I usually talk about me whenever I am talking about answering the question who am I, I usually say like I am a librarian turned free software enthusiast and a Debian Developer. So I had no technical background and I learned, I was introduced to free software through my husband and then I learned Debian packaging, and eventually I became a Debian Developer. So I always give my example to people who say I am not technically inclined, I don't have technical background so I can't contribute to free software. So yeah, that's what I refer to myself.For the next question, could you tell me what do you do in Debian, and could you mention your story up until here today? [Sruthi]:
Okay, so let me start from my initial days in Debian. I started contributing to Debian, my first contribution was a Tibetan font. We went to a Tibetan place and they were saying they didn't have a font in Linux. So that's how I started contributing. Then I moved on to Ruby packages, then I have some JavaScript and Go packages, all dependencies of GitLab. So I was involved with maintaining GitLab for some time, now I'm not very active there. But yeah, so GitLab was the main package I was contributing to since I contributed since 2016 to maybe like 2020 or something. Later I have come [over to] packaging. Now I am part of some of the teams, delegated teams, like community team and outreach team, as well as the Debconf committee. And the biggest, I think, my activity in Debian, I would say is organizing Debconf 2023. So it was a great experience and yeah, so that's my story in Debian.So what are three key terms about you and your candidacy? [Sruthi]:
Okay, let me first think about it. For candidacy, I can start with diversity is one point I started expressing from the first time I contested for DPL. But to be honest, that's the main point I want to bring.[Yashraj]:
So for diversity, if you could break down your thoughts on diversity and make them, [about] your three points including diversity.[Sruthi]:
So in addition to, eventually when starting it was just diversity. Now I have like a bit more ideas, like community, like I want to be a leader for the Debian community. More than, I don't know, maybe people may not agree, but I would say I want to be a leader of Debian community rather than a Debian operating system. I connect to community more and third point I would say.The term of a DPL lasts for an year. So what do you think during, what would you try to do during that, that you can't do from your position now? [Sruthi]:
Okay. So I, like, I am very happy with the structure of Debian and how things work in Debian. Like you can do almost a lot of things, like almost all things without being a DPL. Whatever change you want to bring about or whatever you want to do, you can do without being a DPL. Anyone, like every DD has the same rights. Only things I feel [the] DPL has hold on are mainly the budget or the funding part, which like, that's where they do the decision making part. And then comes like, and one advantage of DPL driving some idea is that somehow people tend to listen to that with more, like, tend to give more attention to what DPL is saying rather than a normal DD. So I wanted to, like, I have answered some of the questions on how to, how I plan to do the financial budgeting part, how I want to handle, like, and the other thing is using the extra attention that I get as a DPL, I would like to obviously start with the diversity aspect in Debian. And yeah, like, I, what I want to do is not, like, be a leader and say, like, take Debian to one direction where I want to go, but I would rather take suggestions and inputs from the whole community and go about with that. So yes, that's what I would say.And taking a less serious question now, what is your preferred text editor? [Sruthi]:
Vim.[Yashraj]:
Vim, wholeheartedly team Vim?[Sruthi]:
Yes.[Yashraj]:
Great. Well, this was made in Vim, all the text for this.[Sruthi]:
So, like, since you mentioned extra data, I'll give my example, like, it's just a fun note, when I started contributing to Debian, as I mentioned, I didn't have any knowledge about free software, like Debian, and I was not used to even using Linux. So, and I didn't have experience with these text editors. So, when I started contributing, I used to do the editing part using gedit. So, that's how I started. Eventually, I moved to Nano, and once I reached Vim, I didn't move on.Team Vim. Next question. What, what do you think is the importance of the Debian project in the world today? And where would you like to see it in 10 years, like 10 years into the future? [Sruthi]:
Okay. So, Debian, as we all know, is referred to as the universal operating system without, like, it is said for a reason. We have hundreds and hundreds of operating systems, like Linux, distributions based on Debian. So, I believe Debian, like even now, Debian has good influence on the, at least on the Linux or Linux ecosystem. So, what we implement in Debian has, like, is going to affect quite a lot of, like, a very good percentage of people using Linux. So, yes. So, I think Debian is one of the leading Linux distributions. And I think in 10 years, we should be able to reach a position, like, where we are not, like, even now, like, even these many years after having Linux, we face a lot of problems in newer and newer hardware coming up and installing on them is a big problem. Like, firmwares and all those things are getting more and more complicated. Like, it should be getting simpler, but it's getting more and more complicated. So, I, one thing I would imagine, like, I don't know if we will ever reach there, but I would imagine that eventually with the Debian, we should be able to have some, at least a few of the hardware developers or hardware producers have Debian pre-installed and those kind of things. Like, not, like, become, I'm not saying it's all, it's also available right now. What I'm saying is that it becomes prominent enough to be opted as, like, default distro.What part of Debian has made you And what part of the project has kept you going all through these years? [Sruthi]:
Okay. So, I started to contribute in 2016, and I was part of the team doing GitLab packaging, and we did have a lot of training workshops and those kind of things within India. And I was, like, I had interacted with some of the Indian DDs, but I never got, like, even through chat or mail. I didn't have a lot of interaction with the rest of the world, DDs. And the 2019 Debconf changed my whole perspective about Debian. Before that, I wasn't, like, even, I was interested in free software. I was doing the technical stuff and all. But after DebConf, my whole idea has been, like, my focus changed to the community. Debian community is a very welcoming, very interesting community to be with. And so, I believe that, like, 2019 DebConf was a for me. And that kept, from 2019, my focus has been to how to support, like, how, I moved to the community part of Debian from there. Then in 2020 I became part of the community team, and, like, I started being part of other teams. So, these, I would say, the Debian community is the one, like, aspect of Debian that keeps me whole, keeps me held on to the Debian ecosystem as a whole.Continuing to speak about Debian, what do you think, what is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of Debian, like, the word, the community, what's the first thing? [Sruthi]:
I think I may sound like a broken record or something.[Yashraj]:
No, no.[Sruthi]:
Again, I would say the Debian community, like, it's the people who makes Debian, that makes Debian special. Like, apart from that, if I say, I would say I'm very, like, one part of Debian that makes me very happy is the, how the governing system of Debian works, the Debian constitution and all those things, like, it's a very unique thing for Debian. And, and it's like, when people say you can't work without a proper, like, establishment or even somebody deciding everything for you, it's difficult. When people say, like, we have been, Debian has been proving it for quite a long time now, that it's possible. So, so that's one thing I believe, like, that's one unique point. And I am very proud about that.What areas do you think Debian is failing in, how can it (that standing) be improved? [Sruthi]:
So, I think where Debian is failing now is getting new people into Debian. Like, I don't remember, like, exactly the answer. But I remember hearing someone mention, like, the average age of a Debian Developer is, like, above 40 or 45 or something, like, exact age, I don't remember. But it's like, Debian is getting old. Like, the people in Debian are getting old and we are not getting enough of new people into Debian. And that's very important to have people, like, new people coming up. Otherwise, eventually, like, after a few years, nobody, like, we won't have enough people to take the project forward. So, yeah, I believe that is where we need to work on. We are doing some efforts, like, being part of GSOC or outreachy and having maybe other events, like, local events. Like, we used to have a lot of Debian packaging workshops in India. And those kind of, I think, in Brazil and all, they all have, like, local communities are doing. But we are not very successful in retaining the people who maybe come and try out things. But we are not very good at retaining the people, like, retaining people who come. So, we need to work on those things. Right now, I don't have a solid answer for that. But one thing, like, I was thinking about is, like, having a Debian specific outreach project, wherein the focus will be about the Debian, like, starting will be more on, like, usually what happens in GSOC and outreach is that people come, have the, do the contributions, and they go back. Like, they don't have that connection with the Debian, like, Debian community or Debian project. So, what I envision with these, the Debian outreach, the Debian specific outreach is that we have some part of the internship, like, even before starting the internship, we have some sessions and, like, with the people in Debian having, like, getting them introduced to the Debian philosophy and Debian community and Debian, how Debian works. And those things, we focus on that. And then we move on to the technical internship parts. So, I believe this could do some good in having, like, when you have people you can connect to, you tend to stay back in a project mode. When you feel something more than, like, right now, we have so many technical stuff to do, like, the choice for a college student is endless. So, if they want, if they stay back for something, like, maybe for Debian, I would say, we need to have them connected to the Debian project before we go into technical parts. Like, technical parts, like, there are other things as well, where they can go and do the technical part, but, like, they can come here, like, yeah. So, that's what I was saying. Focused outreach projects is one thing. That's just one. That's not enough. We need more of, like, more ideas to have more new people come up. And I'm very happy with, like, the DebConf thing. We tend to get more and more people from the places where we have a DebConf. Brazil is an example. After the Debconf, they have quite a good improvement on Debian contributors. And I think in India also, it did give a good result. Like, we have more people contributing and staying back and those things. So, yeah. So, these were the things I would say, like, we can do to improve.For the final question, what field in free software do you, what field in free software generally do you think requires the most work to be put into it? What do you think is Debian's part in that field? [Sruthi]:
Okay. Like, right now, what comes to my mind is the free software licenses parts. Like, we have a lot of free software licenses, and there are non-free software licenses. But currently, I feel free software is having a big problem in enforcing these licenses. Like, there are, there may be big corporations or like some people who take up the whole, the code and may not follow the whole, for example, the GPL licenses. Like, we don't know how much of those, how much of the free softwares are used in the bigger things. Yeah, I agree. There are a lot of corporations who are afraid to touch free software. But there would be good amount of free software, free work that converts into property, things violating the free software licenses and those things. And we do not have the kind of like, we have SFLC, SFC, etc. But still, we do not have the ability to go behind and trace and implement the licenses. So, enforce those licenses and bring people who are violating the licenses forward and those kind of things is challenging because one thing is it takes time, like, and most importantly, money is required for the legal stuff. And not always people who like people who make small software, or maybe big, but they may not have the kind of time and money to have these things enforced. So, that's a big challenge free software is facing, especially in our current scenario. I feel we are having those, like, we need to find ways how we can get it sorted. I don't have an answer right now what to do. But this is a challenge I felt like and Debian's part in that. Yeah, as I said, I don't have a solution for that. But the Debian, so DFSG and Debian sticking on to the free software licenses is a good support, I think.So, that was the final question, Do you have anything else you want to mention for anyone watching this? [Sruthi]:
Not really, like, I am happy, like, I think I was able to answer the questions. And yeah, I would say who is watching. I won't say like, I'm the best DPL candidate, you can't have a better one or something. I stand for a reason. And if you believe in that, or the Debian community and Debian diversity, and those kinds of things, if you believe it, I hope you would be interested, like, you would want to vote for me. That's it. Like, I'm not, I'll make it very clear. I'm not doing a technical leadership part here. So, those, I can't convince people who want technical leadership to vote for me. But I would say people who connect with me, I hope they vote for me.
