AM +0100, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
> The only problem is that svn-buildpackage does not support this. Or
> rather: it should have, but a long standing bug (with a partial fix
> attached to it, to which the maintainer did not comment. But since
> uploaded one or two versions).

I recently tried the most recent patch from #585658 when looking at 'love',
another multi-source package, but it did not resolve the build failure for
me. In that situation, I gave up, used dpkg-source to extract/merge the
upstream tarballs, manually checked out ./debian, used debuild -i.svn
-I.svn and avoided svn-buildpackage altogether. But that was for one patch
on a package I don't regularly maintain, so I guess that doesn't scale.
(I should probably update the bug.)

If the patch is working for you, great! Sadly it's not comprehensive enough
to work in all situations yet.


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Re: packaging with git: automatic setup of remotes/upstream when cloning

[Jon Dowland]

I (used to) document the upstream branch location in debian/README.source.


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Re: Bug#700506: ITP: trinity -- A Linux System call fuzz tester

[Jon Dowland]

On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 11:37:03AM -0500, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> The chances of Trinity, the desktop environment, being packaged in Debian are
> very low.

That may be the case, but it may still confuse users regardless.


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Re: Go (golang) packaging, part 2

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Feb 06, 2013 at 09:23:02AM +, Neil Williams wrote:
> Then don't package Go at all and leave it entirely outside the realm of dpkg
> - no dependencies allowed in either direction, no files created outside
> /usr/local for any reason, no contamination of the apt or dpkg cache data. If
> what you want is complete separation, why is there even a long running thread
> on integration?

That's one possible solution, and a low-risk one at that. The others carry the
risk of doing the job badly, especially if there is not enough resource to
implement them going forwards.

> Then why bother discussing packaging Go if it isn't going to be packaged,
> it's just going to invent it's own little ghetto in /usr/local?

That seems pretty perjorative. The reason Go has "invented it's own little
ghetto" is to solve the distribution problem. The reason they want to solve it
is because, despite our best efforts, we haven't solved it. Pretending we have
done helps nobody. From Go's perspective, we are a bit player. There's a
pattern of misplaced arrogance and pride that permeates -devel from time to
time whenever difficult integration discussions come up (systemd included) that
really doesn't help. Let's not overstate our importance in the wider world, it
does not help us one bit. Step by step we'll just close our doors to the rest
of the Universe and slide further into irrelevance.

> If Go wants to be packaged, it complies by the requirements of packaging.

Go doesn't want anything: It's a programming language and environment, not a
sentient being. The authors of Go are probably not that bothered about it being
packaged, seeing as they've put energy into solving the distribution problem
themselves, at the same time making it more difficult to distribution-package.
The people who want to see it packaged are people who want to see Debian users
be able to conveniently interact with Go-land.


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Re: Go (golang) packaging, part 2

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 04:02:18PM -0500, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> For cpan there is even dh-make-perl.  The solution then is to make
> equivelant scripts for other languages.  The solution is NOT to use some
> other package installation system.

Although I've never used dh-make-perl myself, I'm lead to believe that it
is perhaps *the* most successful tool of its type (that is, of things that
create .debs from packages in an alternative repository system like CPAN,
gems, cabal, etc.), and that it works as reliably as it does (which as Russ
points out is not 100% by any means) by relying on data from CPAN. So it's
hard to use it as an argument against such external package systems.


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Re: Go (golang) packaging, part 2

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 12:38:16PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Using Debian packages is a *means*, not an *end*.  Sometimes in these
> discussions I think people lose sight of the fact that, at the end of the
> day, the goal is not to construct an elegantly consistent system composed
> of theoretically pure components.  That's a *preference*, but there's
> something that system is supposed to be *doing*, and we will do what we
> need to do in order to make the system functional.

And in particular, where a problem cannot be solved in pure Debian, I don't
want Debian to interfere with the bit of the solution that lives outside of
its domain. That may include not attempting to package/patch/alter/adjust
upstream systems like Go that have a different philosophical approach. The
worst case scenario IMHO is some people invest a lot of time to make the
Debianized-Go stuff quite divergent from upstream, people's expectations of
how things behave in Go-land are broken when they access Go-via-Debian, the
job is never quite complete and so we get extra bugs, and a new upstream
community relationship is marred. This is a much worse outcome than not
attempting to package Go at all, IMHO.

I guess I'd quite like the boundaries of responsibility to be very clear,
when I'm forced to have such boundaries.


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Re: Go (golang) packaging, part 2

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 03:20:08PM -0500, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 10:00:32AM +0000, Jon Dowland wrote:
> > As a Haskell developer, I find cabal much more convenient than nothing,
> > in the situation where the library I want is not packaged by Debian yet.
> > If I want my haskell libraries and programs to reach a wide audience, I
> > need to learn Cabal anyway.
> 
> If you are writing libraries to add to the language, then I don't consider
> you a normal developer using the language.

Well, my point stands if I were writing a mere Haskell user-oriented program
for that matter.

> You generally don't have to because things are in Debian archives already.

It can be a chicken and egg problem. I see .debs often when a repository does
exist (spotify, dropbox I think, google chrome) and many situations where a
repository does not (humble indie bundle)

> If you want bleeding edge, then you are not a normal user and you
> certainly aren't a system administrator that wants to keep a controlled
> system they can reproduce.

I must admit I'm losing touch of precisely what you are arguing here. I guess
it's not "everything that matters will be packaged with Debian" hence the
previous paragraph re: external apt repositories. Yet, I don't suppose you're
arguing that availability in an external apt repository is any guarantee of
quality (Or at least I hope you're not).  I don't think we're necessarily
talking about bleeding edge, either.  If something is not packaged in Debian,
it's not necessarily bleeding edge.

> I know dpkg --get-selections will tell me all the software installed on
> the system so I can do the same on another one.  If yet another package
> maanger gets involved I have to know about it and do something different
> to handle that.  That's not a good thing.

True. But you also lose lots of other information, such as what is marked
automatic, the contents of your debconf DB and corresponding changes in
/etc, non-corresponding changes in /etc… dpkg --get-selections is not and
has never been a solution to the problem you are describing.


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Re: Go (golang) packaging, part 2

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Feb 01, 2013 at 01:27:05PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> "Lennart Sorensen"  writes:
> > Not all C libraries are distributed from one central site and they
> > certainly don't expect you to use a central package installation system.
> 
> So much more the shame for C.  Those are *improvements* that Perl came up
> with (well, actually, that the TeX community came up with and Perl copied)
> that made the ecosystem much nicer.

On that note, Rusty Russell's "CCAN" is interesting:
http://ccodearchive.net/


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Re: Go (golang) packaging, part 2

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 06:46:35PM -0500, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> Absolutely.  As a user I have a nice package management system that I
> know how to use and which works well.  I don't need another one.

As a Haskell developer, I find cabal much more convenient than nothing,
in the situation where the library I want is not packaged by Debian yet.
If I want my haskell libraries and programs to reach a wide audience, I
need to learn Cabal anyway.

> It is not the job of a language developer to invent yet another bloody
> package distribution and installation system.

And yet they do, and so we need to manage it.

Remember that Debian does not just provide a package management system: it also
provides repositories and dictates what goes in them according to the DFSG.
Whilst adding new repositories is relatively simple for users (and growing in
popularity for upstreams), installing bare .deb files is still not a very
smooth process (although massively improved by e.g. gdebi these days)

From an upstream POV, they want their software in the hands of end users. They
don't want to have to learn and build a myriad of different package types
(.deb, .rpm, etc.) and crucially neither do we. In many cases they don't want
to have to wait for a distro to package their software for them either.

In the Go case, their users are people who might have a shell/web account but
not admin access on a shared host somewhere, running god knows what distro and
version, hence having a self-contained fat binary that is guaranteed to run
wherever libc is meets their goals.


