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#use wml::debian::weeklynews::header PUBDATE="1999-5-24" SUMMARY="Logo vote begins; rewriting dpkg; editor wars"
<p>
<b>Welcome</b> to Debian Weekly News, a newsletter for the Debian developer
community.
</p>
<p>
<a name="debianlogo"></a>
Either Wichert Akkerman or a cron job that is surprisingly good at imitating him
<a href="mail#mail1">posted</a> the <b>Call for Votes for the new Debian logo</b>.
There are seven candidates which you can see
<a href="https://vote.debian.org/1999/vote_0004">here</a>. Cast your
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce-9905/msg00024.html">
ballot</a>!
</p>
<p>
<b>The big topic of discussion this week is rewriting dpkg.</b> First
Aaron Van Couwenberghe posted
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9905/msg01250.html">his
plans</a> to completely rewrite dpkg in C++. Though this rather predictably
sparked a C vs. C++ flame war ("<i>I don't care what language you rewrite
dpkg in, as long as it's C</i>"), the important thing is that <b>everyone who
posted agrees that dpkg needs to be rewritten</b>.
</p>
<p>
Next, Ben Collins
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9905/msg01405.html">
announced</a> the <b>DPKGv2 Project</b>, which has in fact already been
quietly preparing to rewrite dpkg. They are working on finishing their design
specification and then the project will open up a bit for public comment.
</p>
<p>
<b>Should the "nag" messages be turned off?</b> For those who haven't
received one, these are automated messages sent out periodically to the
maintainers of packages with old bugs, in hopes that the reminder will lead
to a fix. However, as their name suggests, these nags can be annoying,
especially to those who keep up with their bugs by other means, and they
cannot be turned off. During the
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9905/msg01168.html">heated
discussions</a> about turning them off, the messages were frequently compared
to spam. Opinions are divided, though the majority view seems to be that they
should be turned off or at each developer should at least be allowed to
disable them. Brian White, who is responsible for the messages, has been
notably silent on the subject.
</p>
<p>
Ben Collins
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9905/msg01544.html">issued</a>
a <b>call for PAM support</b>. Everyone who maintains packages that could use
it are encouraged to enable PAM support if possible, and look for patches to
add it otherwise.
</p>
<p>
<b>News from LinuxExpo</b>: Many CD's given away, a cool "<i>Debian
Developed Here</i>"
<a href="https://www.debian.org/~jgoerzen/lexpo-photos/thursday/Image16.jpg">
world map</a>, light sabre duels with Slashdot staff, and other fun all
described
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9905/msg01551.html">here</a>
and <a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9905/msg01707.html">
here</a>.
</p>
<p>
<b>It was a good week for advertising and mentions in the press.</b>
Debian gets prominent mention on every page of the new
<a href="http://www.linux.com/">linux.com</a> portal, which runs Debian.
There's also a banner ad on the front page.
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9905/msg01619.html">Here's
</a> an idea about a way to team up with some Debian vendors and get a full
page ad in Linux Journal. Speaking of which, an article on Linux Standards in
the June Linux Journal quotes both Nils Lohner and Wichert Akkerman, and that
issue also contains an article on RAID by Martin Schulze.
</p>
<p>
<b>Aren't editor wars fun?</b> We had <a
href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9905/msg01537.html">one</a> this
week on debian-devel, focused on what editor should go on the boot disks. The
only conclusion that resulted is that ae's vi emulation mode is more trouble
than it's worth, so it has been removed from ae.
</p>
<p>
<b>New packages</b> added to Debian this week include the following and
<a href="http://master.debian.org/~tausq/newpkgs.html">39 more</a>, including
lots of <a href="https://packages.debian.org/libroxen">roxen modules</a>:
</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="../../oldurl?../../../../Packages/unstable/devel/libstdc++2.9-glibc2.1-dbg.html">libstdc++2.9-glibc2.1-dbg</a>: The GNU stdc++ library (debugging files)
<li><a href="https://packages.debian.org/unstable/interpreters/libunicode-map8-perl">libunicode-map8-perl</a>: Perl module to map 8bit character sets to Unicode
<li><a href="https://packages.debian.org/unstable/interpreters/libunicode-string-perl">libunicode-string-perl</a>: Perl modules for Unicode strings
<li><a href="https://packages.debian.org/unstable/devel/pointerize">pointerize</a>: Internationalization utilities, based on gettext
<li><a href="https://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/realplayer">realplayer</a>: Real Player G2 (installer)
<li><a href="https://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/snmpd">snmpd</a>: CMU SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) Agent.
</ul>
<p>
There were no new packages announcements last week because of technical
difficulties. <b>These packages were new last week</b>:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/lsof-2.2">lsof-2.2</a>: lists open files
<li>Netscape 4.6: Netscape version 4.6 (<a href="../../oldurl?../../../../Packages/unstable/web/netscape-base-46.html">base</a>,
<a href="../../oldurl?../../../../Packages/unstable/web/netscape-java-46.html">java support</a>,
<a href="../../oldurl?../../../../Packages/unstable/web/netscape-smotif-46.html">statically linked binaries</a>,
<a href="../../oldurl?../../../../Packages/unstable/web/netscape-dmotif-46.html">dynamically linked binaries</a>)</ul>
<p>
<b>Server news</b>:
</p>
<ul>
<li><b>Pandora is now on the 6bone</b>.
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9905/msg01836.html">This</a>
is a good opportunity for people to start working on IPv6 support.
(A few kinks are still being worked out; IPv6 may not always be turned on.)
<li><b>Faure</b> was
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-alpha-9905/msg00118.html">upgraded</a>
to kernel 2.2.9 and will be upgraded to potato soonish.
</ul>
<p>
<b>Followups</b> to previous news items:
</p>
<ul>
<li><a name="jp"></a><b>The Debian JP team</b> has decided not to release a "potato-jp" set of
add-on Japanese packages. Instead they're working to merge their packages
into Debian proper. To that end, three or four more members of Debian JP
have become developers.
</ul>
<p>
Thanks to Randolph Chung, Christian Meder and Katsura S. Yoshio for
<a href="../../contributing">contributing</a>.
</p>
#use wml::debian::weeklynews::footer
|
