The process has been ongoing for more than a year but the Debian technical committee is about to select a candidate to recommend for its vacant seat. The Debian Project Leader will then (likely) appoint him (looks like it won t be a women). According to recent discussions on debian-ctte@lists.debian.org, it seems that either Keith Packard or Philipp Kern will join the committee. If you look at the current membership of the committee, you will see:

• Bdale Garbee: USA
• Russ Allbery: USA
• Don Armstrong: USA
• Andreas Barth: Germany
• Ian Jackson: United Kingdom
• Steve Langasek: USA
• Colin Watson: United Kingdom

That s very Anglo-Saxon centric (6 out of 7 members). While I trust the current members and while I know that they are open-minded people, it still bothers me to see this important body with so few diversity. Coming back to the choice at hand, Keith Packard is American and Philipp Kern is German. No new country in the mix. I can only hope that Philipp will be picked to bring some more balance in the body.

9 comments Liked this article? Click here. My blog is Flattr-enabled.

In wheezy (and all other current linux distros) there is a well-hidden bug that might freeze LVM if deleting a snapshot fails. Doesn't sound too bad one would think, but actually, creating and deleting snapshots is what buildds do all the time, and so they run into that issue quite often. It's worse on some architectures than on others, and so some packages are currently not built as fast as we're used to. Details about the bug are in #659762. Anyone fixing that would (not only) do our buildd network a big help (and you don't need to know anything about autobuilders for fixing that).

After adding the new triggers to auto-build wheezy-backports and jessie yesterday, today I cleaned up the remaining bits in wanna-build from lenny:

wanna-build=> delete from packages where distribution ~ 'lenny' ;
DELETE 8250
wanna-build=> delete from distribution_architectures where distribution ~ 'lenny';
DELETE 63
wanna-build=> delete from locks where distribution ~ 'lenny';
DELETE 63
wanna-build=> delete from pkg_history where distribution ~ 'lenny';
DELETE 16504
wanna-build=> delete from distributions where distribution ~ 'lenny';
DELETE 6
wanna-build=> delete from architectures where architecture in ('alpha', 'arm', 'hppa');
DELETE 3

Back from Banja Luka was the DebConf bus trip to Zagreb. Even though the train connection should allow to catch the night train to M nchen, the time in Zagreb was too short to be sure (as with the other Bosnian track, two trains per day - taking a earlier train was not possible if I wanted to get at least a bit of sleep). So, I went on the DebConf-bus to Zagreb, and arrived there on time. Border checks into Hrvatska were a bit more time consuming then in the other direction - too much traffic but nothing else. In Zagreb, I dropped off my luggage at the train station again, and then went by tram to the parts of the city I hadn't been before (and which were more normal parts, and not the tourist-areas). Incidently I also experienced tram track works, and so had to switch to the bus; however, information was so bad that not only I didn't notice it (which wasn't too bad and unexpected - I plan with enough time as tourist) but also locals were taken by surprise. (Many parts of) Zagreb appears to have many too wide roads, with pedestrians pushed away. Not too uncommon for some cities here as well. But sad to see if public space is not created with humans in mind. This used to be modern in the 60ies, whereas it should have now advanced to center around humans again. If one compares the situation how one feels while standing in a too far road (where the wind blows easily cold) with a decent road in any city center, one could see the difference. But as said, many german cities make the same mistake. After arriving back at the train station, this was in time for taking the night train. Obviously there were many DDs on board. Passport checks in Hravatska went smooth but with many boarder guards. The train had an extra stop not in the official timetable so that they didn't leave their territory armed. On arriving in Slovenija the train had to stop some time. Border checks were quite strict (as this was entering the european union) and time consuming, e.g. partly cover sheets of the train were removed. After entering Slovenija the reminder of the trip was uneventful (or at least: ignored while sleeping), so the trip ended in M nchen as planned. Summarising it was an interesting and nice trip. I had no problem using public transport in spite of the warnings before. Of course, as always while traveling in foreign countries one should expect the country to be more different to home than just temperature and language - i.e. one should expect a bit of the unexpected, and be able to cope with. But that's true for any place one is going to. And these areas are worth another visit another time. I also learned more about "local" history (whereas local covers everything within 1000 kilometers around M nchen). However, the really bad thing is when comparing Hrvatska and Bosna i Hercegovina to see how much more Bosna i Hercegovina could have advanced within the last 16 years, but didn't due to incompetent management. Thinking that the same ways of obstructing decision-making happens in this country (and the european union as a whole) as well (but isn't as visible - we hadn't had a war, but also not much advances in our infrastructure) makes me more sad. Having said this, I still enjoyed the tour quite much - it was a good decision to have done it.