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Bug#699158: ITP: squishyball -- audio sample comparison testing tool

[Jon Dowland]

Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
Owner: Jon Dowland 

* Package name: squishyball
  Version : 0.1~svn18785
  Upstream Author : Monty 
* URL : http://svn.xiph.org/trunk/squishyball/
* License : GPL
  Programming Lang: C
  Description : audio sample comparison testing tool

 squishyball is a simple command-line utility for performing
 double-blind A/B, A/B/X or X/X/Y (A/B/X with additional sample order
 randomisation) testing of audio samples on the command line.
 .
 The user specifies two input files to be compared and uses the
 keyboard during playback to flip between the randomized samples to
 perform on-the-fly comparisons.  After a predetermined number of
 trials, squishyball prints the trial results to stdout and exits.
 .
 squishyball can be used to help establish what lossy audio codec
 settings are optimal for a particular combination of user and
 audio equipment.


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Re: Linux Future

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 10:46:33AM +0100, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> You might find this useful:
> http://np237.livejournal.com/33449.html
> 
> I made this presentation in the hope to make such things easier to
> understand for the sysadmin.

Just for the record I found it a good read, and mentally have it bookmarked
for the next time I need it.


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Re: Bug#696006: ITP: tinyos -- operating system for sensor motes and embedded devices

[Jon Dowland]

Hi - we have/had some modules here at Newcastle University using TinyOS
and having it available in Debian may make it easier for us to deliver
the teaching in future. Thanks!

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Re: Bug#695897: ITP: corekeeper -- Core file centralizer and reaper

[Jon Dowland]

These have been forcemerged.

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Re: GFDL in main

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 01:04:22AM +0100, Jakub Wilk wrote:
> * Jakub Wilk , 2012-12-01, 12:10:
> >Any volunteers to file bugs?
> 
> I'll file them myself.

Please collect them together with a usertag to help others who
may wish to get involved.


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Re: dput-ng/1.1 in unstable

[Jon Dowland]

On Thu, Dec 06, 2012 at 01:02:29PM +0100, Arno Töll wrote:
> Hint: gpg --list-keys --with-colons --keyring
> /usr/share/keyrings/debian-keyring.gpg --no-default-keyring

No need, I have 'keyring /usr/share/keyrings/debian-keyring.gpg' in my
~/.gnupg/gpg.conf.

> Not sure though, why nion is listed with his old 1k key in the DD keyring.

Doesn't count until he is…


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Re: dput-ng/1.1 in unstable

[Jon Dowland]

On Thu, Dec 06, 2012 at 09:53:41AM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
> Anything less than the full fingerprint (8, 7 or whatever)

I hadn't noticed that 0xFEFACED was only 7 characters. That's cheating ☺

It might be worth noting that GPG does not accept less than 8 chars as an
argument prefixed by 0x

> $ gpg --list-keys 0xDEFACED
> gpg: error reading key: malformed user id

I've just learned that my key is uniquely identifyable by the last three
bytes within (and only within) the current debian-keyring

> $ gpg --list-keys --with-colons|grep AAA:
> pub:u:4096:1:0907409606AA:2009-09-14:::u:Jon Dowland 
> ::scESC:

Not that this information is particularly useful to me. (the '4096' bit
is serendipity too, since it's a 4096-bit RSA key.)

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Re: Packaging MATE for Debian

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Dec 03, 2012 at 02:06:03AM +0100, Adam Borowski wrote:
> You can use the upstream packaging, available at:
> deb http://packages.mate-desktop.org/repo/debian wheezy main

Thanks but I'm interested in possibly helping an effort to package MATE
in Debian, rather than run it myself.
 
> So from an _user_'s point of view, John Paul could just upload everything
> as-is and it'd be in a better shape than Gnome3 or XFCE already.  I don't
> know about packaging internals here so I can't offer this kind of help,
> though.

I think it's the packaging internals that I'm most likely to be able to
help with.

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Re: Packaging MATE for Debian

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Dec 03, 2012 at 03:39:03PM -0500, Jeremy Bicha wrote:
> What's so bad about evince that you need to use a forked version
> anyway? Or gnome-icon-theme, gnome-keyring, gnome-terminal, etc.

This is drifting off the topic at hand, please, take it to another
list if you want to continue down this line.

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Re: wheezy and gcc 4.3 (and maybe 4.5)

[Jon Dowland]

I feel your pain. I've tried to do much the same thing to diagnose old
kernel bugs. I recommend installing squeeze on a small root partition
entirely separately. (or older than squeeze if necessary)

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Re: Packaging MATE for Debian

[Jon Dowland]

On Sun, Dec 02, 2012 at 01:26:50PM +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> Hey,
> 
> On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 11:22:52AM +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> > I'd therefore like to ask if anyone here would be willing to help me
> > to get MATE into Debian for Jessie.
> 
> I'd like to ping back and see if there's anyone here who'd be
> interested in joining me to package MATE for Debian.

If there was a git repo to check out I'd be happy to test packages and do
some mild work, but not as a main commitment.


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Re: Candidates for removal from testing (2012-11-30)

[Jon Dowland]

Thanks for the update!

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Re: Really, about udev, not init sytsems

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 12:19:22PM +0100, Salvo Tomaselli wrote:
> I am using systemd on my laptop, i have a very default system configuration,
> (except that i compile my own kernel to avoid initrd)…
^^
> …if I, with a normal, standard desktop configuration 

I do not agree that reconfiguring your machine to avoid an initrd is a normal
standard desktop configuration. There's also several other things about your
setup which I would argue are not standard (see below)

> can find that many bugs in a software that is supposed to be extremely 
> stable, 
> how many bugs would people with more specific setups find in it?

Despite the fact we're in freeze and the focus of attention for maintainers
is to fix RC bugs and get wheezy out the door, ⅓ of the bugs you've submitted
have been fixed. That sounds pretty good to me!

It's also unfair to necessarily suggest that the three bugs you've filed are
bugs in systemd itself. They could be bugs in the packaging of systemd, bugs
in service files supplied by other packages, or bugs in other daemons that
are exposed by running systemd. I suppose they could also not be bugs at all.
That's certainly the maintainer's opinion for one of the ones you submitted.
You also say in another bug yourself "I know the bug is in wicd". I think
you are being pretty disingengous about systemd and your experiences.

(I've only briefly scanned over the three you have submitted: #694048¹, 
#661239² and #693522).

> So I honestly quite like systemd but I think it should be in alpha-testing 
> right now.

In Debian, that's essentially the situation right now. Nobody is arguing to
make systemd the default init today.

¹ Indicates you don't have libpam-systemd installed, which means you have set
  apt install recommends to "false": another deviation from "standard desktop
  configuration". Also the last maintainer mail on the bug says "This looks
  like a bug in the fetchmail init script".
² wicd? Another deviation from "standard desktop configuration"


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Re: Really, about udev, not init sytsems

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 12:55:13AM +0800, Thomas Goirand wrote:
> However, you are running Gentoo and rebuild your kernel, why would
> you bother with such thing as kernel modules and initrd? The thing is,
> many (most? all?) Gentoo user, as far as I understand (I'm not a
> Gentoo user), do not use kernel modules at all.

In that situation, you'd be posting to gentoo-dev.


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Re: the right bug severity in case of data corruption

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 05:29:20PM +, Jon Dowland wrote:
> > The following SHOULD be 0, 1, and 2 levels of quoting, first to last.
> 
> It was for me (Maildir)

Just rechecked, I'm wrong - the first line was quoted.


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Re: the right bug severity in case of data corruption

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 03:34:32PM +, Darren Salt wrote:
> Having just viewed the raw text of my message (as sent), there's one other
> little wrinkle which I already knew but had failed to consider and which
> makes testing of this useless: gpg handles any 'From ' lines itself in a
> reversible manner, using '- ' as the prefix.