How am I? Well, I'm, as I wrote in my platform, I'm a proud grandfather doing a lot of free software stuff, doing a lot of sports, have some goals in mind which I like to do and hopefully for the best of Debian.And How are you today? [Andreas]:
How I'm doing today? Well, actually I have some headaches but it's fine for the interview. So, usually I feel very good. Spring was coming here and today it's raining and I plan to do a bicycle tour tomorrow and hope that I do not get really sick but yeah, for the interview it's fine.What do you do in Debian? Could you mention your story here? [Andreas]:
Yeah, well, I started with Debian kind of an accident because I wanted to have some package salvaged which is called WordNet. It's a monolingual dictionary and I did not really plan to do more than maybe 10 packages or so. I had some kind of training with xTeddy which is totally unimportant, a cute teddy you can put on your desktop. So, and then well, more or less I thought how can I make Debian attractive for my employer which is a medical institute and so on. It could make sense to package bioinformatics and medicine software and it somehow evolved in a direction I did neither expect it nor wanted to do, that I'm currently the most busy uploader in Debian, created several teams around it. DebianMate is very well known from me. I created the Blends team to create teams and techniques around what we are doing which was Debian TIS, Debian Edu, Debian Science and so on and I also created the packaging team for R, for the statistics package R which is technically based and not topic based. All these blends are covering a certain topic and R is just needed by lots of these blends. So, yeah, and to cope with all this I have written a script which is routing an update to manage all these uploads more or less automatically. So, I think I had one day where I uploaded 21 new packages but it's just automatically generated, right? So, it's on one day more than I ever planned to do.What is the first thing you think of when you think of Debian? Editors' note: The question was misunderstood as the worst thing you think of when you think of Debian [Andreas]:
The worst thing I think about Debian, it's complicated. I think today on Debian board I was asked about the technical progress I want to make and in my opinion we need to standardize things inside Debian. For instance, bringing all the packages to salsa, follow some common standards, some common workflow which is extremely helpful. As I said, if I'm that productive with my own packages we can adopt this in general, at least in most cases I think. I made a lot of good experience by the support of well-formed teams. Well-formed teams are those teams where people support each other, help each other. For instance, how to say, I'm a physicist by profession so I'm not an IT expert. I can tell apart what works and what not but I'm not an expert in those packages. I do and the amount of packages is so high that I do not even understand all the techniques they are covering like Go, Rust and something like this. And I also don't speak Java and I had a problem once in the middle of the night and I've sent the email to the list and was a Java problem and I woke up in the morning and it was solved. This is what I call a team. I don't call a team some common repository that is used by random people for different packages also but it's working together, don't hesitate to solve other people's problems and permit people to get active. This is what I call a team and this is also something I observed in, it's hard to give a percentage, in a lot of other teams but we have other people who do not even understand the concept of the team. Why is working together make some advantage and this is also a tough thing. I [would] like to tackle in my term if I get elected to form solid teams using the common workflow. This is one thing. The other thing is that we have a lot of good people in our infrastructure like FTP masters, DSA and so on. I have the feeling they have a lot of work and are working more or less on their limits, and I like to talk to them [to ask] what kind of change we could do to move that limits or move their personal health to the better side.The DPL term lasts for a year, What would you do during that you couldn't do now? [Andreas]:
Yeah, well this is basically what I said are my main issues. I need to admit I have no really clear imagination what kind of tasks will come to me as a DPL because all these financial issues and law issues possible and issues [that] people who are not really friendly to Debian might create. I'm afraid these things might occupy a lot of time and I can't say much about this because I simply don't know.What are three key terms about you and your candidacy? [Andreas]:
As I said, I like to work on standards, I d like to make Debian try [to get it right so] that people don't get overworked, this third key point is be inviting to newcomers, to everybody who wants to come. Yeah, I also mentioned in my term this diversity issue, geographical and from gender point of view. This may be the three points I consider most important.Preferred text editor? [Andreas]:
Yeah, my preferred one? Ah, well, I have no preferred text editor. I'm using the Midnight Commander very frequently which has an internal editor which is convenient for small text. For other things, I usually use VI but I also use Emacs from time to time. So, no, I have not preferred text editor. Whatever works nicely for me.What is the importance of the community in the Debian Project? How would like to see it evolving over the next few years? [Andreas]:
Yeah, I think the community is extremely important. So, I was on a lot of DebConfs. I think it's not really 20 but 17 or 18 DebCons and I really enjoyed these events every year because I met so many friends and met so many interesting people that it's really enriching my life and those who I never met in person but have read interesting things and yeah, Debian community makes really a part of my life.And how do you think it should evolve specifically? [Andreas]:
