Big release notes since 1.0: We ve got a new list dput-ng-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org feel free to subscribe!

1.3:
  * Avoid failing on upload if a pre/post upload hook is missing from the
    Filesystem.
  * Fix "dcut raises FtpUploadException" by correctly initializing the uploader
    classes from dcut (Closes: #696467)
1.2:
  * Add bash completions for dput-ng (Closes: #695412).
  * Add in a script to set the default profile depending on the building
    distro (Ubuntu support)
  * Fix a bug where meta-class info won't be loaded if the config file has the
    same name.
  * Add an Ubuntu upload target.
  * Added .udeb detection to the check debs hook.
  * Catch the correct exception falling out of bin/dcut
  * Fix the dput manpages to use --uid rather then the old --dm flag.
  * Fix the CLI flag registration by setting required=True
    in cancel and upload.
  * Move make_delayed_upload above the logging call for sanity's sake.
  * Fix "connects to the host even with -s" (Closes: #695347)

Thanks to everone who s contributed!

     7  Bernhard R. Link
     4  Ansgar Burchardt
     3  Luca Falavigna
     2  Michael Gilbert
     2  Salvatore Bonaccorso
     1  Benjamin Drung
     1  Gergely Nagy
     1  Jakub Wilk
     1  Jimmy Kaplowitz
     1  Luke Faraone
     1  Sandro Tosi

This has been your every-once-in-a-while dput-ng update. We re looking for more code contributions (to make sure everyone s happy), doc updates (etc) or ideas.

Yeah, wait, what? No, really! I took a look through clojure-py, and found out something pretty rad. In order to get clojurepy scripts to load other clojurepy, it had to shim out and add a new importer for clojure scripts. What this really means, is that you can import Clojure from Python, which is pretty sweet. I abused the internals here, and added it to dput-ng as a quick hack. Basically, I just had to import clojure.main, and let the main function set up the sys shim. I would set it up in dput, but I d have to import that module anyway. Remember, when doing this, the namespace ((ns ...)) needs to match the filename. So, I present the first Clojure hook for dput-ng:

; Copyright (c) Paul R. Tagliamonte <paultag@debian.org>, 2012, under the
; terms of dput-ng itsself.
(ns clojtest
  (:require dput.core
            dput.exceptions))
(defn log [x]  ; for debug output
  (.debug dput.core/logger x))
(defn dput-checker [changes profile interface]
  (cond (>= (-> changes (.get "maintainer") (.find "arno@debian.org")) 0)
    (throw (dput.exceptions/HookException. "Maintainer's Arno. Aborting upload"))
  :else
    (log "Nah, it's not arno, we're good")))

This, of course, checks if the maintainer is Arno, and throws a fit if it is. Gist is over on gist.github. After, Algernon added his own checker, which throws a fit if you have a package in the B-Ds that you aught to not use (such as dpatch)

; Copyright (c) Gergely Nagy <algernon@debian.org>, 2012, under the
; terms of dput-ng itself.
(ns bd-blacklist
  (:require dput.core
            dput.exceptions
            dput.dsc))
(defn prune-build-deps
  "Prune a string representation of the build-depends so that only a
  list of packages remain."
  [bd-string]
  (map #(first (-> % (.strip) (.split " "))) (.. bd-string (split ","))))
(defn has-blacklisted?
  "Given a dsc file and a blacklist, check if any of the
  build-depencencies are in that list. Throws an error if there are
  matches."
  [dsc-file blacklist]
  (let [dsc (dput.dsc/parse_dsc_file dsc-file)
        build-deps (prune-build-deps (.. dsc (get "build-depends")))]
    (if-let [bad-bd (some blacklist build-deps)]
      (throw (dput.exceptions/HookException. (str "Blacklisted build-dependency found: " bad-bd)))
      (-> dput.core/logger (.trace "Build-Dependencies do not have anything on the blacklist")))))
(defn blacklist-checker
  "Checks whether the dsc has blacklisted build-dependencies, ignores
  the check when no dsc is to be found."
  [changes profile interface]
  (if-let [dsc-file (.. changes (get_dsc))]
    (has-blacklisted? dsc-file (set (get profile "bd-blacklist")))
    (-> dput.core/logger (.trace "No .dsc found, build-dependencies cannot be checked"))))

You can check that out in the git tree Hacks welcome!