Definitely reversible? How does it distinguish 'From ' from '- From' prior
to signing? Ad infinitum down the rabbit hole…

> The following SHOULD be 0, 1, and 2 levels of quoting, first to last.

It was for me (Maildir)


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Re: Really, about udev, not init sytsems

[Jon Dowland]

I had a half-drafted message to the same effect, but deleted it
earlier. Thanks Neil for speaking up. I have to say Thomas, many
recent messages from you across many threads, mostly on -devel
but also elsewhere, have seemed to have very little in the way
of polite, constructive content, advancing the state of the
various arguments taking place in Debian at the moment. I'd
really appreciate it if you could think twice before contributing
to the larger, more controversial threads going forward, and
only hit the 'send' button if what you're writing is novel, new,
and of interest to the rest of the Debian community (so not e.g.
a correction to a point in one other individual's message, of
interest really only to that individual, and not every other
developer.)


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Re: lib- prefix for non-library (was: Bug#693998: ITP: linux-minidisc -- Free software for accessing NetMD and HiMD MiniDisc devices)

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 05:41:35PM -0400, David Prévot wrote:
> Seems weird to see another non-library ending up in the pool/main/libr/
> directory of our archive (and yet another special case to handle for
> tools like deborphan). It would be nice to avoid the lib- prefix for
> non-library.

Nice, yes, but not nice is contorting package names away from upstream's
given name to work around a technical limitation in our pool structure/
package programs. Rightly or wrongly package names are still a key piece
of information used in user package discovery.


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Re: the right bug severity in case of data corruption

[Jon Dowland]

For anyone else following along at home who is slightly puzzled by all this,

explains the different mbox formats, what 'From_' means, etc.


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Re: Re: debian mate

[Jon Dowland]

On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 11:51:06PM +0100, Stefano Karapetsas wrote:
> > GNOME Classic is just as featureful and usable as GNOME Shell,
> > which makes it very suitable for a default desktop on non-3D machines.
> 
> But GNOME Fallback is going to be dropped soon.

I'm surprised nobody has talked about forking *that*.


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Re: debian mate

[Jon Dowland]

On 22 Nov 2012, at 15:57, Ian Jackson  wrote:

> So if you don't like that decision it should be escalated to the
> Technical Committee.

I'm surprised that *anyone* can refer issues to tech ctte. Has a non DD ever 
submitted something worthwhile?

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Re: New virtual packages: lv2-plugin and lv2-host

[Jon Dowland]

On 21 Nov 2012, at 17:27, Russ Allbery  wrote:

> don't know if Ian is, but I certainly would.  We have a bunch of
> existing virtual packages that aren't really useful because they don't
> offer any sort of guaranteed interface, and therefore cannot be
> meaningfully used in package relationships (which is the whole point of a
> virtual package).

Hear hear. We recently hit this problem with vpkg boom-engine and vavoom.

I guess the "interface" that virtual packages provide should be defined 
somewhere, most likely in policy. Perhaps the .txt file needs to grow into 
something more structured. I'd be happy to make a start on a proof of concept 
if you agree. Is it best to take this to -policy list or is -devel ok for now?

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Re: debian mate

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 03:48:08PM +, Neil Williams wrote:
> MATE will not be in Wheezy and staying on Squeeze until Jessie is released is
> probably not suitable for most users.

It's quite likely that if MATE packages make it into Debian at all, they
will be provided in backports, so some users might end up doing

GNOME2/squeeze → MATE/wheezy/backports → MATE/jessie

> However, if people choose to migrate to XFCE instead of GNOME3, then a
> migration to a GNOME2-alike in Jessie isn't as hard

The Jury's out on that.


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Re: debian mate

[Jon Dowland]

Please stop top-posting.


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Re: Packaging MATE for Debian

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 11:22:52AM +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> I'd therefore like to ask if anyone here would be willing to help me
> to get MATE into Debian for Jessie.

As you know, there is already an effort to package MATE ongoing (at least
#658783).  The purpose of ITPs is to prevent people from duplicating each
others work. If you want to encourage others to join the effort, it might
be worth setting up a Debian packaging team (an Alioth project?), with a
corresponding mailing list, and documenting the team and the team's processes
on the Debian Wiki. That would make the fact there is a team that could be
joined more visible, and the rules of engagement clear.  Since it might be
a while before MATE packages are acceptable to be uploaded to Debian proper,
a separate package repository with the latest WIP packages is a good idea,
lowering the amount of effort for someone to try it out and get involved.

Also as you aren't the filer or owner of that ITP please make sure anything
you do is agreeable to the actual ITP owner.


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Re: debian mate

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 04:03:33AM +0100, Michael Schmitt wrote:
> So much for the general rules... but exceptions ARE possible! And I
> just try to make a case here about how important it might be!

IF you had a set of MATE packages all ready to go and you were asking
for a freeze exception for them, then the release team would be in a
position to consider an exception. But there are no such packages.
We're arguing hypotheticals (as we often do on -devel, to my eternal
dismay). There's still a lot of work to do in order to get MATE ready
for Debian.

I'm sorry, it's simply too late for wheezy. The last thing we want to
do is delay the release at this point. Long drawn out freezes are
horrendously demoralising for everyone. It's important we get wheezy
out in a timely fashion.


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systemd (was Re: Gentoo guys starting a fork of udev)

[Jon Dowland]

Hi - please change the Subject: of the thread if the topic of conversation
has moved on. (We're all guilty of not doing this enough…)

On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 12:07:29AM -0600, Kevin Toppins wrote:
snip 32 line preamble

I realise your intentions are good, here, but please, it is not much help.
Writing  concise and to-the-point messages is the best way to communicate
on a list like this.

> Please don't answer with a reference to read some kind of
> documentation.

Sadly it is obvious from the rest of this message that you are not up
to speed on the topic here. If you want to usefully contribute to the
topic, at a very least you should familiarise yourself with the prior
threads about systemd to debian-devel. At a very, bare-minimum least.
It would then of course be polite to other thread participants to make
sure you are at least up to speed on what systemd is and how it works…

> I think it is categorically important to *identify* and *convey to the
> community*...
> 
>  -> What role is systemd designed to facilitate?

>  -> Do we know why we want to prevent a process from forking?

This is something that pretty much goes without saying, if you are
familiar with the technology which underpins what we're talking about.
 
>  -> Let's hypothetically decide to prevent a fork on some conditional
> basis (as opposed to no forks at all).is it systemd's
> responsibility, or would that fall to the responsibility of the linux
> kernel?

It's the init systems responsibility. Systemd's implementation relies on
a kernel feature to work (cgroups). The division of responsibility seems
very sensible here.

>  -> If simply checking that the daemon's permissions were set
> correctly before execution would solve this problem, then it would
> make sense that a system redesign need not be in order.

It wouldn't. The UNIX permission model does not address this problem.

>  -> Enforcing permissions is the responsibility of the linux kernel.  Not
>  systemd.
snip
> Why should this model be changed, and why should systemd enter into the
> authority architecture of the system?

It isn't being changed. Systemd uses a kernel feature (cgroups) to achieve
this. What you have written makes no sense.  It's the kernel's job to
enforce traditional UNIX permissions, but you need userland software
like chmod to actually manipulate them.

>  -> Establishing and maintaining the permissions is the responsibility
snip
>  -> POSIX capabilities is already in place to prevent/hamper runaway
snip

These questions are based on your flawed understanding of the relationship
between the kernel, systemd and cgroups, my reply above essentially covers
these.
 
> Well what if some modifications to the init scripts where made
> something along the lines of
snip, and
> Why not just modify _autofs_ to check upon startup

Here we go. You're saying "I acknowledge feature X as useful. Instead of
moving from existing software A, lacking feature X, to existing software B with
feature X, let's alter software A to incorporate feature X".