Sarajevo gave a rainy look the next morning. That wasn't too bad, as I was able to walk around a bit without it being too crowded. Incidently I also saw the corner where Franz Ferdinand was shot in 1914, which started the first world war - Europe has many links beyond todays state borders, in good and bad times. It's not like transeuropean politics (or communications) are something too new.
Bazar in Sarajevo
Franz Ferdinand was shot here in 1914
Trolley buses
River, tram and city
nice building hidden by cars - should our cities be dominated that way?
more of the old city After having spent the morning exploring the old part of Sarajevo and along the river, I used the time after hotel checkout to use the tram link and take a few more pictures. I arrived at the train station as planned, but the train I wanted to take didn't go that day (in spite of checking it within the hotel in the morning). So, I ended with another bus trip (this time unplanned) to Banja Luca. Again, bus trips are worse than train trips - one cannot move in the vehicle, and there are delays for every stop. The events in Banja Luca are discussed elsewhere, so nothing about that here (except that DebConf was great - I enjoyed it very much).

During daytime, I finally bought a train ticket from Mostar to Sarajevo. The ticket for the 100 kilometers trip was 10 KM, which are 5 Euro.
Mostar train station Right on time the train entered the station. However, we had a 30 minutes delay there without any obvious cause or communications. This train was (as well as the previous in Hrvatska) between full and overcrowded, in spite of the bad connections. I however learned soon why these carriages shouldn't go to other parts of europe: The window in our compartment was replaced, so it couldn't be opened any more (and we had no means of fresh air). That wasn't as bad as it sounded, as the train doors weren't locked, so someone opened the door while the train was moving and "locked" it with paper so we could get fresh air (and this configuration stayed all the way to Sarajevo at least, so it was that way for about 4 hours). After leaving Mostar, there were soon signs between the train and the river that the area was mined, so one shouldn't go there. The train drives through beautiful landscape. After it got dark, the electric light within the train was not working, so we had (at best) our mobil phones to provide us with light (strange modern times).
Mine warning between the train tracks and the River Neretva In spite (or: because?) of these technical issues, I meet a few local people from Sarajevo and from all parts of Europe. So the train trip proved to be nice and entertaining, and I learned a bit about government issues there. Along the tracks, the signals were non-functional. The trains were directed only by flags (and hand-lights) from personal. On entering any station the train had to slow down till I got shown the relevant flag or hand-light that allowed it to leave the station again. Another heritage from the last war. With due delay, the train arrived in Sarajevo. Due to missing information at the tram stop, I didn't know that the trams to the train station didn't run that late (but I had the information that there would be trams if the train was on time). As it was late, I shortcut that by taking a taxi to the hotel (if I were to arrive in Sarajevo again, I would walk one tram station to the main line - but well, travelling is also about experiences). Unplanned that evening was also the Sarajevo film festival, with one stage opposite of the hotel window. As this was almost closing down when I arrived in Sarajevo, nothing to worry but to enjoy.

