[smc-discuss] Fwd: Debian Project News - July 21, 2015

Wed Jul 22 00:11:15 PDT 2015

Congrats to Syam on getting his packages to Debian..

-------- Original Message --------
From: "Cédric Boutillier" <boutil at debian.org>
Sent: 22 July 2015 12:26:29 pm IST
To: debian-news at lists.debian.org
Subject: Debian Project News - July 21, 2015

------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Debian Project                               https://www.debian.org/
Debian Project News                    debian-publicity at lists.debian.org
July 21, 2015                https://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2015/06/
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Welcome to this year's sixth issue of DPN, the newsletter for the Debian
community. Topics covered in this issue include:

  * Perl team sprint
  * New documentation guides on the Debian website
  * Bits from the DPL
  * Help rescuing Debian Live Rescue
  * Debian switches to FFmpeg for multimedia packages
  * Reproducible builds funded by the Linux Foundation
  * Transition to GCC5 and libstdc++6
  * Report from Google Summer of Code students
  * Long Term Support reports
  * Tips and Tricks
  * Other news
  * New Debian Contributors
  * Important Debian Security Advisories
  * New and noteworthy packages
  * Work-needing packages
  * Want to continue reading DPN?

Perl team sprint
----------------

The Debian Perl team had its first sprint [1] in May, and it was a
success: seven members met in Barcelona over the weekend from May 22 to
May 24 to kick off Perl development for Stretch and to work on QA tasks
across the more than 3000 packages that the team maintains. Find all the
details in the sprint report [2].

    1: https://wiki.debian.org/Sprints/2015/DebianPerlSprint
    2: https://lists.debian.org/debian-perl/2015/07/msg00009.html

New documentation guides on the Debian website
----------------------------------------------

On his blog, Osamu Aoki announced [3] some updates to Debian
documentation. Having created the debmake [4] helper script to produce
Debian source packages, to take into account new packaging best
practices, he has rewritten the Debian Maintainers' Guide from scratch,
available in the debmake-doc [5] package. Meanwhile, the Debian
Handbook [6] is now also available from the Debian website [7]. This
version is built automatically from the corresponding package [8] in
Debian unstable. This is also the case for the documentation from
debmake-doc [9] and more generally for other debian-doc related
packages [10].

    3: http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.ru/
    4: https://packages.debian.org/sid/debmake
    5: https://packages.org/sid/debmake-doc
    6: https://debian-handbook.info/
    7: https://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2015/06/$HOME/doc/manuals/debian-handbook/
    8: https://packages.debian.org/sid/debian-handbook
    9: https://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2015/06/$HOME/doc/manuals/debmake-doc/index.en.html
   10: https://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2015/06/$HOME/doc/

Bits from the DPL
-----------------

Neil McGovern, Debian project leader, sent a report [11] about his
recent activities: communication (in particular an interview [12] by
Steven Ovadia, and an open questions session [13] on Reddit), funding
management, and work with trusted organisations.

   11: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/07/msg00002.html
   12: http://www.mylinuxrig.com/post/122864405658/the-linux-setup-neil-mcgovern-debian-project
   13: http://redd.it/3ctb6n

Help rescuing Debian Live Rescue
--------------------------------

Ben Armstrong sent [14] a second call for help to revive the rescue
flavour of the Debian Live image, which missed the Debian Jessie
release, with a list of tasks to achieve. If you are interested in
helping with the Debian Live rescue image, contact the #debian-live IRC
channel on irc.debian.org, or send an email to Debian Live mailing
list [15].

   14: http://syn.theti.ca/2015/06/23/debian-live-rescue-needs-some-love/
   15: https://lists.debian.org/debian-live/

Debian switches to FFmpeg for multimedia packages
-------------------------------------------------

For the Wheezy release, the Debian project moved from having FFmpeg [16]
as the provider of multimedia libraries to Libav [17], which is also in
use in the Jessie release. The Debian Multimedia team announced [18]
that after a careful review [19], they have decided to switch back to
FFmpeg, and will do their best to finish the transition for the next
stable release, Debian Stretch.

   16: https://ffmpeg.org/
   17: https://libav.org/
   18: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/07/msg00001.html
   19: https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/libav-provider/ffmpeg

Reproducible builds funded by the Linux Foundation
--------------------------------------------------

The Linux Fundation's Core Infrastructure Initiative [20] announced
that they will support [21, 22] two Debian Developers, Holger Levsen and
Jérémy Bobbio, with $200,000 to advance their Debian work on
reproducible builds [23] and to collaborate more closely with other
distributions such as Fedora, Ubuntu, and OpenWrt to benefit from this
effort.