Oddly enough the authors of systemd decided against that route, as did the
authors of upstart. It is no good us arguing hypotheticals. You or anyone else
who favours this approach, go away and actually implement this stuff in
sysvinit, and then when you can show that it works, we can debate along these
lines. But I tell you, the upstart and systemd authors are not idiots.  Nor the
openrc people, nor the authors of a half-dozen other init replacements.  If
this was a feasible way forward, perhaps one of these enlightened engineers
would have done it?  In all honesty the one thing I don't think is up for 
debate anymore is that sysvinit needs to be replaced if we are to benefit from
these newer features.

> And more importantly. why should systemd be involved in this? What
> does systemd do that the daemon's launch routine cannot accommodate?

You need to read up on what systemd does.

> Why should systemd be involved in this? Not everybody has a need for
> autofs, likewise, not everybody should need systemd to handle a
> problem with autofs for autofs/them.

You're half baked suggestions for sysvinit and autofs are the first steps
on the road to writing systemd again. What's becoming clearer and clearer
in your message is that what you object to in systemd is not what it does
or how it does it (which you don't understand) but simply the name itself.
You are a victim of the anti-hype.
 
> First the data in the volume won't be available until the fsck
> completes, so the server won't be able to give the data any faster
> than it takes to fsck the volume. Minimum time limit, unless you have
> a new filesystem check design to get around this, that is a rather
> unchangeable wait time until you can *serve* the data You might
> investigate why fsck takes the time it does and how could fsck be made
> faster.

Having the server up even if the data partition is not ready yet can be
useful in many situations. Not leas

Re: debian mate

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 06:37:48PM +0100, Michael Schmitt wrote:
> And whatever they or anybody else does in that regard, it will come
> to late for wheezy.

All of MATE will come too late for Wheezy. It's already too late for
Wheezy.


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Re: Fwd: procenv_0.9-1_source.changes REJECTED

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 11:10:37AM +, Dmitrijs Ledkovs wrote:
> I currently do not have facilities to build the package in question
> with the host running Debian's kernel.

So how can you prove that the package builds?


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Re: Gentoo guys starting a fork of udev

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 01:25:38PM -0600, Steve Langasek wrote:
>   "The core components are always built (which includes systemd itself, as
>   well as udevd and journald).
> 
>   For some uses the configure switches do not provide sufficient modularity. 
>   For example, they cannot be used to build only the man pages, or to build
>   only the tmpfiles tool or udevd."
> 
> I always have the feeling that everyone who is zealously advocating systemd
> simply didn't read the documentation first.

>From what I understand, the sentence above is assuming you are running "make".
Their makefile is well specified, so you can just build udevd by running "make
udevd". However, I have yet to see (and haven't tried) how easy it would be to
actually build all of the udev components from the sysemd source in the context
of a package. I.e., you could not rely on the output of "make install" putting
the files you need into a given directory, I think you'd need to cherry-pick
the files you *know* you need for udev, and tracking that set and changes to it
may prove a real pain.

(I think Matthias tried to make the same point, but I couldn't parse
his email.)


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Re: RFC on MBF (non-freeness of "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil")

[Jon Dowland]

user j...@debian.org
usertags 692614 + good-not-evil
usertags 692619 + good-not-evil
usertags 692624 + good-not-evil
usertags 692625 + good-not-evil
usertags 692627 + good-not-evil
usertags 692628 + good-not-evil
usertags 692629 + good-not-evil
usertags 692630 + good-not-evil
usertags 692631 + good-not-evil
usertags 692613 + good-not-evil
usertags 692615 + good-not-evil
usertags 692626 + good-not-evil
usertags 692621 + good-not-evil
thanks

On Fri, Nov 09, 2012 at 04:25:43PM +, Jon Dowland wrote:
> I've found one of these - #692614 - is the whole set collected together
> under a common usertag or similar?

I couldn't find one so I created one, above, using the list of bugs
Neil found for his wheezy-ignore tagging. Please let me know, and 
the release team probably, if we've missed one, and please use usertags
in future to collect together bugs under a single MBF.


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please change subject / trim accordingly (was Re: major linux problems summary 2012)

[Jon Dowland]

Every post to this thread makes my heart that little bit heavier.

Can participants please

  a) consider whether this is on topic to -devel and move to -user if
 not;
  b) trim quotes appropriately;
  c) change Subject: when the subject under discussion changes

Thanks in advance.


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Re: Bug#692894: ITP: plum -- plum is a command line tool used to interact with the U-Boot netconsole of any LaCie product

[Jon Dowland]

On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 03:51:53PM +, Neil Williams wrote:
> lucie-uboot
> 
> lucie-uboot-netconsole

If upstream refer to it as 'plum', then eradicating plum from the package
name entirely isn't sensible.


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Re: Bug#692830: ITP: nemo -- File manager for cinnamon

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Nov 09, 2012 at 05:27:03PM +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> Yes, that's correct. But that's only one of the points of my
> criticism. I am in general not very much convinced by the quality of
> the packages in Linux Mint.

Neither am I. I did look at cinnamon and muffin briefly, saw many of the same
issues you describe for mdm (muffin a regex-change-only version of mutter) and
I couldn't see the point of muffin at all (why couldn't cinnamon be a client
of mutter?) plus lots of copyright and documentation issues. However I expect
things will improve given time, and/or input from people who care (Debian
packagers).


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Re: RFC on MBF (non-freeness of "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil")

[Jon Dowland]

CCing Ansgar

On Thu, Nov 08, 2012 at 04:25:51PM +0100, Leo 'costela' Antunes wrote:
> Ansgar has recently made an MBF against all packages including the
> problematic JSON license term "The Software shall be used for Good, not
> Evil".

I've found one of these - #692614 - is the whole set collected together
under a common usertag or similar?


Thanks!


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Re: Bug#692830: ITP: nemo -- File manager for cinnamon

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Nov 09, 2012 at 05:06:57PM +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> I don't think it is currently a sensible decision to introduce
> duplicate GNOME3 packages into Debian. Nautilus 3.4 is currently
> available through GNOME3, so this would introduce redundancy.

wheezy will have 3.4 but 3.6 is already in experimental. So uploads
targetting experimental only until post-freeze should address your
concern.


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Re: Bits from the release team - Freeze update

[Jon Dowland]

On Thu, Nov 08, 2012 at 07:21:30PM +, Neil McGovern wrote:
> Apologies for the lack of clarity in the d-d-a posting - the new
> acceptance criteria are for unblocks filed after 11:54:49 + today.

No problem - thanks for the clarification!


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Re: Bits from the release team - Freeze update

[Jon Dowland]

On Thu, Nov 08, 2012 at 08:29:02PM +0100, Benjamin Drung wrote:
> Hm, I filed two unblock requests after that deadline, but before reading
> the announce mail about it.

You don't state whether the decision impacts them or not, but so it goes…


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Re: RFC on MBF (non-freeness of "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil")

[Jon Dowland]

On Thu, Nov 08, 2012 at 07:13:45PM +0100, Holger Levsen wrote:
> On Donnerstag, 8. November 2012, Jakub Wilk wrote:
> > As far as I can see Mr Crockford _enjoys_ being asked to change his
> > license. So no, please don't feed the troll.
> 
> As much as I think this licence is stupid (from my free software point of 
> view), I don't think he should be called a troll, just because he likes 
> his users to do good - even if only by his own definition.

I seem to recall reading something Crockford wrote about people who wanted
him to change their license, and coming to the same conclusion as Jakub had,
that Crockford was perpetuating the license purely to troll. However, I've
just tried to find whatever it was I read, and I can't: I can only find him
(famously) discussing the issue and how he granted a license exception to
IBM (jsonsaga.ppt and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=763165), which is
not enough for me to come to the same conclusion. Maybe I'm mis-remembering.