Yeah, for instance, last year in Kochi, it became even clearer to me that the geographical diversity is a really strong point. Just discussing with some women from India who is afraid about not coming next year to Busan because there's a problem with Shanghai and so on. I'm not really sure how we can solve this but I think this is a problem at least I wish to tackle and yeah, this is an interesting point, the geographical diversity and I'm running the so-called mentoring of the month. This is a small project to attract newcomers for the Debian Med team which has the focus on medical packages and I learned that we had always men applying for this and so I said, okay, I dropped the constraint of medical packages. Any topic is fine, I teach you packaging but it must be someone who does not consider himself a man. I got only two applicants, no, actually, I got one applicant and one response which was kind of strange if I'm hunting for women or so. I did not understand but I got one response and interestingly, it was for me one of the least expected counters. It was from Iran and I met a very nice woman, very open, very skilled and gifted and did a good job or have even lose contact today and maybe we need more actively approach groups that are underrepresented. I don't know if what's a good means which I did but at least I tried and so I try to think about these kind of things.What part of Debian has made you smile? What part of the project has kept you going all through the years? [Andreas]:
Well, the card game which is called Mao on the DebConf made me smile all the time. I admit I joined only two or three times even if I really love this kind of games but I was occupied by other stuff so this made me really smile. I also think the first online DebConf in 2020 made me smile because we had this kind of short video sequences and I tried to make a funny video sequence about every DebConf I attended before. This is really funny moments but yeah, it's not only smile but yeah. One thing maybe it's totally unconnected to Debian but I learned personally something in Debian that we have a do-ocracy and you can do things which you think that are right if not going in between someone else, right? So respect everybody else but otherwise you can do so. And in 2020 I also started to take trees which are growing widely in my garden and plant them into the woods because in our woods a lot of trees are dying and so I just do something because I can. I have the resource to do something, take the small tree and bring it into the woods because it does not harm anybody. I asked the forester if it is okay, yes, yes, okay. So everybody can do so but I think the idea to do something like this came also because of the free software idea. You have the resources, you have the computer, you can do something and you do something productive, right? And when thinking about this I think it was also my Debian work. Meanwhile I have planted more than 3,000 trees so it's not a small number but yeah, I enjoy this.What part of Debian would you have some criticisms for? [Andreas]:
Yeah, it's basically the same as I said before. We need more standards to work together. I do not want to repeat this but this is what I think, yeah.What field in Free Software generally do you think requires the most work to be put into it? What do you think is Debian's part in the field? [Andreas]:
It's also in general, the thing is the fact that I'm maintaining packages which are usually as modern software is maintained in Git, which is fine but we have some software which is at Sourceport, we have software laying around somewhere, we have software where Debian somehow became Upstream because nobody is caring anymore and free software is very different in several things, ways and well, I in principle like freedom of choice which is the basic of all our work. Sometimes this freedom goes in the way of productivity because everybody is free to re-implement. You asked me for the most favorite editor. In principle one really good working editor would be great to have and would work and we have maybe 500 in Debian or so, I don't know. I could imagine if people would concentrate and say five instead of 500 editors, we could get more productive, right? But I know this will not happen, right? But I think this is one thing which goes in the way of making things smooth and productive and we could have more manpower to replace one person who's [having] children, doing some other stuff and can't continue working on something and maybe this is a problem I will not solve, definitely not, but which I see.What do you think is Debian's part in the field? [Andreas]:
Yeah, well, okay, we can bring together different Upstreams, so we are building some packages and have some general overview about similar things and can say, oh, you are doing this and some other person is doing more or less the same, do you want to join each other or so, but this is kind of a channel we have to our Upstreams which is probably not very successful. It starts with code copies of some libraries which are changed a little bit, which is fine license-wise, but not so helpful for different things and so I've tried to convince those Upstreams to forward their patches to the original one, but for this and I think we could do some kind of, yeah, [find] someone who brings Upstream together or to make them stop their forking stuff, but it costs a lot of energy and we probably don't have this and it's also not realistic that we can really help with this problem.Do you have any questions for me? [Andreas]:
I enjoyed the interview, I enjoyed seeing you again after half a year or so. Yeah, actually I've seen you in the eating room or cheese and wine party or so, I do not remember we had to really talk together, but yeah, people around, yeah, for sure. Yeah.
