Recently, I started to write some web tool to track the status of ongoing transitions in unstable. I thought I could use some code from the Buildd status project (to see how it fetches the status for each package). Unfortunately, this caused some nightmares for some WB admin (because they used to rely on the generated BDB files and not the PGSql database, where the former is a snapshot of the latter stored in a funny format). Those BDB files were considered deprecated and status pages were looking for some love. Besides, the BDB files were kept in sync by regenerating them regularly (every 15 minutes, AFAIK). So, the information stored there was up-to-date only for a couple of seconds and then outdated, waiting for the next run to be updated. Last weekend, I rewrote the status pages from scratch to make them use the PGSql database. I kept the same user interface (and pages arguments) to make it a drop-in replacement for the old one. Today, thanks to the WB admins, the new status pages replaced the old ones! There are no new visible features for now (except the backend and some links) but I have a list of new features that I intend to implement. These new features will be implemented in my local copy first and then integrated if WB admins want them. And, as some of you already noticed, the new status pages are aware of non-free packages (because it happens that the data is present in the PGSql database thank WB admins for that!).

Since the recent announce of http://ubuntudiff.debian.net, some people started using it and asked for a few features. Lately, I ve been working on it and tried to implement the following:

• Use a single page (instead of a small HTML page with a lot of JS) well, that was easy
• Show the debdiff between the Ubuntu package and the Debian one: that was simpler than I first thought. Right now, it s implemented and deployed [1]. When I first generated all patches, I realized how people can be crazy I had diffs larger than 60MB. So, I had to reduce that by keeping only diffs less than 200 lines per file. At the end, I had a little more than 2GB of patches (and html files) generated for ~2000 source packages (which is somehow reasonable). So now, below the changelog, there is a list of modified files and you can:
  • download a patch for each file, extracted from the debdiff,
  • or click on the file s name to see the diff (if not too large, i.e. less than 200 lines)
  Note that red colored filenames denote files with too large diffs.

I ll still have some details to fix like putting the download patch link on the left, fix the show/hide thing which is also activated when you click on download patch . Then, I ll consider it feature-complete (almost) and won t touch it again. My next game will be to write some tools to analyse or detect new transitions if you want to play, let me know As always, please test this new beta version of UbuntuDiff (and enjoy it :p) and maybe, you may also report errors/bugs, if any [1] http://ubuntudiff.debian.net/beta/

I got my air ticket. So, I m able to say that I will go to DebConf10!

Just an update about sgeps, because it seems to have made a small stir (which is more than I expected).

• Yes, I know about emacs foo.gpg. Admittedly I found out while I was developing sgeps, but I kept on my track anyway. The real reason was that I was having fun, but I could also mention that sgeps doesn't store data unencrypted on disk, not even temporarily. I'm not sure about vim foo.gpg. (Update: Joey Hess telle me it does the right thing.) Anyway, I don't want to fire up an editor (or switch to an already opened one) just to get a password.
• I had also found out about pwman too. My script started as pwman.pl but it was renamed later. I like the simplicity of sgeps better, especially the lack of any UI besides the CLI, but pwman is probably good in its own way, but it doesn't fit my usage pattern.
• It seems the Gentoo people don't share my qualms about making very small packages, and apparently sgeps is now packaged for Gentoo Linux.
• Mehdi Dogguy already contributed suggestions (including better error handling) and even a patch implementing sgeps --delete. Thanks to him!
• An anonymous commenter suggests that sgeps should be able to store notes as well as passwords. That wasn't a requirement I initially had, but I won't reject the patch if it comes He also argues that it should be able to push the password into the X11 paste buffer. Again, why not, if it doesn't break anything.

OCaml 3.11 has migrated to testing Quoting from Dato:

* St phane Glondu [Sat, 04 Apr 2009 14:01:35 +0200]:
> Adeodato Sim  a  crit :
> >> Please schedule the attached requests for the OCaml 3.11.0 transition.
> > Scheduled, with the glitches noted below. Please get back to us with the
> > needed wanna-build actions.
> All packages that needed recompilation or sourceful uploads for the
> OCaml 3.11.0 transition are now compiled and available in unstable.
> I guess migrating ocaml to testing can now be considered...
This is now done:
ocaml    3.11.0-5   testing
ocaml    3.11.0-5   unstable
Congratulations for making of this transition one of the less painful
I ve ever had to deal with, though I guess being a quite self-contained
set of packages and not having ties to other ongoing
transitions really
helped. ;-)
Thanks!,

IOW OCaml 3.11 has just migrated to Debian testing YAY \o/ Congrats and thanks to all the people who contributed. Special kudos go to the (not so) newbies of the Debian OCaml Task Force, and in particular to Stephane Glondu and Mehdi Dogguy: they have contributed work to a lot of packages and have also developed new tools which helped monitoring the transition effectively. Keep up the good work.