Voting is open in the Debian Project Leader Elections 2012 So now I need to figure out who to vote for. This year I didn t take part in the discussions (all my spare time was bought, basically). The platforms are linked from the Debian Project Leader Elections 2012 page above and the key discussions were:

• Questions to all candidates
  • discouraging discussion styles any cure? I think this is vital. I like Gergely s answer best, but there s not much between his and Wouter s. I m not sure about Stefano s.
  • More votes in Debian? Any idea for improvement? Another vital issue to me, as democracy is a point of principle for me and our co-op. Wouter s answer sucked and there s not much to choose between the others.
  • Finding sponsors for Debian
  • Raising money for Debian I didn t feel that any candidate distinguished themselves on this or the previous question. No financial revolution looks likely.
  • About debian-companies Wouter s answer is pretty much identical to my view so I m disappointed he won t interfere if elected.
  • how informed should a DPL be? I ve a slight preference for Gergely s answer, but all are good again.
  • Debian s trademarks and logos, and their terms of use. Sadly, I suspect this is most likely to divide three good candidates for me (reads) or not. Basically the same positions, with Gergely expressing interest in delegating it to Stefano to finish what s been started.
  • Question to all candidates: In eight years Seems only Stefano has a vision?
• Questions to some candidates
  • Gergely and Wouter: on the need of becoming a DPL It seems they mainly want the freedom and a few style changes, but I feel Wouter makes a bit of a pig s ear of this discussion, seemingly insulting Stefano at one point and even defending the broken Mail-Followup-To because it would help him use reply-all for everything.
  • Gergely and Wouter: the level of independence from other distributions It seems that both want to decide first but share more if we reach the same decision as others.
  • Wouter and Gergely: software monopoly vs diversity both seem pro-choice, as long as it s maintainable.
• Questions to one candidate
  • Stefano Zacchiroli: What would you do different no big changes.
  • DPL practicing
  • Gergely Nagy: enough packaging manpower? This becomes about reforming the mentor/sponsor system, which I feel is needed.
  • Gergely Nagy: how will you search for talent and passion has more good ideas on similar themes.
  • Gergely Nagy: Disappearing? No, won t happen, based on experience.

Thanks to everyone who asked these great questions. So, what do you think?

After not attending FOSDEM for a few years, this year I decided to attend and also give a talk about Debian packaging for beginners , a replay of a talk given by Gergely Nagy in Debconf11 (video). As the per distribution devrooms were replaced a few years ago with the cross-distributions rooms, I thought it might be a good chance to have this kind of introduction talk to help people started contributing to Debian (or derived distributions). The talk wasn t meant to replace reading the documentation (new maintainer s guide, developer s references and the debian policy), but it s a good start for those who want some hands-on experience. The idea is to start with a just the upstream directory and progress trough the various errors and warnings we get during the build process using dpkg-buildpackage. The outcome is of course very basic, but enough to get people ready to do things on their own, including various QA tests on the package (e.g. lintian and debdiff). The presentation covers the important points of the 3 main files in the debian directory: control, changelog and rules. It addition it holds some information about the various tools one can used to test the packages. I hope to make another version of the presentation to be more standalone than just having the main points during the talk itself.
Filed under: Debian GNU/Linux, FOSDEM

Out of curiosity, and because it is Sunday morning and I have a cold and can't get my brain to do anything tricky, I counted the number of candidates in each year's DPL elections.

Year	Count	Names
1999	4	Joseph Carter, Ben Collins, Wichert Akkerman, Richard Braakman
2000	4	Ben Collins, Wichert Akkerman, Joel Klecker, Matthew Vernon
2001	4	Branden Robinson, Anand Kumria, Ben Collins, Bdale Garbee
2002	3	Branden Robinson, Rapha l Hertzog, Bdale Garbee
2003	4	Moshe Zadka, Bdale Garbee, Branden Robinson, Martin Michlmayr
2004	3	Martin Michlmayr, Gergely Nagy, Branden Robinson
2005	6	Matthew Garrett, Andreas Schuldei, Angus Lees, Anthony Towns, Jonathan Walther, Branden Robinson
2006	7	Jeroen van Wolffelaar, Ari Pollak, Steve McIntyre, Anthony Towns, Andreas Schuldei, Jonathan (Ted) Walther, Bill Allombert
2007	8	Wouter Verhelst, Aigars Mahinovs, Gustavo Franco, Sam Hocevar, Steve McIntyre, Rapha l Hertzog, Anthony Towns, Simon Richter
2008	3	Marc Brockschmidt, Rapha l Hertzog, Steve McIntyre
2009	2	Stefano Zacchiroli, Steve McIntyre
2010	4	Stefano Zacchiroli, Wouter Verhelst, Charles Plessy, Margarita Manterola
2011	1	Stefano Zacchiroli (no vote yet)

Winner indicate by boldface. I expect Zack to win over "None Of The Above", so I went ahead and boldfaced him already, even if there has not been a vote for this year. Median number of candidates is 4.

