path: root/english/News/weekly/1999/2/index.wml

#use wml::debian::weeklynews::header PUBDATE="1999-1-11" SUMMARY="A bug counting mistake; deep freeze soon"

<p>
<b>Welcome</b> to the second edition Debian Weekly News, a newsletter for
the Debian developer community.
</p>

<p>
It turns out there was a
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-9901/msg00005.html">\
bug</a> in the program that generates the
<a href="../../oldurl?http://master.debian.org/~wakkerma/report.html">\
release-critical bug report</a>. Some bugs that were not release critical were
being included. So in fact we have <b>less than 40 release critical bugs
left</b> now.
Brian White
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-testing-9901/msg00034.html">\
plans</a> to put slink into <b>deep freeze</b> and chose a release date
soon. In the ensuing discussion, someone 
brought up the old <b>libc6 versioning problem</b> &mdash; Paul Crowley posted an 
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-testing-9901/msg00057.html">\
excellent summary</a> of the problem and our options.
</p>

<p>
There's been some discussion this week about whether we can just <b>release
Debian i386</b> when it's ready, if Debian m68k or other mature <b>ports aren't
ready for release yet</b>. On the one hand, this lets us release i386 as soon as
possible; on the other hand, this makes some of the porters feel like their
architectures are
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9901/msg00271.html">\
second class citizens</a>.
</p>

<p>
Jay Treacy introduced a new 
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-www-9901/msg00005.html">\
package search</a> system on the web pages
based on <b>DFSG free software</b>, swish++. According to Jay, <q>It is very
simple, but well thought out.</q> Sadly, <b>Debian itself continues to use 
non-free software</b> elsewhere. We use qmail on lists.debian.org, to handle
the huge mail demands of the Debian lists, and we use pgp for package signing.
I hope this will change one day..
</p>

<p>
Vincent Renardias
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9901/msg00436.html">\
suggested</a> <b>replacing fdisk with cfdisk</b>, since fdisk now has
no upstream maintainer. However, cfdisk is missing some important
troubleshooting options, and lacks some useful fdisk features. Some people
suggested sfdisk as a better candidate for fdisk replacement.
</p>

<p>
The CD group is ready for
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-testing-9901/msg00031.html">\
more testing</a> of their
<a href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~stevem/DebianCD/">scripts</a>.
If you have the ability, <b>burn some CD's</b> to test them.
And once you have some slink CD's, why not try installing slink? Adam Di Carlo
is working on the <b>Installation Manual for slink</b>. He posted a
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-testing-9901/msg00042.html">\
request</a> for help and the current progress is available
<a href="../../oldurl?http://www.debian.org/~aph/boot-floppies/i386">online</a>. If you
are planning on doing an installation soon, be sure to print these up and
give him some comments.
</p>

<p>
<a name="hurd"></a>
The <b>Hurd port is making progress</b>; a minimal Debian GNU/Hurd system
is now
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd-9901/msg00023.html">\
available</a>. This marks an important point in the hurd port's bootstrapping
progress; packages can now be built directly on the hurd. Also on the hurd
mailing list there has been some
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd-9901/msg00016.html">\
talk</a> about whether the GRUB boot loader is suitable for Debian to use
instead of LILO as its <b>default boot loader</b>.
</p>

<p>
<a name="build_deps"></a>
Ben Collins posted a 
<a href="sourcedeps">\
small patch</a> to dpkg-source that implements the much-requested
<b>Source-Depends</b> feature.
</p>

<p>
Bruce Perens is going to
<a href="http://slashdot.org/articles/99/01/06/1630245.shtml">donate</a> a
<a href="http://www.census.gov/ftp/pub/geo/www/tiger/">huge quantity</a>
of US map data to Debian and other free software groups in an effort to
spur the development of <b>free mapping applications</b>.
</p>

<p>
Marc Haber asked why Debian uses the <b>.deb package format instead of
.rpm</b>. See my <a href="http://kitenet.net/~joey/pkg-comp/">package
format comparison</a> page for some answers to this common question.
</p>

<p>
Finally, Karl B. Hammar deserves a plug for his
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-testing-9901/msg00080.html">\
lilo.conf</a> file. <b>Well documented config files</b> should be a goal for
every part of Debian.
</p>

<p>
<b>Interesting package releases</b> this week include:
</p>
<ul>
<li>A
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9901/msg00399.html">\
rewritten and largely redesigned devscripts</a>, that <b>fixes all
known bugs</b>. Be sure to use version 2.0.3 or above; earlier versions had
/tmp races.</li>
<li>A new version of
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-changes-9901/msg00617.html">\
suidmanager</a> that fixes the <b>debhelper/suidmanager
incompatibility problem</b> (<q>04755 not equal to 4755</q>) that has plagued us for
the past month.</li>
<li>Unofficial KDE 1.1pre .deb packages are 
<a href="ftp://ftp.timsnet.com/pub/kde/pre1.1/19990103/">available</a>.</li>
</ul>

<p>
<b>Packages in trouble</b> this week:
</p>
<ul>
<li>Do not try to upgrade to libpng version 1.0.2 &mdash; it is
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9901/msg00342.html">\
somewhat broken</a>.
<li>The xcompat package will probably be 
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9901/msg00356.html">\
moved to project/orphaned</a>, since it
is an a.out package that can no longer be built on a Debian system.
</ul>

<p>
<b>Server news</b> this week:
</p>
<ul>
<li>ftp.debian.org is being
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-testing-9901/msg00096.html">\
replaced</a> with a new server which should be in
place soon.
<li>non-us.debian.org may be fixed, but no-one knows for sure.
</ul>

<p>
<b>Followups</b> to news items from last week:
</p>
<ul>
<li>Ben Collins made a 
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9901/msg00430.html">\
formal proposal</a> about making packages log install-time information via
a <b>dpkg-logger</b> utility. Discussion continues.
<li>RMS is not the only person having <b>difficulty installing Debian</b>
on his <b>toshiba laptop</b>. The long times between Debian releases mean that
packages such as pcmcia in stable are often 
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9901/msg00410.html">\
so outdated</a> they will not work on the latest and greatest laptops, 
forcing people to figure out how to get updated packages from unstable.
</ul>

<p>
Response to the
<a href="../1/">previous
issue</a> was <b>overwhelmingly positive</b>, including mentions in
<a href="http://freshmeat.net/">Freshmeat</a> and
<a href="http://lwn.net/">Linux Weekly News</a>.
Thank you all. I do have some corrections to make:
</p>
<ul>
<li>RMS has really been using Debian for years. His recent activity on the
lists is new, though.</li>
<li>Martin Schulze's name was misspelled, my apologies.</li>
<li>The next release of Debian will be version 2.1, not 2.2.</li>
</ul>
<p>
Debian weekly news now has <b>several contributors</b> to help me sift through
the lists for items of note. Thanks to Josip Rodin, Brandon Mitchell, Robert
de Forest, Aaron Van Couwenberghe, and Rob Tillotson for their help.
</p>

#use wml::debian::weeklynews::footer