So, I m here. It will take sometime to write about this, but this is to just reminder to myself that I exists on this blog too! 
__DATE__ / __TIME__) has been applied upstream and will be released with GCC 7.
Following that Matthias Klose also has uploaded gcc-5/5.3.1-17 and gcc-6/6.1.1-1 to unstable with a backport of that SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH patch.
Emmanuel Bourg uploaded maven/3.3.9-4, which uses SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH for the maven.build.timestamp.
(SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH specification)
Other upstream changes
Alexis Bienven e submitted a patch to Sphinx which extends SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH support for copyright years in generated documentation.
Packages fixed
The following 12 packages have become reproducible due to changes in their
build dependencies:
hhvm
jcsp
libfann
libflexdock-java
libjcommon-java
libswingx1-java
mobile-atlas-creator
not-yet-commons-ssl
plexus-utils
squareness
svnclientadapter
The following packages have became reproducible after being fixed:
Last weekend I went to Mumbai to attend the Mini-Debconf held at IIT-Bombay. These are my impressions of the trip.
Arrival and Impressions of Mumbai
Getting there was a quite an adventure in itself. Unlike during my ill-fated attempt to visit a Debian event in Kerala last year when a bureaucratic snafu left me unable to get a visa, the organizers started the process much earlier at their end this time and with proper permissions. Yet in India, the wheels only turn as fast as they want to turn so despite their efforts, it was only literally at the last minute that I actually managed to secure my visa. I should note however that Indian government has done a lot to improve the process compared to the hell I remember from, say, a decade ago. It's fairly straightforward for tourist visas now and I trust they will get around to doing the same for conference visas in the fullness of time. I didn't want to commit to buying a plane ticket until I had the visa so I became concerned that the only flights left would be either really expensive or on the type of airline that flies you over Syria or under the Indian Ocean. I lucked out and got a good price on a Swiss Air flight, not non-stop but you can't have everything.
So Thursday afternoon I set off for JFK. With only one small suitcase getting there by subway was no problem and I arrived and checked in with plenty of time. Even TSA passed me through with only a minimal amount of indignity. The first leg of my journey took me to Zurich in about eight hours. We were only in Zurich for an hour and then (by now Friday) it was another 9 hours to Mumbai. Friday was Safala Ekadashi but owing to the necessity of staying hydrated on a long flight I drank a lot of water and ate some fruit which I don't normally do on a fasting day. It was tolerable but not too pleasant; I definitely want to try and make travel plans to avoid such situations in the future.
Friday evening local time I got to Mumbai. Chhattrapati Shivaji airport has improved a lot since I saw t last and now has all the amenities an international traveller needs including unrestricted free wifi (Zurich airport are you taking notes?) But here my first ominous piece of bad luck began. No sign of my suitcase. Happily some asking around revealed that it had somehow gotten on some earlier Swiss Air flight instead of the one I was on and was actually waiting for me. I got outside and Debian Developer Praveen Arimbrathodiyil was waiting to pick me up.
Normally I don't lke staying in Mumbai very much even though I have relatives there but that's because we usually went during July-August the monsoon season when Mumbai reverts back to the swampy archipelago it was originally built on. This time the weather was nice, cold by local standards, but lovely and spring-like to someone from snowy New Jersey. There have been a lot of improvements to the road infrastructure and people are actually obeying the traffic laws. (Within reason of course. Whether or not a family of six can arrange themselves on one Bajaj scooter is no business of the cops.)
The Hotel Tuliip (yes, two i's. Manager didn't know why.) Residency where I was to stay while not quite a five star establishment was adequate for my needs with a bed, hot water shower, and air conditioning. And a TV which to the bellhops great confusion I did not want turned on. (He asked about five times.) There was no Internet access per se but the manager offered to hook up a wireless router to a cable. Which on closer inspection turned out to have been severed at the base. He assured me it would be fixed tomorrow so I didn't complain and decided to do something more productive thank checking my email like sleeping.
The next day I woke up in total darkness. Apparently there had been some kind of power problem during the night which tripped a fuse or something. A call to the front desk got them to fix that and then the second piece of bad luck happened. I plugged my Thinkpad in and woke it up from hibernation and a minute later there was a loud pop from the power adapter. Note I have a travel international plug adapter with surge protector so nothing bad ought to have happened but the laptop would on turning on display the message "critical low battery error" and immediately power off. I was unable to google what that meant without Internet access but I decided not to panic and continue getting ready. I would have plenty of opportunity to troubleshoot at the conference venue. Or so I thought...