Tonight, we've watched Chronicles of Narnia, girlfriend and I, and we came to a few interesting observations. Really, they're quite amazing! Someone has been playing World of Warcraft decades before it was released! Spoilers ahead, beware! For example, let us have a look at the Witch. She was surely a mage, as she could conjure food and water. However, she appeared to be buffed a lot, as she could dual wield swords as well - and she wasn't all that bad at that, either. She also had an instant-cast frost spell.. This latter lead to a little debate among us, as I was asserting she must have been a shaman, using frost shock. Would have fit quite well, if only she wouldn't have been able to conjure food... And the fact, that after Aslan killed her, she didn't self-res. I doubt there's any worthy shaman out there who doesn't have a stack of ankhs in the bags. That's just not possible, really. Not to mention she always wore cloth, while we all know, shamans wear mail. Next on the table - the stone-table, hah! - is Aslan. Unlike the witch, he really was a shaman. The best proof: he self-ressed.. Albeit it took him a while. However, he did not appear to have any durability loss - on the contrary, he had his mane grown back! What kind of armor he wore, I do not know, he was in ghost lion form all through the movie, sadly. We also saw him resurrect others, that part fits too. Totems - we missed those, yes... But... if a shaman is fighting in ghost lion form, he must be so powerful, decked out in epics, he does not need them anyway. And this is where we come to the part of investigation where we have a look at the levels of the characters. Aslan and the Witch were skull-level bosses for sure. Most of the armies must have been lowbies, judging by their puny equipment - and most of the time, their puny skills aswell. Thus, it is no wonder that a single boss - the Witch - could tear through almost a whole army of poor newbies. It took another boss to stop her for good. Kinda like summoning your side's bosses in Alterac Valley. With the exception that in Alterac Valley, a raid is enough - here, one needed a whole lot more than a single 40-man raid. So far, this is what we figured out. I expect more details will see the light as we watch the film over and over again, in the hope of discovering more connections between the Chronicles and Warcraft.

The webserver I've been running for the past year or two, my own creation, had been acting strangely lately. It got stuck at times and refused to serve requests. I knew of the problem for some time, but due to time constraints, I haven't touched the code in a very long while. Therefore, the problem never got fixed - and as it stands, it never will be, as I've given up working on Thy (and pretty much everything else), until I finally finish my studies. Originally, thy was written because the machine that powered my domain was not strong enough to run apache. The hardware got replaced about two times since then, and the current one is adequate enough, and the switch was made: I'm now running Apache 2.0. A few rough edges still remain - like SSL is not configured yet at all, but other than that, I think everything else that used to work, still works.

Your Social Dysfunction: Schizotypal You display social deficits and oddities of thinking. Your perception and communication are similar to those of a schizophrenic.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com Please note that we aren't, nor do we claim to be, psychologists. This quiz is for fun and entertainment only. Try not to freak out about your results.