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Re: Bits from the release team - Freeze update

[Jon Dowland]

On Thu, Nov 08, 2012 at 10:40:18PM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
> Which policy applies to #685913 (and all the other open unblocks)? The
> policy announced at the beginning of the freeze or the current policy?

…or the time the unblock was filed?


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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: Intel/AMD x86 CPU microcode update system in non-free

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Nov 05, 2012 at 06:12:53PM -0200, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> Microcode updates will be applied immediately when the microcode
> packages are installed or updated: you don't have to reboot.  You will
> have to keep the packages installed, though: as explained above, the
> microcode updates have to be reapplied at every boot.
> 
> You can check which version of the microcode your processors are running
> by looking for "microcode" lines on /proc/cpuinfo.  This information is
> only available on recent kernels (such as the Wheezy kernel).

This did not appear to work for me automatically. I did not upgrade my kernel
in the same aptitude session.

Before: 

> $ grep microcode /proc/cpuinfo
> microcode : 0x1b

After installing intel-microcode and iucode-tool 0.8.3-1:

> $ grep microcode /proc/cpuinfo
> microcode : 0x1b

After some manual fiddling

> # iucode_tool --scan-system -vv
> iucode_tool: cpuid kernel driver unavailable, cannot scan system processor 
> signatures
> # modprobe cpuid
> # iucode_tool --scan-system -vv
> iucode_tool: trying to get CPUID information from /dev/cpu/0/cpuid
> iucode_tool: system has processor(s) with signature 0x000206a7
> iucode_tool: trying to get CPUID information from /dev/cpu/1/cpuid
> iucode_tool: trying to get CPUID information from /dev/cpu/2/cpuid
> iucode_tool: trying to get CPUID information from /dev/cpu/3/cpuid
> iucode_tool: checked the signature of 4 processor(s)
> $ grep microcode /proc/cpuinfo
> microcode : 0x28
> $ dpkg -S /boot/vmlinuz-$(uname -r)
> linux-image-3.2.0-4-amd64: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-4-amd64
> ii  udev   175-7amd64/dev/ and hotplug management daem

Shall I file a bug?


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Re: Candidates for removal from testing (2012-10-30)

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 04:53:24PM +0100, Jerome BENOIT wrote:
> does it make sense to establish a list of candidates for reintroduction to 
> testing ?

Is this not something best managed on a case-by-case basis?


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Re: Bug#691624: ITP: dput-ng -- next generation Debian package upload tool

[Jon Dowland]

On Sun, Oct 28, 2012 at 08:03:02AM +0100, Philipp Kern wrote:
> I'd prefer if such a tool could replace an existing one. Why not aim at
> replacing dput if there's a reason for it?

I must concur. I can't see the reason for dput, dupload and dput-ng to
co-exist. If dput-ng has the momentum and is a superset of the features of the
previous two we should remove the previous two. I use the royal 'we', too often
we hide behind our package-centric view of the world ("package A is not
actively maintained. Package B reimplements it. Removing Package A is inactive
maintainer C's problem.").  But having a plethora of
similar-but-slightly-different tools to do the same job increase the surface
area of stuff for beginners to navigate through and makes it that much harder
for contributors to get a handle on things.


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Re: Bug#691624: ITP: dput-ng -- next generation Debian package upload tool

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 03:53:42PM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> Wrong. It will be a new thing, not related to the previous thing.

It's evidently related: if not in terms of actual reused code but in terms
of who is expected to use it and what it is to be used for.

> On Sun, Oct 28, 2012 at 01:19:31PM -0400, Michael Gilbert wrote:
> > I don't see the harm in calling things what they actually are.
> 
> It's rude.

In your opinion. I disagree.


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Re: Bugs filed in unexpected places

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 07:39:52PM +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Vi, 26 oct 12, 15:38:03, Thibaut Paumard wrote:
> > 
> > it is currently showed in the PTS: e.g.
> > http://packages.qa.debian.org/a/alevt.html:
> > "problems
> 
> How many non-DDs/DMs do you think are aware of the PTS? My guess is: not 
> that many. IMVHO the BTS is much more visible, especially to users who 
> do take the time to report bugs.

How about how many non-DDs/DMs are aware of wnpp, versus the processed result
of it (http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp - which is not the same as b.d.o/wnpp,
and could be auto-generated from e.g. a usertag or top-level tag just as easily
as from b.d.o/wnpp)


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Re: Candidates for removal from testing (results)

[Jon Dowland]

Great stuff, thanks!


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Re: (seemingly) declinging bug report numbers

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 02:53:43AM +0200, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote:
> Then again,... I wonder why Ubuntu exists, if they allegedly anyway want
> their changes into Debian.
> And still sounds like a fork in a respect that forks usually don't
> change everything.
> 
> But I mean that discussion doesn't help... the question in the end will
> rather be, is Ubuntu becoming a thread to Debian (which it easily can by
> being more of a hype, by having commerical background, by focusing
> pretty much on what's "cool" like tablets and so on)... IMHO there are
> at least some sings for this.

Such things have been endlessly discussed ever since Ubuntu was first released,
eight years ago. I agree with you that discussion doesn't help here :)


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Re: Report from the BSP in Alcester, GB

[Jon Dowland]

Great work, thanks all!

Did you usertag any of the bugs you closed in that party? It would be kind-of
interesting to see them. Does anyone else think that might be useful (either
now or in future?) I suppose I could just scan debian-bugs-dist for the time
period.


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Re: Popularity of bzr-builddeb and dh-make

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 04:03:53PM +1100, Craig Small wrote:
> Steve with his years of packaging experience is not probably a good
> sample of one to base this upon. I'd be curious to see if newer
> packagers use it or not.

I don't bother with dh-make anymore. Like Steve the (mixed-case! Argh!) .ex
(.EX) files just get on my nerves. A dh7+ rules file I can type from memory
now and that just leaves the minor convenience of having the control file
stanzas written out.


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Re: Out of Date Package and Maintainer Absence

[Jon Dowland]

On Thu, Oct 04, 2012 at 09:54:05AM +0200, Arno Töll wrote:
> It is very unlikely they would unblock a package with major changes such
> as a new upstream version. Not to say Vincent should not work on it, but
> it won't be in time for Wheezy.

Yes, agreed. There is the small-print reason that the existing version is
long unsupported by upstream, but it would be the release team's call, and
I agree that it is vanishingly unlikely. The work is worthwhile either way.


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Re: Out of Date Package and Maintainer Absence

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Oct 03, 2012 at 10:27:22PM -0700, Vincent W. Chen wrote:
> I am willing to co-maintain the package with Manoj, or even maintain
> it by myself if he's no longer interested in dealing with it. But
> since there has been no reply from him I now turn to the list: any
> suggestion on what I should do now, or what I should have done?

You should start preparing a newer version of the package, making as few
changes to the packaging decisions made by Manoj (e.g. stick with pre-dh
debhelper if that's what he's using; don't introduce cdbs or other packaging
helper tools if they aren't already in use; stick to the VCS he's using, etc.)
and putting your WIP somewhere public, both as a repo that can be cloned and
attach a patch to the bug. Tag the bug 'patch', too.  That way, we are talking
in concrete, not abstract terms. Debian is a 'do-ocracy'.

As for getting it into wheezy: I don't think odds are particularly high, but
the release team will need to see a newer version of the package in order to
decide whether to grant a freeze exception or not.


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Re: Comments+blank line in debian/control: Clarification in policy or MBF?