The next day was reserved for seeing Mostar. I could leave my luggage at the hotel, so I first went to the train station. The train station was rather large and impressive, in spite of only two trains per day and direction. However, the train station was closed at that time, so no ticket purchase yet. Into the historic city of Mostar: Visiting the Ottoman House was interesting, as well as climbing on the tower of one mosque. In the city, many houses still had effects of shelters and gun shots from the war. (At least) One of the trees in the pedestrian area had many shots as well.
river Neretva within the city of Mostar
City of Mostar from the mosque tower
Ottoman House and bird nests within Seeing Stari Most, the old (or rather: rebuilt) bridge was nice, as well as the masses of people looking there. However, the area with many tourists was quite small. Whereas Stari Most was shoot down during the war, there was a small sister bridge which survived the war damaged but still existed. However, that bridge collapsed during one high water afterwards but had also been rebuilt.
Stari Most with tourists, sister bridge of Stari Most without tourists and houses along the river Below Stari Most, there was an area that looked like a nice picknick-place to look at the bridge and old city, but it was obviously unmaintained since some time. Same at other places: Really great, but many of them unmaintained (as in "too less money", not as in "vandalized"). Soon in the afternoon, most tourists disappeared, so I had the chance to look at the city with only few tourists arround before I had to leave for the train. Walking around Mostar, I meet a few people who were in Germany before, for work, studying or school. The city was quite fascinating - in some way reminded me of 20 years ago. I saw a few more nice vegetables, like kiwis. Mostar wasn't as tourismn-oriented as I would have expected from the monuments available to see there. All people were very nice and friendly, and in the cafes around there was free wifi. A nice place, but also depressing when thinking how much better it could be.

Second half of the second day saw me entering the bus to Mostar in Split. Starting in Split, the bus was rather empty. As the bus went along the coast in Hrvatska to Ploce, it filled with more and more people (and was in many traffic jams). In Ploce, it met the train station which is in an industrial area. On this trip, one could see the disadvantages of busses: Not only one couldn't get up and meet new people, but also the bus needs to leave the main road for every stop, so a stop has a drastic effect on the speed of the connection. (However, as this bus was after the last train of the day, I had little choice; going from Zagreb to Mostar via Split in one day with minimum bus is basically impossible unless the train to Split is strictly on time.) From Ploce, the bus went parallel to the train tracks. The boarder checks were quite easy to pass - except for one passenger who needed the passport stamped, but the stamp had to be fetched from the office first. That took a few minutes, but nothing too bad either. On entering Bosna i Hercegovina, I had the feeling of a rather dark country, at least compared to Hrvatska (but might be influenced as well that it was just getting dark, and I was in Zagreb on the previous evening). The journey for this day ended in Mostar, where I found a warm welcome in the hotel (which was some 10 minutes away from the bus and train station). An additional difficulty was that the hotel booking system I used to book hotels uses Google maps, but different to openstreetmaps, Google maps doesn't really know much about Bosna i Hercegovina.

On the second day, I entered the train to Split early in the morning. The train was a bit crowded, but having a seat reserved helped. Unfortunatly I knew that kind of train already from home (here known as 612), and changing colours didn't make it a better train.
Train from Zagreb to Split in Gra ac After leaving Zagreb, the train went through nice countryside. After some time hills started - with given-up houses, walls, areas. As I learned in the meantime, this track used to be not the main line to Split but a backland-line. However, since the last war (the one from 1991-1995), the shorter and faster direct line is still cut. In Knin one could still see the reminders of the direct line which was electrified.
Landscape from within the train The railway was a mixture of historic operations (with many people, changing switches by going there and by hand and using flags instead of signals) and directly into the 21nd century with electronic signal boxes just being built.
train junction in Perkovi In spite of "the train should be an alternative to cars and busses"-speeches, as there was only one (and overcrowded) train suiteable for going to Split, priorities seem to be elsewhere (not too uncommon for politics on public transport in Europe). Also, there was obviously much more money put into the streets than into the trains. The journey to Split should have taken about 6 hours, but the train in the opposite direction was a bit late, so I arrived late about 30 minutes. Directly on the platform there was a crowd of people trying to let appartments to tourists etc. Ignoring that, I first got rid of my luggage in the train station, bought the bus ticket for the next leg, and as having planned for late trains still had ample of time to see Split. This was my first "southern" target on this journey, so I could say Hi to fig trees (and their smell as they were blooming at that time). Split itself has an historic center (being dated back to the Romans). One could also go up a hill and have an overview over both Split and the Adria. All in all I found Hrvatska being compareable to other nice parts of Europe: Many tourists, overcrowded, and prices similar to Germany. Usage of public transport by tourists seems strange, and mostly only done by interrailers.