I took an autorickshaw to IIT. There also there have been positive improvements. Being quite obviously a foreigner I was fully prepared to be taken along the "scenic route." But now there are fair zones and the rickshaws all have (tamperproof!) digital fare meters so I was deposited at the main gate without fuss. After reading a board with a scary list of dos and don'ts I presented myself at security only to be inexplicably waved through without a second glance. Later I found out they've abandoned all the security theatre but not got around to updating the signs yet. Mumbai is one of the biggest, densely populated cities in the world but the IIT campus is an oasis of tranquility on the shores of Lake Powai. It's a lot bigger than it looked on the map so I had to wander around a bit before I reached the conference venue but I did make for the official registration time.
Registration
I was happy to meet several old friends (Such as Kartik Mistry and Kumar Appiah who along with Praveen and myself were the other DDs there,) people who I've corresponded with but never met, and many new people. I'm told 200+ people registered altogether. Most seemed to be students from IIT and elsewhere in Mumbai but there were also some Debian enthusiasts from further afield and most hearteningly some "civilians" who wanted to know what this was all about.
With the help of a borrowed Thinkpad adapter I got my laptop running again. (Thankfully, despite the error message, the battery itself was unharmed.) However, my streak of bad luck was not yet over. It was that very weekend that IIT had a freak campus-wide network outage something that had never happened before. And as the presentation for the talk I was to give had apparently been open when I hibernated my laptop the night before, the sudden forced shutdown had trashed the file. (ls showed it as 0 length. An fsck didn't help.) I possibly had a backup on my server but with no Internet access I had no way to retrieve it. I still remained cool. The talk was scheduled for the second day so I could recover it at the hotel.
Keynotes
Professor Kannan Maudgalya of the FOSSEE (Free and Open Source Software for Education) Project which is part of the central government Ministry for Human Resource Development spoke about various activities of his project. Of particular interest to us are:
Ren Mayorga reported Debian bug
#760000 on Saturday August 30th, against the pyfribidi
package.
Bug #750000 was reported as of May 31th: nearly exactly 3 months
for 10,000 bugs. The bug rate increased a little bit during the last
weeks, probably because of the freeze approaching.
We're therefore getting more clues about the time when bug #800000
for which we have
bets. will be reported. At current rate, this should happen in one
year. So, the current favorites are Knuth Posern or Kartik Mistry.
Still, David Pr vot, Andreas Tille, Elmar Heeb and Rafael Laboissiere
have their chances, too, if the bug rate increases (I'll watch you
guys: any MBF by one of you will be suspect...:-)).
Today I'm writing this blog with saddened heart. My mentor and a best
friend Dr.Ashokkumar is no more. He
died yesterday after fighing with Lymph Node cancer.
Ashokkumar or Ashok sir that is how we all students used to
address him, was a Professor in Information Science Engineering in
NMAM Institue of Technology and recently transferred to Computer
Science Engineering Departement. My last meeting him with him was
last year December during which he was looking every bit okay other
than he had knee pain because of which he couldn't walk freely. But I
never imagined that it will be my last meeting with him.
Ashok sir was also behind the FLOSS event that took place in NMAM
Institute of Technology including MiniDebconf 2011 which saw 2 of the
foreign DD's Christian Perrier and Jonas Smedegaard.
It was because of his first organized FLOSS event which I volunteered
called Linux Habba I entered into the FLOSS world. This means its
because of him that I started my FLOSS world journey and reached to
my current level. Also it was because of his motivation I started
writing this blog which I continue till this day.
I whole heartedly thank Ashok sir for teaching me guiding me and motivating me during my difficult times. You will always be remembered through out my life. May your soul Rest In Peace.Here are the 2 pics of Ashok sir taken during Minidebconf (Credits: Christian Perrier and Kartik Mistry)
Good bye Sir :-(
* So, we got new laptop last week.
The entire plan was to introduce my wife into tech world or atleast in Debian and/or OpenSouce world. I visited home for one of this and other personal reason(s) [Expect next post on this!]. My wife reported her first bug (installation-report, with help from me) which was closed by mighty bubulle! I handed over couple of freely available Python books and we started with codecademy s Python track. So far, things are good, but being really non-tech person, I m currently working as support system for her.