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Oct 01, 2012 at 02:25:36PM +0100, Michael Tautschnig wrote:
> - the problem affects all packages *build-depending* on gnome-pkg-tools, thus
>   I'd actually have to do an MBF (it's more than 160 packages)

It would be worth looking at a) whether those 160 packages have a common 
maintainer,
e.g. the Debian GNOME team, and b) whether those 160 packages have a VCS in 
common.
It might be something that can be simply fixed with a single commit, in which 
case
the beaurocracy of 160 bugs filed and then closed again would not be worth it 
IMHO.


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Re: Bug#687103: ITP: maps -- OpenStreetMap client for the GNOME Desktop

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 11:08:31AM +1200, Chris Bannister wrote:
> If it pulls in half of GNOME when you install it, its nice to have the
> name "gnome" in there somewhere.

Well I disagree, but either way, it doesn't¹:

> Depends: ${misc:Depends},
>  ${python:Depends},
>  gir1.2-champlain-0.12,
>  gir1.2-gtkchamplain-0.12,
>  gir1.2-gtk-3.0,
>  gir1.2-glib-2.0,
>  gir1.2-clutter-1.0,
>  gir1.2-gdkpixbuf-2.0,
>  python-lxml,
>  gir1.2-gtkclutter-1.0

I don't see 'libgnome' anywhere.

¹ http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~sigurdga/maps/master/view/head:/debian/control


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Re: Comments on Mate DE

[Jon Dowland]

That's not really of any interest to -devel, and I guess you're quoting
info from private mail here. Please let's keep this list useful.


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Re: status of eligibility of dug lists on lists.debian.org

[Jon Dowland]

Personally, I think l.d.o would be an appropriate home for such things, but I
believe the decision is one for the list server admins. Having said that, I
think efforts are underway so that the alioth-hosted lists are moved to the
l.d.o infrastructure, precicely because it is recognised that running multiple
list servers across the Debian community is counter-productive. IMHO the same
reasoning applies here, but it is for the list admins to say authoratively.


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Re: Comments on Mate DE

[Jon Dowland]

Hello,

Thank you for your mail.

The reason MATE is not in Debian is that nobody has put the work in to make it
so. In Debian, things happen thanks to developers putting effort in, usually in
their spare time.  Whilst it's true that some people believe MATE should not be
included in Debian, they do so for technical reasons, not religious ones - and
they won't prevent it being included so long as people are prepared to put the
work in.

Some people have started to put the work in - see 
.
However the timing is such that it will not be included in the next Debian 
stable
release. It might make the one after that…


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Re: CD1 without a network mirror isn't sufficient to install a full desktop environment

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 09:08:23PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> I'm so tired of these gnome2 vs gnome3 discussions...

Stop proliferating them then! They are orthogonal to the point of
this thread, and you will never shout down all the people who disagree
with your point of view.


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Re: Bug#688066: ITP: rex -- What do you want to deploy today?

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 10:52:29PM +0200, Mike Gabriel wrote:
>   Description : What do you want to deploy today?

A better short description is needed here. In a nutshell, what
does it do?


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Re: Creating and use Virtual IP Interfaces

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 09:33:41AM +, Pietro Paolini wrote:
> I am not really sure this is the correct newsletter  for  my question, if not 
> please apologize me and suggest me a right newsletter, thanks.

It isn't - please try debian-user: 


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Re: CD1 without a network mirror isn't sufficient to install a full desktop environment

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 12:45:36PM +0300, Serge wrote:
> There's no need to walk through the minefield, it's already done.
> Fedora lost more than half of the user base with the Fedora 15
> release (GNOME3 and systemd).

[citation-needed]

> They now bring GNOME2 back. [1] :)
> 
> [1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/MATE-Desktop

MATE is not GNOME2, it's a fork of GNOME2, and there's no indication
that they are planning to offer it as default, which is what we're discussing
here.


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Re: Bug#687624: ITP: libdvdcss-pkg -- automated installer for libdvdcss

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 01:26:19PM +0100, Simon McVittie wrote:
> game-data-packager, although that one is a bit different: it supports a
> relatively large number of game-data packages, and most of the data it
> works on is not freely downloadable, so it often has to support building
> "the same" package from various different releases (American vs.
> European publisher, original version vs. budget re-release, etc.) in
> order to support the particular disk/CD/DVD that a user owns.

Indeed - I had envisaged game-data-packager growing into 'data-packager' at
some point.

The design was initially inspired by java-package, which IMHO was a better
solution than run-as-root postinst (the flash installer method, and the one
OP is proposing in this ITP).  java-package since disappeared, as the sun
java's could be packaged; that situation has sadly regressed so perhaps
there's call for java support in (game-)data-packager once again.

In this case, however, it seems as easy to install libdvdcss from
debian-multimedia than to have hacks to build it from source. The hacky
package would have to live in contrib anyway, so it's still not in Debian.


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Re: Bug#687103: ITP: maps -- OpenStreetMap client for the GNOME Desktop

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 12:03:33PM +0200, Jean-Christophe Dubacq wrote:
> Let's acknowledge that the gnome-* prefix means "to be used mostly in
> the GNOME Desktop environment" and not "officially endorsed by GNOME".
> Or something like that.

We need to distinguish between what the situation is now, and what we think
the situation should be.  I believe 'gnome' should only be used by things
which are part of the GNOME project, but I haven't done any researhc into
how widespread the problem is, nor have I discussed it with the GNOME team,
nor have I proposed it as a release goal for wheezy+1.  Perhaps I (or we,
or someone) should start this work before compounding the problem.


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Re: CD1 without a network mirror isn't sufficient to install a full desktop environment

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 01:06:22PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> I have encountered numerous people who have been complained (not in
> particular to me, just i general) about changes to GNOME.  Not being a
> GNOME user myself I don't really appreciate these complaints.
> However, I have observed that these complainants have generally been
> told by their peers to switch to xfce and been broadly satisfied with
> the results.
> 
> I haven't seen anyone in my social circles praise these changes as
> good for them.
> 
> Based on this, I think there is at the very least no reason to
> reverse the decision to switch the Debian default to xfce.

There is not a single Debian release with the version that is being complained
about. Therefore the audience of stable have not yet tried it, and you're
drawing conclusions from the anecdotes of a sample of users who may not be
representative of our (stable) users.

I feel that the decision to change from GNOME to something else, on the
basis of complaints about GNOME 3, should only be considered after we've
actually released with at least one version of GNOME 3.


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Re: Bug#687001: ITP: optional-dev -- fake (empty) dev package

[Jon Dowland]

On Sat, Sep 08, 2012 at 10:01:17PM +1000, Dmitry Smirnov wrote:
> When building for as many architectures as we have, situation when some 
> dependencies are missing (or can't exist) on some architectures is not rare.
> 
> However we still want to build our packages with all features possible.

You should have two (or more) binary targets, each of which excludes the 
architecture(s) that do not support the particular feature. E.g. if baz is
not available on hurd:

Package: foo
Architecture: any !hurd
Build-Depends: bar libbaz-dev

(I forget the precise syntax for excluding an arch here)
and

Package: foo-hurd
Build-Depends: bar
Architecture: hurd

Or possibly in some circumstances

Package: foo-minimal
Build-Depends: bar
Architecture: any

…where foo without baz might be useful for someone on any architecture.

Explain the differences clearly in the package long description.


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Re: Bug#687103: ITP: maps -- OpenStreetMap client for the GNOME Desktop

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 06:45:42AM +0200, martin f krafft wrote:
> also sprach Luca Capello  [2012.09.09.2029 +0200]:
> > Or, if this is tightened to OSM, 'gnome-osm-maps'.
> 
> except the 'm' on "osm" is already a "map", so maybe osm-client.

I like dropping 'gnome', and not doubling-up map, but osm may not
be clear enough to those who aren't intimately involved, how about
openstreetmap-client?