These articles cover my way to DebConf 11 through Hrvatska and Bosna i Hercegovina. After telling my initial plans to go by train (mostly) and bus (where it couldn't be avoided) on IRC, I was warned that public transport is quite bad and unreliable. Also, as I live in M nchen, of course this part of Europe was always known as "near" and "could be visited any time" (which means "one never gets to it"; and I can still remember the time when it was Yugoslavia - there are and always were many people living here from that part of Europe; in fact, it's nearer than some parts of Germany). I plan to publish more parts of my way within the next days. Already at home I also learned that most trains in Hrvatska (and all in Bosna i Hercegovina) are not part of the usual train information system, so it was a bit more advanced to find out the appropriate connections. And in both countries there are only a few trains running, so one shouldn't miss a train ("few" means e.g. two per day and direction - but one at most unappropriate times, so really only one suiteable). The first day saw me boarding the Suburban train (S-Bahn) at my usual station, changing platforms and trains at M nchen Ost station and then I was sitting in a train to Zagreb. Nothing strange there, except that the coach I had an seat reserved in was missing. I learned later on that it happens more often that the coach from Serbia is not there because it's technically too unfit to send it to Germany -- and usually, there will be more coaches added in Ljubljana. Border checks were uneventfull but at the slovenijan border my passport was stamped (not sure why, didn't happen on the way back).
Train in sterreich After arriving in Zagreb and dropping off my luggage in the hotel, I first got some Kunas and then bought my ticket to Split for the next day (as a direct ticket from M nchen to Split was not available). After having done that, I took a brief tour through Zagreb until it became dark, with visiting some of the tourist places.
Zagreb

Every 7 years with the Sch fflertanz the end of the Black Death in 1517 is celebrated. After lots of people died, everyone was too scared to go out in the streets again, even after the Black Death was gone. The Sch ffler (cooper = people who traditionally build barrels) started to cheer the people in Munich up with their dance, and made them go on the streets and start their normal lifes again. This is one of the few local traditions that even survived the modern times. The barrel is signed with "Sch fflertanz 2012" and "Zur Erinnerung an das Pestjahr 1517" = "To remind of the Black Death-year 1517", and should remind us that even in the darkest times, there is still hope and life goes on.

I'm looking for an opensource mail backup which doesn't treat mails as "unix files", but instead knows a bit more. So that upon recovery mode I could recover mails by title or sender, and not only just "all files as of that date". Did I miss that, or can this only be bought by money currently? (Speaking of mails, I really mean "Maildir".)

As grub is now working on the loongson 2e boxes as well (thanks to phcoder and Colin Watson), it is time to move the buildds running at my home to a data center (previously we couldn't remote manage the kernels / boot flags without VGA console, which means no data center usage). Also one of the boxes could be converted to a porter machine, so that we could get an mipsel porter box again. The machines are delivered only with 256M of ram, which is a bit too less for usage. Thanks to Zugschlus (Marc Haber) I got 1g ram for both machines going to Vienna (one buildd, one porter box), and thanks to Robert Grimm a 160g harddisk to replace the build-in 40g in the porter box (the buildd can cope with 40g fine). The additional ram modules and hard disk are visible on the following picture.
eysler.debian.org is now DSAed, online and building packages (including autosigning). I will shutdown monteverdi.ayous.org which is still at my place in the next days, reinstall the system and send it to Darmstadt as another buildd for data center hosting there. After that happens all mipsel buildds are DSAed as it should be, and are running in a data center and not via some DSL line. (In case you're looking for hardware at your place, there are a couple of loongson 2f-systems available to buy. 2f is the successor cpu of 2e. Some 2f systems get delivered with Debian installed on it, see e.g. http://www.aliexpress.com/product-gs/290632002-Yeeloong-8101-Laptop-10-inch-Debian-EU-Adaptor-version--wholesalers.html. However, for buildd usage, the 2e are fine as well, and we got them sponsored some time ago.)