I ve used KDE as desktop. Machine runs on latest kernel from experimental due to issues with hardware mentioned here. I was not able to explain IRC in much depth, so we re using non-free methods like Google Talk for communicating and reporting.
Wish us luck! 
I ll report Part 2 when things will be enough to report the progress.
* Inspired by DPL Game post.
Not in order,
* Somehow, I felt that there should be post for atleast to abuse Planet Debian in the new year of 2013. So, what s going on?
1. Finished Full Marathon aka Standard Charted Mumbai Marathon with pathetic timing of 5h55m35s (and felt good at the end).
2. Good thing: Visited family twice in last 2 months.
3. N number of Idlis were consumed. Where, N >= 300. Overall, I m big fan of South Indian food which is more suitable for my stomach. Thanks to running, my junkfood consumption is lesser than I can imagine but you can find me in those places during some weekends to fullfill calories lost in LSD run!
4. Last Sunday, I delivered lecture on Debian Ecosystem , mostly same presentation with additional updates and details, at SVIT, Doddaballapur (technically, some outskirt of BLR) as part of FSMK s 5 days event. It was well received from the applause I got. Photos are still lying in memory card and probably will not come out until next usage of camera.
5. I m very silent on Debian packaging and someone will hit me for pending tasks, but enjoying packaging and fixing tlsdate/torbirdy for Debian lately to get motivation. Other than that, few uploads were done.
* In case you re not watching my twitter (and other social medias), I ve moved to none other than Bangalore. I m working with credativ. So, hello all DDs there!
* On running front, I m back to track from today. Planning to run Bangalore Ultra 50K next month and then Mumbai Marathon (SCMM) in January 2013. BLR Ultra registration should be done in next 1-2 days.
* It is challenging to stay along after four and half years of staying with family (and out of it 3 years of working from home!). I hope to move them here as soon as some things are fixed and start enjoying real life.
(doh, I nearly had it. I just got #690019, #690020 and #690022 for
l10n stuff)
Bartek Krawczyk reported Debian bug
#690000 on Monday October 8th, against guake. And my friend
Sylvestre Ledru, the package maintainer, now has to fix it instead of
trying to promote the use of Scilab over proprietary alternatives in
the French aerospace research organizations..:-)
Bug #680000 was reported as of July 2nd: 3 months and 8 days
for 10,000 bugs. This is a VERY significant drop in the bug reporting
rate in Debian.
Last time, I wrote: "How will the wheezy freeze affect this? We'll see
in two months!". We have the answer: the wheezy freeze triggerred an
important drop in bug reporting rate in Debian. My general feeling is
somehow different: for whatever reason, I feel like the *overall*
activity in the project has dropped significantly. I seem to have less
mails to read, less bugs reported against my packages, even less
heated discussions here and there, as well as several very quiet
channels on IRC.
Am I pessimistic when feeling that the overall momentum is sliding out
of Debian? Maybe I am, so, folks, please make me optimistic and move
you fingers out of the place where they are and help releasing that
damn penguin.
Apart from that, our next milestone (apart from the wheezy release!) will be bug
#700000. Remember
the bet?. It looks like the probability of Kartik Mistry winning
it is now away (he bet for Now 8th 2012) and the best position is hel
by David Pr vot (he bet for December 12th). On the other hand, my own
chances are increasing if the bug rate drop is confirmed and if bug
#700000 is reported in more than 3 months (I bet for February 14th
2013, guess why?). We'll see that in a few weeks!
* KDE Randa Meetings and make a donation!
I know that my contributions to KDE is minimal at this stage, but hey I m doing my part this time for sure!
Falcon is a programming language which is not yet packaged for
Debian. I saw that the ITP#460591 is owned by my Debian
mentor and good friend Kartik Mistry. So I jumped in to
help him finish this package.