In the meantime, Jérémy Bobbio published [24] several [25] issues [26]
of his weekly [27] report [28] from the Debian reproducible builds
effort: since the last issue of the Debian Project News, about 500
packages have become reproducible.

   20: https://www.coreinfrastructure.org/
   21: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/announcements/2015/06/linux-foundation-s-core-infrastructure-initiative-funds-three-new
   22: https://bits.debian.org/2015/06/reproducible-builds-funded-by-cii.html
   23: https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds
   24: https://people.debian.org/~lunar/blog/posts/reproducible_builds_stretch_week_7/
   25: https://people.debian.org/~lunar/blog/posts/reproducible_builds_stretch_week_8/
   26: https://people.debian.org/~lunar/blog/posts/reproducible_builds_stretch_week_9/
   27: https://people.debian.org/~lunar/blog/posts/reproducible_builds_stretch_week_10/
   28: https://people.debian.org/~lunar/blog/posts/reproducible_builds_stretch_week_11/

Transition to GCC5 and libstdc++6
---------------------------------

Matthias Klose sent a message [29] about the transition to GCC5 and
libstdc++6, scheduled for the end of the month. Bugs were filed for
packages failing to build from source [30] with the new GCC version, and
for those where investigation is needed [31], to see if the transition
to the new libstdc++ affects them. Details of the transition can be
found on the dedicated Debian wiki page [32].

   29: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/07/msg00000.html
   30: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=ftbfs-gcc-5;users=debian-gcc@lists.debian.org
   31: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=libstdc%2B%2B-cxx11;users=debian-gcc@lists.debian.org
   32: https://wiki.debian.org/GCC5

Report from Google Summer of Code students
------------------------------------------

Yuru Roy Shao, mentored by Ritesh Raj Sarraf [33], is working on Apport
integration in Debian. Yuru posted a report [34] on the new features he
implemented: uniqueness of the apport-notifyd notification daemon
instance, installation of debug symbols, use of the system APT cache to
avoid downloading packages twice, and Debian BTS integration. Orestis
Ioannou also sent an update [35] on the work he has done on a new web
application, the copyright tracker, as part of the Debsources project.

   33: http://www.researchut.com/blog/gsoc-apport-for-debian
   34: http://blog.yurushao.info/2015/07/Debian-Apport-GSoC/
   35: http://oioannou.com/2015/blog/gsoc-updates/

Long Term Support reports
-------------------------

Guido Günther [36], Thorsten Alteholz [37], Mike Gabriel [38], and Ben
Hutchings [39] published their activities in Debian on their blogs, with
a special emphasis on their work on Squeeze Long Term Support [40].

   36: http://honk.sigxcpu.org/con/Debian_work_in_June_2015.html
   37: http://blog.alteholz.eu/2015/07/my-debian-activities-in-june-2015/
   38: http://sunweavers.net/blog/node/16
   39: http://womble.decadent.org.uk/blog/debian-lts-work-june-2015.html
   40: https://wiki.debian.org/LTS

Tips and Tricks
---------------

Several members of the Debian community shared some tips: Thomasz
Buchert explained [41] how to tag emails which haven't been replied to,
using notmuch [42]. Simon Josefsson explained [43] how to deal with SSH
Host Certificates with a YubiKey NEO. Julien Danjou published [44] on
his blog an article on the need to always consider timezone information
with any timestamp, and how to do that in Python. Sandro Tosi
explained [45] how to tweak the configuration of CFEngine [46] for
package upgrades, to deal with epochs [47] in Debian versions. Michael
Prokop noticed [48] on his blog that HAProxy causes random "Hash Sum
mismatch" errors with Debian Squeeze clients. A solution to this issue
was proposed in a comment by Petter Reinholdtsen.