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Re: Bug#687103: ITP: maps -- OpenStreetMap client for the GNOME Desktop

[Jon Dowland]

On Sun, Sep 09, 2012 at 10:42:35PM +0200, Alessio Treglia wrote:
> OK,
> 
> so let's go on picking 'gnome-osm-maps'.
> 
> Thank you all folks!

No, one package in the archive with a misleading name doesn't mean
we should have more! See also: gnuplot, not related to GNU, and no
doubt many more.


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Re: Bug#686903: RFP: pass -- the standard unix password manager

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Sep 07, 2012 at 04:11:25AM +0200, Jason A. Donenfeld wrote:
> Subject: Re: Bug#686903: RFP: pass -- the standard unix password manager

I realise this text comes from upstream, but "the standard unix password
manager" is IMHO misleading for this program. "A unix password manager" is more
accurate. UNIX seems superfluous though, perhaps "A password manager", or
something that describes the program, such as "A command-line password manager".


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Re: Enabling uscan to simply remove files from upstream source

[Jon Dowland]

On Sat, Aug 25, 2012 at 05:18:57PM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
> I also considered, but the information of what files are excluded when 
> creating
> the Debian source package is not relevant to upstream.
> 
> More simply, I think that if debian/watch would radically change its format to
> YAML or the Debian control data file syntax, it would be a good place for the
> Files-Excluded field.

The copyright file is, as the name suggests, for copyright information.

The watch file is, as the name suggests, for watching for upstream releases.

Can we please just have a new file for a new purpose, rather than overloading
ones that are succinct, single-purpose and consistent?

We can then pick a syntax that fits the problem, rathen than trying to bend and
contort one that doesn't.


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Re: Discussion of uscan enhancement 1 (Was: uscan enhancement take 3: script hook)

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Sep 05, 2012 at 09:04:19AM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
> the machine-readable format does not mention trailing slashes at the end
> of directory names, and refers to the -path test of the GNU find command,

Good. Having a trailing-slash be meaningful is very confusing. I especially
hate this with rsync, where I now use trailing-slash on dirs exclusively,
since I've memorized the behaviour when you do this and not when you don't.
It frustrates me because foo and foo/ might differ but they are both names
for the same thing - and the behaviour should not differ if the name for
the same thing differs IMHO.

> which will fail with trailing slashes.

I can understand why it would fail, since the argument to path is a pattern
rather than a filename, and it is compared against find's list of paths
which just so happen not to have trailing slashes. Having said that I wonder
if this behaviour could be considered buggy.


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Re: Minified javascript files

[Jon Dowland]

On Sat, Aug 25, 2012 at 12:27:02PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> 1) We have the source for the parts that we ship in binary packages, 
> yes. We do not, however, necessarily have the actual source for the 
> minified files unused for binary packages yet redistributed by us in 
> source tarballs: Just as with autotools files we generally do not verify 
> that these files has same source as the source we instead use for our 
> binary packages.

That's true; however, it's a source of *potential* bugs, rather than
definitely a bug in every such package, which is an improvement on the
view that they violate the DFSG, where that would be the case.


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Re: Stuff from /bin, /sbin, /lib depending on /usr/lib libraries

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 10:57:10PM +0800, Thomas Goirand wrote:
> On 08/31/2012 06:55 PM, Riku Voipio wrote:
> > How is that different from having a botched / or /boot ? Why do you
> > think having a separate /usr will make / less prone to HD crashes?
> > You have / on RAID5 while /usr isn't?
> >   
> 
> Typically, I have / on 2 small RAID1 partitions making the array on the
> first
> 2 HDD (1 or 2 gigs), and /usr on a LVM on a much, much larger RAID array
> (I use mostly software RAID1 and RAID10, but in some cases, much bigger
> hardware RAID5). So yes, that's my usual server setup.
> 
> Also, / is a partition on which almost nothing is read or written, while
> the others (eg: /usr, /var, /tmp, swap) are a lot more I/O intensive.
> Which means that / is less prone to failure. Often, the 2nd RAID
> array gets degraded, but / isn't. So it does make a lot of sense to
> setup things this way, and yes, / is less prone to HD crashes this
> way (I'm talking from 10 years of experience running about 100
> servers this way, so it's not just theory, it's very practical experience).

I'm struggling to understand this. In the situation you outline (/ ok,
/usr, /var, /tmp, swap on another RAID which is hosed) -- whatever service
the machine was offering is surely not being offered anymore (/ being too
small to be useful for anything except a rescue environment).  So / surviving
whilst all your services/data are dead doesn't seem to be a big win to me at
all. Am I missing a detail?


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Re: [proposal] use xz compression for Debian package by default

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 05:12:15PM +0200, Didier 'OdyX' Raboud wrote:
> We are building a binary distribution which main characteristic is to have 
> the 
> packages built _rarely_. As such, a useful but CPU-expensive operation is 
> always worth it.

The situation is slightly different for Debian-native packages. In that case,
there's little value in not replacing the source PNGs with better-compressed
alternatives. (games-thumbnails is such a native package.)

> And if the package building infrastructure comes in your way by enforcing
> unneeded repeated builds, then the problem resides in the package building
> infrastructure.

Are we not required to provide a functional 'clean' target in our rules files?
Should these not remove files that were generated as part of the build process?


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Re: [proposal] use xz compression for Debian package by default

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 03:17:15PM +0100, Dmitrijs Ledkovs wrote:
> I don't think it's worth +dfsg, and CPU cycles will only be wasted once
> on the maintainer side, since most of PNGs are in arch:all packages anyway.

I used to hack on the games-thumbnails package a bit, which ran optipng as part
of the build stage and removed the results as part of the clean stage.¹ It used
to be quite a pain to run 'debuild' over and over, if you were making small,
iterative packaging changes, because the 'clean' target would be run. I suppose
I could have simply ran the build stage by hand repeatedly instead.

¹ It would appear that the package no longer does the remove stage, from a
  cursory glance at the rules file these days. This is no doubt a pragmatic
  decision, but one that might conflict with people's build expectations.)


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Re: [proposal] use xz compression for Debian package by default

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 12:56:47PM +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> Before wondering whether PNG files should have an additional
> compression level, is there any reason why a better PNG compression
> isn't used in the first place? For instance, "optipng -o9" tries
> various parameters and keeps the best one.

So recompress upstream PNGs and suffix +dfsg to the source version? There might
be some disadvantages to this. If you are using VCS to manage the package, you
are probably carrying the upstream PNGs in that already, so there's an
appreciable increase in repository size to carry the optimized PNGs too.
Another approach could be to inject optipng into the build process and treat
the outputs like compiler output (packed into binary packages, thrown away on
clean), but then repeated builds could be CPU-expensive.   Perhaps getting
upstream to carry better-compressed PNGs in their next release is a good idea.


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Re: Enabling uscan to simply remove files from upstream source

[Jon Dowland]

On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 12:38:14PM -0500, Peter Samuelson wrote:
> ...Or add the exclude list to a file called 'debian/watch'.

I struggle to see why. I suppose because uscan reads debian/watch, but
the point of that file is to document where to find upstream sources,
the name implies that, and putting lists of files to strip into it would
seem counter-intuitive to me.


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Re: Possible release note for systems running PHP through CGI.

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 12:58:42AM +0200, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote:
> But if anyone would lobby that (release goal: default to CGI/FCGI),
> they'd have definitely my support :)

A bit late for wheezy, do you mean for +1?


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Re: Change default PATH for Jessie / wheezy+1

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Aug 08, 2012 at 12:40:42PM +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
>  Warning the user that they are using an obsolete tool is IMO entirely
>  justified, particularly when there is a much better and more capable
>  replacement.

And there's plenty of precedent:

$ ffmpeg
ffmpeg version 0.8.3-6:0.8.3-4, Copyright (c) 2000-2012 the Libav developers
  built on Jun 26 2012 09:26:41 with gcc 4.7.1
*** THIS PROGRAM IS DEPRECATED ***
This program is only provided for compatibility and will be removed in a 
future release. Please use avconv instead.