Ok enough of introduction now directly to point. We thought its better to base
the Debian package on upstream Git repository itself so we can do snapshot release like Go Language
package is doing. So in this post I'm going to give steps we used to do this and also guidelines
on future packaging of Falcon.
git clone http://git.falconpl.org/falcon.git
git checkout -b upstream
git remote add upstream-falcon http://git.falconpl.org/falcon.git
git branch --set-upstream upstream-falcon
git checkout master
git remote set-url origin git.debian.org:/git/collab-maint/falconpl.git
git checkout upstream
git archive --format=tar HEAD gzip -9 > ../falconpl_0.9.6.8-git20120403.orig.tar.gz
git tag upstream/0.9.6.8-git20120403
pristine-tar commit ../falconpl_0.9.6.8-git20120403.orig.tar.gz
* We ve now done with big transition of Indic fonts from ttf-* naming to fonts-*. Debian-IN-Workers team now maintains around 61 packages. We ve also finished process of moving to Git from SVN along with this. Kudos to Vasudev, Muneeb and AbdulKarim for taking lead, help and pushing me hard for upload and testing. (31 packages upload on Sunday night = 62 times my GPG passphrase, not counting couple of wrong entries 
)
* In case of you ve noticed, this blog has new URL: http://0x1f1f.wordpress.com, reading from Planet Debian doesn t harm your feed reader (if any readers left ).
* On Debian front, I m mostly helping Debian-IN-Workers team to finish ttf->fonts naming transition and moving rest of packages to Git. Vasudev and Muneeb has done most of these work, well done! Rest of my time with Debian goes to usual updates of packages and in reading debian-devel during weekends. It is still fun, yeah.
* And, illumian is born.
* On personal side, life is great as usual. It looks that couple of dentist visit is coming soon. I also started jogging/running regularly since couple of months. In case you re interested, I m on dailymile too.
* This post is almost translation of my this post on Gujarati blog (with some corrections and additions etc). If you re not interested in Wikipedia, move on.
So, as I mentioned here and here, Wikipedians in Ahmedabad planned event: Wikipedia Takes Ahmedabad. We gathered at Gandhi Ashram. Met Noopur again and some volunteers were already there at 8 AM. I never been to Ashram since long time. This place has something, you know it, folks! People started coming around 8.30 and we quickly divided them based upon their interests on 4 routes we already decided. Most of people went to old city s route 1 and our route 2 had odd 6 (and 2 coordinaters) people only. Good. Less is always good.
Noopur and Anirudh gave introduction to wikipedia, creative commons license and some basic rules and todo. We then left for Swaminarayan Temple at Sahibaug. We asked for permission to take photographs and we got it after meeting main swamiji there along with nice sweets and he promised to send professional picture for wikipedia to use. We then left for Delhi Darwaja. Ahmedabad has numbers of old fort gates. We covered some of them and moved to Kalupur Railway Station. Palak and Chirag were caught by traffic police and we should take care of following rules from next time. Point noted for next photowalk.
We then left for Zulta Minar. This is well known for its carving and some myths associated with it. We discussed some points regarding uploading pictures, categories and left for Raipur Darwaja. This place is famous for Bhajiyas. We didn t taste it but had again fun taking pictures, talking to police and had smile before we leave for home. Only bad thing I ve got in this walk is that due to some or other reason my phone s touch screen seems stopped working 
That s another topic, but I couldn t call Noopur/Anirudh for lunch etc due to that
You can view all uploaded pictures at: Categories: Ahmedabad 1
Most of Ahmedabad is covered due to event. Time to write articles?
* Some months back, we (Mark Hills is main culprit here) decided to fork xosview codebase and released new version 1.9.0. I had no luck contacting main authors and there were 23 Debian patches pending. Mark did amazing job here and we ve one major and one minor releases in two months. Kudos to him again.
You can always grab latest Debian packages from unstable and code from Mark s Github xosview project page. Temporary homepage until we take over SF.net project is here.
Feel free to send patches!
(This post is bought to you by myself that this blog exists )
* What a lazy DD I m.
My new GPG key transition document is available at: http://people.debian.org/~kartik/gpg-transition-kartik.txt.asc Many thanks to Christian Perrier for this. Please consider signing my new shiny key: 0x783AA4DE
And, yes. It is fun to be at MiniDebconf here in Nitte.
* Life: As usual.
* Debian: Lots of stuffs going on. We ve yet another MiniDebConf edition, this time at Mangalore. (Not really, it is at: NMAM Institute of Technology, Nitte) And, yes, we ve some nice international guests this time. (Ah, hello, bubulle!). I ve booked ticket etc. even I m heading there during Diwali time, I hope that it will be more fun than usual crackers + sweets etc this time!
gwibber still sucks.
* There is nothing apart from Life, Debian that needs update. Aye. Aye.
* Alas. Not going to DebConf 11
Next.