Adulthood is saying, 'But after this week things will slow down a bit' over and over until you die.I can relate! With every task, crisis or deadline that appears, I think that once this is over, I'll have some more breathing space to get back to non-urgent, but important tasks. "Bits from the DPL" was something I really wanted to get right this last term, and clearly failed spectacularly. I have two long Bits from the DPL drafts that I never finished, I tend to have prioritised problems of the day over communication. With all the hindsight I have, I'm not sure which is better to prioritise, I do rate communication and transparency very highly and this is really the top thing that I wish I could've done better over the last four years. On that note, thanks to people who provided me with some kind words when I've mentioned this to them before. They pointed out that there are many other ways to communicate and be in touch with the community, and they mentioned that they thought that I did a good job with that. Since I'm still on communication, I think we can all learn to be more effective at it, since it's really so important for the project. Every time I publicly spoke about us spending more money, we got more donations. People out there really like to see how we invest funds in to Debian, instead of just making it heap up. DSA just spent a nice chunk on money on hardware, but we don't have very good visibility on it. It's one thing having it on a public line item in SPI's reporting, but it would be much more exciting if DSA could provide a write-up on all the cool hardware they're buying and what impact it would have on developers, and post it somewhere prominent like debian-devel-announce, Planet Debian or Bits from Debian (from the publicity team). I don't want to single out DSA there, it's difficult and affects many other teams. The Salsa CI team also spent a lot of resources (time and money wise) to extend testing on AMD GPUs and other AMD hardware. It's fantastic and interesting work, and really more people within the project and in the outside world should know about it! I'm not going to push my agendas to the next DPL, but I hope that they continue to encourage people to write about their work, and hopefully at some point we'll build enough excitement in doing so that it becomes a more normal part of our daily work. Founding Debian as a standalone entity This was my number one goal for the project this last term, which was a carried over item from my previous terms. I'm tempted to write everything out here, including the problem statement and our current predicaments, what kind of ground work needs to happen, likely constitutional changes that need to happen, and the nature of the GR that would be needed to make such a thing happen, but if I start with that, I might not finish this mail. In short, I 100% believe that this is still a very high ranking issue for Debian, and perhaps after my term I'd be in a better position to spend more time on this (hmm, is this an instance of "The grass is always better on the other side", or "Next week will go better until I die?"). Anyway, I'm willing to work with any future DPL on this, and perhaps it can in itself be a delegation tasked to properly explore all the options, and write up a report for the project that can lead to a GR. Overall, I'd rather have us take another few years and do this properly, rather than rush into something that is again difficult to change afterwards. So while I very much wish this could've been achieved in the last term, I can't say that I have any regrets here either. My terms in a nutshell COVID-19 and Debian 11 era My first term in 2020 started just as the COVID-19 pandemic became known to spread globally. It was a tough year for everyone, and Debian wasn't immune against its effects either. Many of our contributors got sick, some have lost loved ones (my father passed away in March 2020 just after I became DPL), some have lost their jobs (or other earners in their household have) and the effects of social distancing took a mental and even physical health toll on many. In Debian, we tend to do really well when we get together in person to solve problems, and when DebConf20 got cancelled in person, we understood that that was necessary, but it was still more bad news in a year we had too much of it already. I can't remember if there was ever any kind of formal choice or discussion about this at any time, but the DebConf video team just kind of organically and spontaneously became the orga team for an online DebConf, and that lead to our first ever completely online DebConf. This was great on so many levels. We got to see each other's faces again, even though it was on screen. We had some teams talk to each other face to face for the first time in years, even though it was just on a Jitsi call. It had a lasting cultural change in Debian, some teams still have video meetings now, where they didn't do that before, and I think it's a good supplement to our other methods of communication. We also had a few online Mini-DebConfs that was fun, but DebConf21 was also online, and by then we all developed an online conference fatigue, and while it was another good online event overall, it did start to feel a bit like a zombieconf and after that, we had some really nice events from the Brazillians, but no big global online community events again. In my opinion online MiniDebConfs can be a great way to develop our community and we should spend some further energy into this, but hey! This isn't a platform so let me back out of talking about the future as I see it... Despite all the adversity that we faced together, the Debian 11 release ended up being quite good. It happened about a month or so later than what we ideally would've liked, but it was a solid release nonetheless. It turns out that for quite a few people, staying inside for a few months to focus on Debian bugs was quite productive, and Debian 11 ended up being a very polished release. During this time period we also had to deal with a previous Debian Developer that was expelled for his poor behaviour in Debian, who continued to harass members of the Debian project and in other free software communities after his expulsion. This ended up being quite a lot of work since we had to take legal action to protect our community, and eventually also get the police involved. I'm not going to give him the satisfaction by spending too much time talking about him, but you can read our official statement regarding Daniel Pocock here: https://www.debian.org/News/2021/20211117 In late 2021 and early 2022 we also discussed our general resolution process, and had two consequent votes to address some issues that have affected past votes: In my first term I addressed our delegations that were a bit behind, by the end of my last term all delegation requests are up to date. There's still some work to do, but I'm feeling good that I get to hand this over to the next DPL in a very decent state. Delegation updates can be very deceiving, sometimes a delegation is completely re-written and it was just 1 or 2 hours of work. Other times, a delegation updated can contain one line that has changed or a change in one team member that was the result of days worth of discussion and hashing out