When I think about Margarita, I always remember her as a friendly and welcoming person. Like most of the Debian Women members by the way. But she likes to spread some love and organized a Debian Appreciation Day for example. I think I met her in real life for the first time at Debconf 6 in Oaxtepec (Mexico). She deeply cares about Debian in general. She has proven it multiple times with her DPL candidacy and by giving talks like Making Debian rule again. One last thing, Debconf11 is just over and you will see that Debconf4 has had a big influence on Marga. My advice is simple: next time there s a Debconf on your continent, make sure to take a few days off and come to meet us! It really gives another picture of the Debian community. Now let s proceed with the interview. Raphael: Who are you? Margarita: I m Margarita Manterola, a Software Developer from Argentina. I work developing software in Python in a Debian-friendly company during the day, and teach programming at a local university during the evenings. I m married to Maximiliano Curia who is also a Debian Developer, most of our Free Software work has been done together. I only maintain a handful of packages in Debian, I m more interested in fixing bugs than in packaging new software. I ve also been a part of the organizing team of many of the previous Debian Conferences. One of the biggest commitments and the biggest success of my participation in Debian was being part of the organizing team of DebConf8, in Argentina. Raphael: How did you start contributing to Debian? Margarita: I started using Debian around 2000. Soon after we had learned the grips of general GNU/Linux usage, Maxy and I started giving an introductory course at our local university, and became quite involved with the local LUG. At some point in 2002/2003 I became a Debian Bug Reporter : most of my friends would report bugs to me, and I would then write them in the proper form to the BTS. I would also be very attentive about reporting any bugs that I might encounter myself trying to create good bug reports. The turning point in my participation in Debian was DebConf4 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Being so close to Argentina meant that we felt specially invited to be there, and Maxy and I decided to go to DebConf for our honeymoon. We didn t really know much about DebConf dynamics, but we were really eager to learn more about Debian and become more involved. What happened was that meeting with DDs from all over the world transformed our lives, we became part of the Debian family and wanted to be more and more involved. Soon after that we both started maintaining packages and not long after that, applied to become Developers. The Debian Women project also meant a lot to me. I felt encouraged all along the way, encouraged to learn, to ask questions and to lose the fear of making mistakes. I became a Debian Developer on November 2005. Since then, Debian has always been one of the most important things I do in my life. Raphael There was a Debian Women BoF during debconf. What are the plans for Debian Women in the upcoming months? Margarita: I was not there in person, but thanks to the awesome work of the video team, and of Christian Perrier s typing efforts when something failed, I was able to experience much of what was discussed. One of the many points that came up during the BOF is that many people Want to help but don t know where to start or how to go about it. It s a challenge for the Debian Women project to find a way to allow these people to become involved in Debian through Mini projects or something like that. Another of the subjects that was brought up was the Debian Women mentoring project, which has been going on for quite a while now, but lacks enough publicity. So, we need to reach more people about it, and maybe also improve it with some templates, similar to the New Maintainer templates, so that mentees that don t know where to start have some sort of general path to follow. Raphael: You created very useful diagrams documenting how package maintainer scripts are invoked by dpkg. How did you do it and was that a useful experience? Margarita: I did those diagrams to be able to answer one of the questions in the NM templates, regarding the order of the maintainer script execution. Answering the question in text was basically copying and pasting the part of the Debian Policy that explained it, which wasn t really too clear for me, so I decided to go and make a diagram of it, so that I could really understand it. I did it by the best of all debugging techniques: adding prints to each of the maintainer scripts, and testing them in all the different orders that I could think of. It was a useful experience at the time, because I learned a lot of how maintainers scripts work. I didn t expect the diagrams to become so famous, though, I only did them to answer one NM question, that I assumed most other people had already answered before Raphael: You participated in a DPL election. This is a big commitment to make. What were your motivations? Margarita: As I said, I was part of the organizing team of DebConf8, in Argentina. Which was quite a success, a lot of people enjoyed it and praised the good work that had been done by the local team. During said DebConf8, I had a dream (it was almost a nightmare, actually): I woke up and just like that, I was the DPL. I spoke to some people about this dream and to my complete surprise many said that I should actually do it. After giving that possibility a year and a half of thoughts, during the 2010 campaign I was talked into participating myself as a candidate, and it was a very interesting experience. However, I m very glad that Zack got elected and not me, I think he makes a much better DPL that I would have made. Raphael: What s the biggest problem of Debian? Margarita: I think the main problem that we have is our communication, both inside the project and outside the project. Most of us are very technical people, our skills lay in the technical part of Debian (preparing packages, fixing bugs, writing software, administering systems) not in the social part. And thus, we lack a general empathy that is quite needed when interacting with people from all over the world. Raphael: Do you have wishes for Debian Wheezy? Margarita: Not particularly. I do want it to be a great release with good quality, stable software. I would also like to keep making Debian more and more universal with each release, making it more user friendly, more accessible, and more robust than any other previous release. Raphael: Is there someone in Debian that you admire for their contributions? Margarita: I admire a lot of people in Debian. There s a lot of people that contribute a lot of time to Debian, amounts of time that I can t begin to understand how they can afford. I admire Stefano Zacchiroli, our current project leader. And Steve McIntyre, the project leader before him. Also Bdale Garbee, who s also been a DPL in the past. Making this list I realize that Debian has been blessed by quite a number of great leaders in the past. I admire Holger Levsen, for his contributions to the DebConf video team, that have made it possible year after year for the whole project to participate in DebConf remotely. I admire Steve Langasek and Andreas Barth (etch is still my favourite release). I admire Christian Perrier for his work on internationalization. I admire Joerg Jaspert for the incredible amounts of time that he puts into Debian. And actually, I could go on admiring people all night long. I admire so many people that this interview could become a very boring list of names. I guess it s better to leave it at saying that Debian is lucky to have quite a lot of excellent hackers around.