   41: https://tomasz.buchert.pl/blog/2015/06/14/notmuch-response
   42: https://packages.debian.org/sid/notmuch
   43: http://blog.josefsson.org/2015/06/16/ssh-host-certificates-with-yubikey-neo/
   44: https://julien.danjou.info/blog/2015/python-and-timezones
   45: http://sandrotosi.blogspot.com.au/2015/06/cfengine-upgrade-debian-packages.html
   46: https://packages.debian.org/sid/cfengine3
   47: https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html#s-f-Version
   48: http://michael-prokop.at/blog/2015/07/02/haproxy-with-debiansqueeze-clients-causing-random-hash-sum-mismatch/

Other news
----------

The 39th issue of the miscellaneous news for developers [49] has been
released and covers the following topics:

  * Android Tools Team
  * Google Code closing
  * uscan redirector pypi.debian.net
  * Derivatives census update
  * oldoldstable on DDPO

   49: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/06/msg00002.html

Martin Michlmayr announced [50] that support for the D-Link DNS-323 and
Conceptronic CH3SNAS has been removed in Debian Stretch, because the
kernel is now too large to fit into the flash on these devices.

   50: https://lists.debian.org/20150615204618.GA23765@jirafa.cyrius.com

The technical committee [51] published their decision [52] about the
maintainership of the aptitude package [53].

   51: https://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2015/06/$HOME/devel/tech-ctte
   52: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/06/msg00004.html
   53: https://packages.debian.org/sid/aptitude

Niels Thykier sent an update [54] on the status of automatically
generated debug packages [55], with a summary of the missing pieces,
hints on how people can help to improve the situation, and some answers
to frequently asked questions.

   54: https://lists.debian.org/debian-dpkg/2015/06/msg00018.html
   55: https://wiki.debian.org/AutomaticDebugPackages

He also introduced in his blog [56] a new tool he created with the FTP
masters for dak, the Debian Archive Kit. The purpose of the "auto-
decrufter" is to identify common types of cruft (such as binary packages
no longer built from any source package), and automatically remove them
from unstable when nothing Depends or Build-Depends on them. Until
recently that removal has been 100% manual and done by the FTP masters.

   56: https://nthykier.wordpress.com/2015/06/22/introducing-dak-auto-decruft/

"Pirate" Praveen Arimbrathodiyil successfully managed to get a crowd-
funding campaign to work full time for a month on the Debian packaging
for the Diaspora [57] social network. He sent [58] a report explaining
the different tasks he carried out, including packaging 23 dependencies
and updating 34 existing packages.

   57: https://diasporafoundation.org/
   58: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2015/07/msg00277.html

New Debian Contributors
-----------------------

4 applicants have been accepted [59] as Debian Developers, and 23 people
have started to maintain packages [60] since the previous issue of the
Debian Project News. Please welcome Diane Trout, Thomas Vincent,
Chrysostomos Nanakos, Markus Wanner, Zhou Mo, Ilias Tsitsimpis, Daniel
Dehennin, Marcel Fourné, Corey Bryant, Bertrand Neron, Thomas Calderon,
Giovani Augusto Ferreira, Afif Elghraoui, Komal Dsukhani, Chris West,
Senthil Kumaran S, Syam G Krishnan, Azat Khuzhin, Axel Burri, Larissa
Reis, Sebastian Wouters, Gunter Königsmann, Dimitris Kalamaras, Orestis
Ioannou, Sergio Durigan Junior, Roelof Berg, and Lucas de Castro Borges,
into our project!

   59: https://nm.debian.org/public/nmlist#done
   60: https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/new-maintainers.cgi

Important Debian Security Advisories
------------------------------------

Debian's Security Team recently released advisories for these packages
(among others): qemu [61], qemu-kvm [62], xen [63], openssl [64],
libav [65], p7zip [66], linux [67], drupal7 [68], cinder [69],
pyjwt [70], wireshark [71], cacti [72], libcrypto++ [73],
unattended-upgrades [74], jackrabbit [75], stunnel4 [76],
icewease [77], haproxy [78], libwmf [79], cups-filter [80], bind9 [81],
python-django [82], pdns [83], pdns-recursor [84], and mysql-5.5 [85].
Please read them carefully and take the proper measures.

   61: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3284
   62: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3285
   63: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3286
   64: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3287
   65: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3288
   66: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3289
   67: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3290
   68: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3291
   69: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3292
   70: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3293
   71: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3294
   72: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3295
   73: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3296
   74: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3297
   75: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3298
   76: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3299
   77: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3300
   78: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3301
   79: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3302
   80: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3303
   81: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3304
   82: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3305
   83: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3306
   84: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3307
   85: https://www.debian.org/security/2015/dsa-3308

The Debian team in charge of Squeeze Long Term Support released security
update announcements for these packages: p7zip [86], linux-2.6 [87],
linux-2.6 [88], openssl [89], qemu [90], qemu-kvm [91],
libclamunrar [92], zendframework [93], postgresql-8.4 [94],
zendframework [95], libwmf [96], librack-ruby [97], cacti [98],
t1utils [99], libwmf [100], jqueryui [101], shibboleth-sp2 [102],
hostapd [103], aptdaemon [104], libcrypto++ [105], ruby1.9.1 [106],
libmodule-signature-perl [107], unattended-upgrades [108],
pykerberos [109], libxml2 [110], aptdaemon [111], virtualbox-ose [112],
linux-ftpd-ssl [113], bind9 [114], libunwind [115], and
python-django [116]. Please read them carefully and take the proper measures.