(even if the above is somewhat misleading)
And the wodim/cdrecord messages.


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Re: Change default PATH for Jessie / wheezy+1

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Aug 08, 2012 at 04:41:35AM +0200, Ulrich Dangel wrote:
> On 08/08/12 04:11, Marco d'Itri wrote:
> > Fedora did it a few months ago, so probably we should do it as well to 
> > minimize the pain.
> 
> As far as I know (based on 
>  /
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/SbinSanity ) Fedora changed it in 2008.
> 
> It seems that Ubuntu also has the sbin directories in PATH per default (via
> /etc/environment) since at least 2006.

In which case any pain we were likely to suffer has been suffered already,
so that's one fewer reason to make the change.


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Re: Bug#685064: ITP: non-daw -- please package non-things

[Jon Dowland]

On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 11:19:23AM +0200, rosea grammostolla wrote:
> Subject: Re: Bug#685064: ITP: non-daw -- please package non-things
   ^

You've filed an ITP (I Intent To Package) but your subject reads more
like a Request For someone else to Package (RFP).  Can you clarify
which you meant?

> * Package name: non-daw
…
> The Non DAW…
> The Non Mixer…
> The Non Sequencer…
> The Non Session Manager…

The package name suggests you are packaging the DAW but the description
covers the other three things too and suggests to some extent that they
are separate. Would the mixer, sequencer and session manager be provided
in the same package, or in separate packages?


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Re: Bug#685042: ITP: libpam-ssh -- Authenticate using SSH keys

[Jon Dowland]

It would be nice if your initial upload would resolve the multiple issues
that were the cause for the package removal, rather than simply reintroduce
them.


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Re: node-like file conflicts

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Aug 07, 2012 at 01:00:38PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> /usr/games is a swamp for another time I think.  I guess it contains
> an awful lot of things with clashing names.

Last I checked the latest FHS drafts removed /usr/games entirely, so the
morass might end up being dumped into /usr/bin at some point in the near
future, where they are promoted from $PATH conflicts to actual binary
conflicts.


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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 12:20:23AM +0300, Timo Juhani Lindfors wrote:
> Svante Signell  writes:
> > NMUs should be made/allowed/encouraged? I know all packaging is made by
> > volunteers at their spare time, but anyway. Debian is one of the best
> > distributions, what about raising the bar a little higher?
> 
> The only way you can really improve the situation is to help with the
> packages.

I disagree.

Fundamentally the problem is lack of manpower. There are not enough
incoming people interested in addressing the problem (like Svante)
to make an appreciable difference if they dedicate their time soley
to packaging.

There is work to be done to make Debian attract more contributors.


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Re: Modified http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDeveloper to mention non-packagers (Re: [CTTE #614907] Resolution of node/nodejs conflict)

[Jon Dowland]

On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 01:55:06PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Jon Dowland writes ("Re: Modified http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDeveloper to 
> mention non-packagers (Re: [CTTE #614907] Resolution of node/nodejs 
> conflict)"):
> > On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 12:15:15AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > > We are in the process of discussing a variety of constitutional amendments
> > > to be raised by the tech-ctte that will hopefully end up creating a sort
> > > of bundle of constitutional fixes to vote on.  Perhaps it would be good to
> > > include in that a terminology standardization on member for the places in
> > > the constitution that we refer to voting project members rather than
> > > specifically people who upload software.
> > 
> > Yes please!
> 
> I am not in favour of this change.  The point about a Debian Developer
> is that the basis of their claim to the rights and responsibilities
> enumerated in the constitution, is that they help develop Debian.
> 
> I don't think the word "Developer" implies that one can't develop
> Debian in other ways than by directly editing software.

The problem to solve is not that "Developer" implies a *limitation* of
responsibity for Developers; it's that non-packaging contributions are
not considered to carry the same value or esteem as traditional packaging.

I agree that 'developer' is a fine word to describe a valued contributor
to the project and does not — on its own — suggest packaging software,
but sadly the historical context does.

I'm not overly interested in the word developer being eradicated, but at
the very least having some consistency in Debian's documents would be
very welcome. ('New Maintainer' → route to 'Developer' vs. 'Debian
Maintainer' is another area of confusion).  Perhaps an entirely new set
of nouns should be chosen, free of historical baggage?


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Re: Modified http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDeveloper to mention non-packagers (Re: [CTTE #614907] Resolution of node/nodejs conflict)

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 12:15:15AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> We are in the process of discussing a variety of constitutional amendments
> to be raised by the tech-ctte that will hopefully end up creating a sort
> of bundle of constitutional fixes to vote on.  Perhaps it would be good to
> include in that a terminology standardization on member for the places in
> the constitution that we refer to voting project members rather than
> specifically people who upload software.

Yes please!


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Re: Have NetworkManager disabled by default when... (was: Recommends for metapackages)

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 03:31:37PM +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> Still, the check would be useful on laptops where wicd is installed
> and enabled (the user could have a default ifupdown config and wicd
> enabled).

What happens if neither wicd nor network-manager are installed, and then both
are installed at the same time?


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Re: Recommends for metapackages

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 11:25:05PM +, Sune Vuorela wrote:
> for the 1-2% of people who has weird needs.

It's this proportion which I think is not consistent, nor agreed, amongst all 
developers.


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Re: Recommends for metapackages

[Jon Dowland]

On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 08:51:32AM -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> Broken as in "partially working because there are expected features missing"
> is the _very_ definition of "not installing a recommended package".
> 
> Now, "broken" as in "doesn't work at all for any use case" would be a bug,
> yes.

I don't disagree with you, and I think that this largely boils down to
expectations management. "Doesn't work at all" is easier to define and agree
upon than "doesn't work as I expected", and I think maintainers have
widely-differing interpretations of how to use Recommends: as a result.


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Re: Recommends for metapackages

[Jon Dowland]

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 04:39:10PM +, Sune Vuorela wrote:
> On 2012-07-10, Gergely Nagy  wrote:
> > No. Only if installing recommends is turned on, which cannot be
> > guaranteed.
> 
> There is many ways to break your system. turning off installation of
> recommends is one of them.

If turning off recommends leads to a broken system, then there's a serious
bug somewhere, and it isn't the user.


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Re: N-M: Depends->Recommends (was: Re: duplicates in the archive)

[Jon Dowland]

On Mon, Jul 09, 2012 at 11:13:16PM +0200, Adam Borowski wrote:
> and also, as Philipp Kern noticed before, things that use N-M to
> distinguish between online and offline modes will think they're offline
> after uninstalling N-M until they are restarted.

You get this even with n-m installed, if n-m isn't managing your connection.
So for example I have n-m configured for wifi and 3g connections, but
ignoring my ethernet connection, so I can use a bridged setup.  Various
desktop apps misbehave in minor ways: pidgin as already mentioned; chrome
reports "unable to connect to Internet" instead of more nuanced failures such
as "no such site", etc.


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Re: Improving our response to "duplicate" packages in Debian

[Jon Dowland]

On Fri, Jun 29, 2012 at 05:28:45AM +, Bart Martens wrote:
> I'm not convinced that the recent additions to the wiki page reflect consensus
> in this debate.  But I appreciate your attempt to summarize this debate on 
> that
> wiki page.  Maybe we should revert the recent changes on that wiki page until
> there is a more explicit consensus in this debate.  My impression is that
> consensus is growing towards what Guus wrote.  But this impression may be
> colored by the fact that I happen to agree with what Guus wrote.

Rather than revert, I'd suggest summarizing the positions where there isn't
consensus.


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Re: Improving our response to "duplicate" packages in Debian

[Jon Dowland]

I really like these suggestions.


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