---

Thank you to Marga for the time spent answering my questions. I hope you enjoyed reading her answers as I did. Subscribe to my newsletter to get my monthly summary of the Debian/Ubuntu news and to not miss further interviews. You can also follow along on Identi.ca, Twitter and Facebook.

14 comments Liked this article? Click here. My blog is Flattr-enabled.

On some machines, we have enough cpus to run more than one build in parallel. However, as of now, this isn't supported by buildd. What needs to be done is to change the following code to have up to n builds happening in parallel (including of getting the next package if there is a free slot).

    while( 1 )  
        $self->check_restart();
        $self->read_config();
        my ( $dist_config, $pkg_ver) = get_next_REDO($self);
        $self->do_build( $dist_config, $pkg_ver) if $pkg_ver;
        next if $pkg_ver;
        ( $dist_config, $pkg_ver) = get_next_WANNABUILD($self);
        $self->do_build( $dist_config, $pkg_ver) if $pkg_ver;
        next if $pkg_ver;
        # sleep a little bit if there was nothing to do this time
            $self->log("Nothing to do -- sleeping " .
                       $self->get_conf('IDLE_SLEEP_TIME') . " seconds\n");
            my $idle_start_time = time;
            sleep( $self->get_conf('IDLE_SLEEP_TIME') );
            my $idle_end_time = time;
            $self->write_stats("idle-time", $idle_end_time - $idle_start_time);
     

Any takers? The full code is available from git://git.debian.org/buildd-tools/sbuild.git in the file lib/Buildd/Daemon.pm (and I'm happy to try out appropriate patches). Update The code above lives in the git branch buildd, and not master. Also, I already have one proposal in my mail.

On some machines, we have enough cpus to run more than one build in parallel. However, as of now, this isn't supported by buildd. What needs to be done is to change the following code to have up to n builds happening in parallel (including of getting the next package if there is a free slot).

    while( 1 )  
        $self->check_restart();
        $self->read_config();
        my ( $dist_config, $pkg_ver) = get_next_REDO($self);
        $self->do_build( $dist_config, $pkg_ver) if $pkg_ver;
        next if $pkg_ver;
        ( $dist_config, $pkg_ver) = get_next_WANNABUILD($self);
        $self->do_build( $dist_config, $pkg_ver) if $pkg_ver;
        next if $pkg_ver;
        # sleep a little bit if there was nothing to do this time
            $self->log("Nothing to do -- sleeping " .
                       $self->get_conf('IDLE_SLEEP_TIME') . " seconds\n");
            my $idle_start_time = time;
            sleep( $self->get_conf('IDLE_SLEEP_TIME') );
            my $idle_end_time = time;
            $self->write_stats("idle-time", $idle_end_time - $idle_start_time);
     

Any takers? The full code is available from git://git.debian.org/buildd-tools/sbuild.git in the file lib/Buildd/Daemon.pm (and I'm happy to try out appropriate patches).