Seems fitting... *grins*

2006, what a lovely year! Not. I heard its a custom, that at the start of the new year, one looks back at the past one. So I did, and wasn't impressed at all. Mind you, the same happens each and every year, so it is no suprise, really. For the past year, I have been rather inactive, I should have gone on an extensive vacation from Debian a long time ago, around May, when I quit my last job. I intend to rectify that as soon as I manage to dig up my GPG key. Most of my packages will get officially orphaned too, as I lack the time and motivation to work on them - no news here, either, as this is the case since early last year. Lets see what I did on the free software front in the past year or two... One of my most succesfull projects was CCZE, a log colouriser. Needles to say, the idea is not mine. The crap implementation, the most messy and bad code I've ever written, is mine, though. It hasn't seen an update since I don't know when. Nor will it in the foreseeable future. The only thing that could help the codebase, is a rewrite, which I had been planning since 2003, and not a bit of code was committed ever. In the meantime, new programs appear, whose logs could be colourised, new demands arrive, but the project has been dead for good. Once, Thy was the software I was most proud of. I really loved it, and spent most of my time hacking on it. Those times are past, new, similar software appeared, that surpassed my beloved HTTP daemon in nearly every respect. I don't believe thy has any place among todays similar projects. This, I truly regret, I had great fun developing Thy. But as everything, even good things must come to an end. Back when I worked for a company that was into this media streaming business, I contributed a few bits and pieces to GStreamer, but all the "grand ideas" I had, and wished to make reality, never happened. Looking further back, I can't notice any significant contribution I made.. except maybe one, a very small one.. Even nowadays, I can't stop feeling a little proud, when it crosses my mind. Some may know, most probably don't, I acted as an application manager for Debian, and for a little while, I like to think I wasn't that bad at that job. For a little while... Anyway, during this, I had the pleasure to work with Daniel Stone. Heh, those were good times! I hope, that what we've done there, was of at least a bit useful. Meh, enough of this. My projects failed, I didn't have the neccessary resources to make some of my dreams come true. All I need now, is a break, a break so I will not feel bad about things I do not have time for. I'll let them go, as I should have done ages ago, that's best both for them, and me. Until a time I feel I can contribute back something, for all I received from the free software community, I'll take a vacation. From time to time, I'll be hanging around on IRC, but my activity will be as low as it was during the past year. Good bye, and thanks for all the fish! P.S.: Yamm, my over-sized tamagotchi expressed interest in maintaining me in Debian. If, by any chance, he'd take over my computer, and expressed his wish to run for DPL-ship, please, by all means, stop him. Thank you.

My recent Planet query got two legitimate replies: Planet JD is a personal Planet (though the owner, David Pashley, does not mind if I mention the address); in the comments Gergely Nagy mentioned his Planet which does not feed directly off my site yet. This leaves at least two planets unaccounted for: their identification strings are Planet persson and Planet BTJ. Anybody know about them? Some people have wondered why I need to query like this, after all, everybody can easily find Planet GNOME, right? Well, I should be so fortunate to be republished by them, though I fail to see why they would. However, most Planets feeding off my blog are not easily recognisable. I don't particularly mind Planets, but I like to know about them. After all, I am interested about my readership :) I would be satisfied with a page that listed planets in a way that would allow me to translate an Apache log entry into a URL of the Planet in question. Having the Planet URL in the Referer field would not be a bad idea, either. ObDebian: I should be starting implementing query-dctrl soonish.

''=~('(? '.('[_@@*@'^'+-).^ ').'"'.('>,<%_@/@ '^'_@[@-.@.^').',$/ )')

Generate your own perl name! Sick, sick, sick, but I love it. Hint: run perl, paste the code, and hit ctrl+d

Here's the deal: I'm terribly bad at screaming, really. Yet, I often find I want to scream at somebody, and all I can do is raise my voice a little. A few minutes ago, on #debian-devel@OFTC, a rethorical question was put out:

<Yoe> Whee
<Yoe> Don't you just *love* C++

And that got me thinking: "Would I get screamed at, loudly, if I said yes?" I could record that, and replay them when I feel like screaming. Nothing beats the angry scream of a roomful of debian developers, I'd imagine. Unfortunately, a beating was all people could promise me. That doesn't worth the trouble, though. However, as it was said shortly after, it would be a nice project for some developer gathering. And from there things followed... and now, I have a plan set out! It's quite certain that I can't attend FOSDEM (or any other conference, unless it's held in hungary on a weekend); I'd like to record some screaming; I have worked with video software before... so, the conclusion reached on #debian-devel: I should get a setup together, where I can anger the audience from my own room, at a safe distance, and record the screaming I get in return. All this using and demoing free software. Sweet, ain't it? Now I just have to find some time to do the setup and test it. Looking forward to christmas, when I plan to have a few days off of work. The relevant parts of the IRC log are, of course, available.

Elvish

To which race of Middle Earth do you belong? Darn... I want to be a hobbit!

Finally, I can drop freepascal. It turned out to be far more effective to rewrite things in c++ (like, do a module in a day, while I've been fighting freepascal for a week, before I worked around all quirks and bugs). Maybe life does not suck that much, after all...

Life sucks. That's all. On a side note, I think I will close this weblog of mine, among other things.