differences. I also received quite a few requests either to host a service, or to pay a third-party directly for hosting. This was quite an admin nightmare, it either meant we had to manually do monthly reimbursements to someone, or have our TOs create accounts/agreements at the multiple providers that people use. So, after talking to a few people about this, we founded the DebianNet team (we could've admittedly chosen a better name, but that can happen later on) for providing hosting at two different hosting providers that we have agreement with so that people who host things under debian.net have an easy way to host it, and then at the same time Debian also has more control if a site maintainer goes MIA. More info: https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DebianNet You might notice some Openstack mentioned there, we had some intention to set up a Debian cloud for hosting these things, that could also be used for other additional Debiany things like archive rebuilds, but these have so far fallen through. We still consider it a good idea and hopefully it will work out some other time (if you're a large company who can sponsor few racks and servers, please get in touch!) DebConf22 and Debian 12 era DebConf22 was the first time we returned to an in-person DebConf. It was a bit smaller than our usual DebConf - understandably so, considering that there were still COVID risks and people who were at high risk or who had family with high risk factors did the sensible thing and stayed home. After watching many MiniDebConfs online, I also attended my first ever MiniDebConf in Hamburg. It still feels odd typing that, it feels like I should've been at one before, but my location makes attending them difficult (on a side-note, a few of us are working on bootstrapping a South African Debian community and hopefully we can pull off MiniDebConf in South Africa later this year). While I was at the MiniDebConf, I gave a talk where I covered the evolution of firmware, from the simple e-proms that you'd find in old printers to the complicated firmware in modern GPUs that basically contain complete operating systems- complete with drivers for the device their running on. I also showed my shiny new laptop, and explained that it's impossible to install that laptop without non-free firmware (you'd get a black display on d-i or Debian live). Also that you couldn't even use an accessibility mode with audio since even that depends on non-free firmware these days. Steve, from the image building team, has said for a while that we need to do a GR to vote for this, and after more discussion at DebConf, I kept nudging him to propose the GR, and we ended up voting in favour of it. I do believe that someone out there should be campaigning for more free firmware (unfortunately in Debian we just don't have the resources for this), but, I'm glad that we have the firmware included. In the end, the choice comes down to whether we still want Debian to be installable on mainstream bare-metal hardware. At this point, I'd like to give a special thanks to the ftpmasters, image building team and the installer team who worked really hard to get the changes done that were needed in order to make this happen for Debian 12, and for being really proactive for remaining niggles that was solved by the time Debian 12.1 was released. The included firmware contributed to Debian 12 being a huge success, but it wasn't the only factor. I had a list of personal peeves, and as the hard freeze hit, I lost hope that these would be fixed and made peace with the fact that Debian 12 would release with those bugs. I'm glad that lots of people proved me wrong and also proved that it's never to late to fix bugs, everything on my list got eliminated by the time final freeze hit, which was great! We usually aim to have a release ready about 2 years after the previous release, sometimes there are complications during a freeze and it can take a bit longer. But due to the excellent co-ordination of the release team and heavy lifting from many DDs, the Debian 12 release happened 21 months and 3 weeks after the Debian 11 release. I hope the work from the release team continues to pay off so that we can achieve their goals of having shorter and less painful freezes in the future! Even though many things were going well, the ongoing usr-merge effort highlighted some social problems within our processes. I started typing out the whole history of usrmerge here, but it's going to be too long for the purpose of this mail. Important questions that did come out of this is, should core Debian packages be team maintained? And also about how far the CTTE should really be able to override a maintainer. We had lots of discussion about this at DebConf22, but didn't make much concrete progress. I think that at some point we'll probably have a GR about package maintenance. Also, thank you to Guillem who very patiently explained a few things to me (after probably having have to done so many times to others before already) and to Helmut who have done the same during the MiniDebConf in Hamburg. I think all the technical and social issues here are fixable, it will just take some time and patience and I have lots of confidence in everyone involved. UsrMerge wiki page: https://wiki.debian.org/UsrMerge DebConf 23 and Debian 13 era DebConf23 took place in Kochi, India. At the end of my Bits from the DPL talk there, someone asked me what the most difficult thing I had to do was during my terms as DPL. I answered that nothing particular stood out, and even the most difficult tasks ended up being rewarding to work on. Little did I know that my most difficult period of being DPL was just about to follow. During the day trip, one of our contributors, Abraham Raji, passed away in a tragic accident. There's really not anything anyone could've done to predict or stop it, but it was devastating to many of us, especially the people closest to him. Quite a number of DebConf attendees went to his funeral, wearing the DebConf t-shirts he designed as a tribute. It still haunts me when I saw his mother scream "He was my everything! He was my everything!", this was by a large margin the hardest day I've ever had in Debian, and I really wasn't ok for even a few weeks after that and I think the hurt will be with many of us for some time to come. So, a plea again to everyone, please take care of yourself! There's probably more people that love you than you realise. A special thanks to the DebConf23 team, who did a really good job despite all the uphills they faced (and there were many!). As DPL, I think that planning for a DebConf is near to impossible, all you can do is show up and just jump into things. I planned to work with Enrico to finish up something that will hopefully save future DPLs some time, and that is a web-based DD certificate creator instead of having the DPL do so manually using LaTeX. It already mostly works, you can see the work so far by visiting
https://nm.debian.org/person/ACCOUNTNAME/certificate/
and replacing
ACCOUNTNAME
with your Debian account name, and if you're a DD, you
should see your certificate. It still needs a few minor changes and a
DPL signature, but at this point I think that will be finished up when
the new DPL start. Thanks to Enrico for working on this!
