path: root/english/News/weekly/1999/5/index.wml

#use wml::debian::weeklynews::header PUBDATE="1999-2-1" SUMMARY="Logo contest; gnome-apt released; libtool woes; help wanted."

<p>
<strong>Welcome</strong> to the fifth edition of Debian Weekly News, a newsletter for
the Debian developer community. Debian Weekly News has been in publication
for a month now. How are we doing? <a href="mailto:dwn@debian.org">Write to
the editor</a> and let us know what parts of the newsletter you like best, and
what needs improvement.
</p>

<p>
Attention all developers: 
<a href="http://www.debian.org/vote/1999/vote_0001">Elections</a> for Debian
project leader close on the 3rd; <strong>hurry up and vote</strong> if you haven't
already. Just don't <a href="mail#mail1">vote like Netgod</a>.
</p>

<p>
The <a href="http://contest.gimp.org/">gimp contest</a> for <strong>new Debian
logos</strong> <a href="mail#mail2">has begun</a>. It will run for one month, then a
<a href="mail#mail3">5 person logo team</a> will weed out the best logos for the
rest of Debian to vote on.
<q>"The winner will be awarded an email-address at debian.org, a CD-set
with Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 for the architectures of his/her choice (alpha,
i386, m68k, or sparc) and ever-lasting fame for creating the one and only
Debian logo-set."</q>
</p>

<p>
<a name="dpkg"></a>
<strong>Development of dpkg</strong> will soon begin again. Ian Jackson says he plans
to get to work on it once he's no longer project leader. Guy Maor 
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-dpkg-9901/msg00149.html">
intends</a> to do some work on it, and long MIA Klee Dienes has
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-dpkg-9901/msg00162.html">
re-surfaced</a> and is looking for some dpkg coding tasks to work on too. Guy
has already implemented a
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9901/msg02650.html">
nice new feature</a>: When a new experimental dpkg-dev
package is used, dinstall (the program that installs packages onto the ftp
site) can now <strong>announce package uploads</strong> to the correct list, and <strong>close
bugs</strong> fixed by those uploads.
</p>

<p>
There have been suggestions to clean up <strong>dselect's access methods</strong>. One
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-testing-9901/msg00217.html">
suggestion</a> is to take out harddisk, mounted, cdrom, and nfs; either 
removing them entirely or splitting them into a separate package. This
would prevent some of the confusion newbies experience when they first use
dselect, at least until they get to the package selection part.
</p>

<p>
Of course, the ultimate end to dselect confusion is apt; and <strong>gnome-apt</strong>,
the <strong>GUI front end to apt</strong>, has finally been
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9901/msg02402.html">
released</a> as a .deb. "<q>Who says package management can't be Sexy?</q>".
It's available <a href="http://www.debian.org/~hp/gnome-apt.html">here</a>.
</p>

<p>
The long awaited X packages have been
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-changes-9901/msg02183.html">
released</a> to frozen, and they sport the <strong>longest Debian changelog entry
ever</strong>, weighing in at an impressive 189 lines. (This has been 
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9901/msg02490.html">
verified</a> by a scan of the entire distribution.) In other X news, Stephen 
Crowley
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9901/msg02195.html">
plans</a> to package Red Hat's Xconfigurator as part of Debian.
</p>

<p>
A <a href="../../oldurl?http://www.hams.com/OSD.html">draft chapter</a> of the O'Reilly
book <q><a href="http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/">Open 
Sources</a></q> mentions Debian in several places. The chapter is written by
Bruce Perens and describes the <strong>Open Source Definition</strong>. <q>"the Debian
Free Software Guidelines were the right document to define Open Source"</q>
</p>

<p>
Darren Benham is
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-www-9901/msg00064.html">
searching</a> for new <strong>software for list archiving</strong>. Hopefully, it will
support pgp/MIME signatures, and it must be DFSG-free.
Among other problems, the current list archiving software used on the
Debian web site <a href="mail#mail4">has a Y2K problem</a>. And speaking of 
<strong>Debian and Y2K</strong>, we now have a
<a href="http://master.debian.org/~csmall/y2k.html">Y2K web page</a>.
</p>

<p>
And last but not least, the longest thread on the lists this week was a
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9901/msg02245.html">
frustrating dialog</a> with the author of libtool about its use of
<strong>-rpath</strong>. Many developers agree this is a bad idea for linux systems;
the libtool author disagrees. After arguing in circles for days, we haven't
quite reached a resolution, but a <strong>hack of ld.so</strong> is looking likely 
instead of a change to libtool.
</p>

<p>
<strong>Help wanted</strong>:
</p>
<ul>
<li>If you notice your <strong>cron running jobs at the wrong time of day</strong>, you
can help the maintainer track down the cause of this problem by doing a little
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9901/msg02311.html">
experiment</a>.
<li>Several applications <strong>linked statically to gettext</strong> need to be
<a href="../../oldurl?https://bugs.debian.org/28850">recompiled</a>. There's a security 
hole involved. If you maintain a package that uses gettext, check it out.
<li>Work on <a href="http://www.net.lut.ac.uk/psst/">lsh</a>, the <strong>free
ssh clone</strong> is progressing, but help is still needed. Non-US
developers are
<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-9901/msg02030.html">
asked to participate</a>, since they are able to hack on crypto code, but
those from the US can still contribute by other means.
</ul>

<p>
<strong>Followups</strong> to previous news items:
</p>
<ul>
<li>The Zope license has been
<a href="../../oldurl?http://www.zope.org/News?query_start=1">changed</a> and is now
DFSG free.
</ul>

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