I'm still receiving messages by fax. Sometimes pages get inserted wrong (head-down). To make my life easier, I'd like to execute code which automatically rotates the page if it was inserted with bottom first - any idea if there is free software suiteable to recognize if it's wrong (I won't mind if hand-written pages appear wrong - if it works in 90% of the cases, I'm entirely happy).

• Surely, you already found out ftp-master is back.
• Andreas Barth wrote a good post about how to help the Debian release team.
• Bernd Zeimetz introduced the deb.li the Debian ShortURL Service, still in beta phase!
• Sylvestre Ledru blogged about an important update of the linear algebra libraries, BLAS and LAPACK, in Debian:
  • a refactoring of the ATLAS libraries (a BLAS implementation) with an upgrade to the version 3.8.3 fixing many issues
  • the switch between the different BLAS/LAPACK implementations is now way easier:
    http://wiki.debian.org/DebianScience/LinearAlgebraLibraries
• Some important deadlines are approaching:
  • April 9th, GSOC: student application deadline.
  • April 15th, Debian Project Leader Elections 2010 voting.
  • April 15th, DebConf: Early registration deadline if you want to be eligible for free food and accommodation and/or travel sponsorship
  • May 1st, DebConf: Event submission deadline. See also, DebConf important dates

The next Debian release needs help. Releasing Debian is a community effort, only we together can make it happen. What needs to be done is mostly one of:

• release critical bugs: Anyone can help here. If you are an Debian Developer, you can upload NMU bug fixes (precondition as always: the bug is already at least one week old, the fix is long enough in the bug report and the maintainer didn't disagree). Anyone (including non-Developers) can search for a proper solution of an RC bug report, or if it's not RC, downgrade the bug report to important or below. All RC bug reports are available on http://bts.turmzimmer.net/details.php, the RC bug policy is available on http://release.debian.org/squeeze/rc_policy.txt. For "how to NMU", please refer to the Developers Reference.
• bug squashing parties: organise some party in your local Debian community where you meet with other developers and users and try to crush as many bugs as possible: by having them fixed, by proposing a patch, by trying if you could reproduce the bug report.
• release notes: They have been last-minute for all the releases I have watched so far. If you are interested in getting them done in time (and this means speaking with lots of different people now, trying things out yourself etc), that'd be great. There is some work already going on, please refer to http://lists.debian.org/20100318181919.GA31714@dedibox.ebzao.info and http://lists.debian.org/20100404183801.GB1959@dedibox.ebzao.info (plus other mails around this one) for all I know about it. Please coordinate with whoever is already on it (as always).
• release management tools: bts.turmzimmer.net needs to be put on solid ground. If you are interested, please contact me. (Requires: ability to read php; ability to write in a sensible language for a webpage, i.e. python or perl)
• handling transitions: Some of the transitions waiting to happen could profit from someone checking if everything is all right. This means finding out which packages are affected, which of these need sourceful uploads and coordination with the maintainers of these packages. If it should go to testing, care needs to be taken to not entangle it with any of the other ongoing transitions. When all of that is checked and prepared, the transitioning package can be uploaded and binNMUs be scheduled; appropriate access to wanna-build could be arranged if you are a Debian Developer. To avoid many people working on the same transition, please coordinate with us in the #debian-release IRC channel first.
• finding out why packages didn't migrate to testing: Take a package in depenency toplist or top stalls from http://release.debian.org/migration/ and check why it didn't migrate. Do or ask for the proper fix (like filing RC bugs, giving back packages on the buildd, appropriate hints for britney to let a couple of packages go in together, or whatever is required)
• join the release team: If you have enough time to spare to do most of the above on a regular basis, consider if you want to join the release team. If so, please send mail before April 15th to the release mailing list.

If any of the above lists seem suited to you, but you are missing the required rights to do so, please don't hesitate to contact us. And if we notice someone does always the right things, we're keen ourselves to make sure we don't need touch every request unnecessarily. Whatever you do: Write about what you achived. Coordinate with others in time. Have fun!