Since my first term, I've been trying to find ways to improve all our
accounting/finance issues. Tracking what we spend on things, and
getting an annual overview is hard, especially over 3 trusted
organisations. The reimbursement process can also be really tedious,
especially when you have to provide files in a certain order and
combine them into a PDF. So, at DebConf22 we had a meeting along with
the treasurer team and Stefano Rivera who said that it might be
possible for him to work on a new system as part of his Freexian work.
It worked out, and Freexian funded the development of the system since
then, and after DebConf23 we handled the reimbursements for the
conference via the new reimbursements site:
https://reimbursements.debian.net/
It's still early days, but over time it should be linked to all our TOs
and we'll use the same category codes across the board. So, overall,
our reimbursement process becomes a lot simpler, and also we'll be able
to get information like how much money we've spent on any category in
any period. It will also help us to track how much money we have
available or how much we spend on recurring costs. Right now that needs
manual polling from our TOs. So I'm really glad that this is a big
long-standing problem in the project that is being fixed.
For Debian 13, we're waving goodbye to the KFreeBSD and mipsel ports.
But we're also gaining riscv64 and loongarch64 as release
architectures! I have 3 different RISC-V based machines on my desk here
that I haven't had much time to work with yet, you can expect some blog
posts about them soon after my DPL term ends!
As Debian is a unix-like system, we're affected by the
Year 2038 problem, where systems that uses 32 bit time in seconds
since 1970 run out of available time and will wrap back to 1970 or have
other undefined behaviour. A detailed wiki page explains how this
works in Debian, and currently we're going through a rather large
transition to make this possible.
I believe this is the right time for Debian to be addressing this,
we're still a bit more than a year away for the Debian 13 release, and
this provides enough time to test the implementation before 2038 rolls
along.
Of course, big complicated transitions with dependency loops that
causes chaos for everyone would still be too easy, so this past weekend
(which is a holiday period in most of the west due to Easter weekend)
has been filled with dealing with an upstream bug in xz-utils, where a
backdoor was placed in this key piece of software. An Ars Technica
covers it quite well, so I won't go into all the details here. I
mention it because I want to give yet another special thanks to
everyone involved in dealing with this on the Debian side. Everyone
involved, from the ftpmasters to security team and others involved were
super calm and professional and made quick, high quality decisions.
This also lead to the archive being frozen on Saturday, this is the
first time I've seen this happen since I've been a DD, but I'm sure
next week will go better!
Looking forward
It's really been an honour for me to serve as DPL. It might well be my
biggest achievement in my life. Previous DPLs range from prominent
software engineers to game developers, or people who have done things
like complete Iron Man, run other huge open source projects and are
part of big consortiums. Ian Jackson even authored dpkg and is now
working on the very interesting tag2upload service!
I'm a relative nobody, just someone who grew up as a poor kid in South
Africa, who just really cares about Debian a lot. And, above all, I'm
really thankful that I didn't do anything major to screw up Debian for
good.
Not unlike learning how to use Debian, and also becoming a Debian
Developer, I've learned a lot from this and it's been a really valuable
growth experience for me.
I know I can't possible give all the thanks to everyone who deserves
it, so here's a big big thanks to everyone who have worked so hard and
who have put in many, many hours to making Debian better, I consider
you all heroes!
-Jonathan
In addition to the problem of state, installing regular updates periodically requires a reboot, even if the rest of the process is automated through a tool like unattended-upgrades. For my personal homelab, I manage a handful of different machines running various services. I used to just schedule a day to update and reboot all of them, but that got very tedious very quickly. I then moved the reboot to a cronjob, and then recently to a systemd timer and service. I figure that laying out my path to better management of this might help others, and will almost certainly lead to someone telling me a better way to do this. UPDATE: Turns out there s another option for better systemd cron integration. SeeYou: uptime
Me: Every machine gets rebooted at 1AM to clear the slate for maintenance, and at 3:30AM to push through any pending updates. @SwiftOnSecurity, December 27, 2020
systemd-cron
below.