   86: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00010.html
   87: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00011.html
   88: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00012.html
   89: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00013.html
   90: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00014.html
   91: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00015.html
   92: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00016.html
   93: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00017.html
   94: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00018.html
   95: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00019.html
   96: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00020.html
   97: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00021.html
   98: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00022.html
   99: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00023.html
  100: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00024.html
  101: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00025.html
  102: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00026.html
  103: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00027.html
  104: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00028.html
  105: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/06/msg00029.html
  106: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/07/msg00000.html
  107: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/07/msg00001.html
  108: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/07/msg00002.html
  109: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/07/msg00003.html
  110: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/07/msg00004.html
  111: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/07/msg00005.html
  112: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/07/msg00006.html
  113: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/07/msg00007.html
  114: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/07/msg00008.html
  115: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/07/msg00009.html
  116: https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/07/msg00010.html

Debian's Stable Release Team released update announcements for these
packages: clamav [117], open-vm-tools [118], tzdata [119], and
libdatetime-timezone-perl [120]. Please read them carefully and take the
proper measures.

  117: https://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2015/05/msg00000.html
  118: https://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2015/05/msg00001.html
  119: https://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2015/06/msg00001.html
  120: https://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/2015/06/msg00002.html

Please note that these are a selection of the more important security
advisories of the last weeks. If you need to be kept up to date about
security advisories released by the Debian Security Team, please
subscribe to the security mailing list [121] (and the separate backports
list [122], and stable updates list [123]) for announcements.

  121: https://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/
  122: https://lists.debian.org/debian-backports-announce/
  123: https://lists.debian.org/debian-stable-announce/

New and noteworthy packages
---------------------------

1633 packages were added to the unstable Debian archive recently. Among
many others [124] are:

  * blkreplay — block device testing and benchmarking toolkit [125]
  * boomaga — virtual printer for viewing a document before printing [126]
  * btrbk — backup tool for btrfs volumes [127]
  * edid-decode — tool decoding to text the binary EDID information from monitors [128]
  * elixir — dynamic, functional language on top of the Erlang VM [129]
  * firejail — sandbox to restrict the application environment [130]
  * iep — Interactive Editor for Python (Python 3) [131]
  * lizardfs-master — distributed fault-tolerant file system resilient to data corruption [132]
  * mmdb-bin — IP geolocation lookup command-line tool [133]
  * muon — package manager for KDE [134]
  * notmuch-addrlookup — address lookup tool for Notmuch [135]
  * osmcoastline — tool to extract coastline data from OpenStreetMap planet file [136]
  * sddm — modern display manager for X11 [137]
  * trocla — tool to generate and store passwords and certificates on a central server [138]
  * zulucrypt-cli — tool to encrypt volumes [139]

  124: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/newpkg
  125: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/blkreplay
  126: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/boomaga
  127: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/btrbk
  128: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/edid-decode
  129: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/elixir
  130: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/firejail
  131: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/iep
  132: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/lizardfs-master
  133: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/mmdb-bin
  134: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/muon
  135: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/notmuch-addrlookup
  136: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/osmcoastline
  137: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/sddm
  138: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/trocla
  139: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/main/zulucrypt-cli

Work-needing packages
---------------------

Currently [140] 673 packages are orphaned [141] and 176 packages are up
for adoption [142]: please visit the complete list of packages which
need your help [143].

  140: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2015/07/msg00125.html
  141: https://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/orphaned
  142: https://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/rfa
  143: https://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/help_requested

Want to continue reading DPN?
-----------------------------

Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer
writers to watch the Debian community and report about what is going on.
Please see the contributing page [144] to find out how to help. We're
looking forward to receiving your mail at
<debian-publicity at lists.debian.org>.

  144: https://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/HowToContribute

This issue of Debian Project News was edited by Cédric Boutillier, Jean-
Pierre Giraud, Donald Norwood, Justin B Rye, Paul Wise and Alex Muntada.

-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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