Ultimately, uptime only measures the duration since you last proved you can turn the machine on and have it boot. @SwiftOnSecurity, May 7, 2016
/var/spool/cron/crontabs/root
1
is enough to get your machine to reboot once a month2 on the 6th at 8:00 AM3:
0 8 6 * * reboot
regular-reboot.timer
with the following contents:
[Unit]
Description=Reboot on a Regular Basis
[Timer]
Unit=regular-reboot.service
OnBootSec=1month
[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target
regular-reboot.service
systemd unit
when the system reaches one month of uptime.
I ve seen some guides to creating timer units recommend adding
a Wants=regular-reboot.service
to the [Unit]
section,
but this has the consequence of running that service every time it starts the
timer. In this case that will just reboot your system on startup which is
not what you want.
Care needs to be taken to use the OnBootSec
directive instead of
OnCalendar
or any of the other time specifications, as your system could
reboot, discover its still within the expected window and reboot again.
With OnBootSec
your system will not have that problem.
Technically, this same problem could have occurred with the cronjob approach,
but in practice it never did, as the systems took long enough to come back
up that they were no longer within the expected window for the job.
I then added the regular-reboot.service
:
[Unit]
Description=Reboot on a Regular Basis
Wants=regular-reboot.timer
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=shutdown -r 02:45
OnBootSec
.
This way different systems have different reboot times so that everything
doesn t just reboot and fail all at once. Were something to fail to come
back up I would have some time to fix it, as each machine has a few hours
between scheduled reboots.
One you have both files in place, you ll simply need to reload configuration
and then enable and start the timer unit:
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable --now regular-reboot.timer
# systemctl status regular-reboot.timer
regular-reboot.timer - Reboot on a Regular Basis
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/regular-reboot.timer; enabled; preset: enabled)
Active: active (waiting) since Wed 2024-03-13 01:54:52 EDT; 1 week 4 days ago
Trigger: Fri 2024-04-12 12:24:42 EDT; 2 weeks 4 days left
Triggers: regular-reboot.service
Mar 13 01:54:52 dorfl systemd[1]: Started regular-reboot.timer - Reboot on a Regular Basis.
prometheus-node-exporter
. There are plenty of ways to hack in cron support
to the node exporter, but just moving to systemd units provides both
support for tracking failure and logging,
both of which make system administration much easier when things inevitably
go wrong.
systemd-cron
An alternative to converting everything by hand, if you happen to have
a lot of cronjobs is
systemd-cron
.
It will make each crontab and /etc/cron.*
directory into automatic
service and timer units.
Thanks to Alexandre Detiste for letting me know about this project.
I have few enough cron jobs that I ve already converted, but
for anyone looking at a large number of jobs to convert
you ll want to check it out!
prometheus-alertmanager
rules:
- alert: UptimeTooHigh
expr: (time() - node_boot_time_seconds job="node" ) / 86400 > 35
annotations:
summary: "Instance Has Been Up Too Long!"
description: "Instance Has Been Up Too Long!"
/etc/crontab
or drop a script into /etc/cron.monthly
depending on your system.
NEWS
file entry follows.
Courtesy of CRANberries, there is also a diffstat report for the most recent release. If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can sponsor me at GitHub.Changes in RcppEigen version 0.3.4.0.0 (2024-02-28)
- The Eigen version has been upgrade to release 3.4.0 (Yixuan)
- Extensive reverse-dependency checks ensure only three out of over 400 packages at CRAN are affected; PRs and patches helped other packages
- The long-running branch also contains substantial contributions from Mikael Jagan (for the lme4 interface) and Andrew Johnson (revdep PRs)
This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.
/C=BE/O=GlobalSign nv-sa/CN=AlphaSSL CA - SHA256 - G4 /C=GB/ST=Greater Manchester/L=Salford/O=Sectigo Limited/CN=Sectigo RSA Domain Validation Secure Server CA /C=GB/ST=Greater Manchester/L=Salford/O=Sectigo Limited/CN=Sectigo RSA Organization Validation Secure Server CA /C=US/ST=Arizona/L=Scottsdale/O=GoDaddy.com, Inc./OU=http://certs.godaddy.com/repository//CN=Go Daddy Secure Certificate Authority - G2 /C=US/ST=Arizona/L=Scottsdale/O=Starfield Technologies, Inc./OU=http://certs.starfieldtech.com/repository//CN=Starfield Secure Certificate Authority - G2 /C=AT/O=ZeroSSL/CN=ZeroSSL RSA Domain Secure Site CA /C=BE/O=GlobalSign nv-sa/CN=GlobalSign GCC R3 DV TLS CA 2020Rather than try to work with raw issuers (because, as Andrew Ayer says, The SSL Certificate Issuer Field is a Lie), I mapped these issuers to the organisations that manage them, and summed the counts for those grouped issuers together.
Issuer | Compromised Count |
---|---|
Sectigo | 170 |
ISRG (Let's Encrypt) | 161 |
GoDaddy | 141 |
DigiCert | 81 |
GlobalSign | 46 |
Entrust | 3 |
SSL.com | 1 |
Issuer | Issuance Volume | Compromised Count | Compromise Rate |
---|---|---|---|
Sectigo | 88,323,068 | 170 | 1 in 519,547 |
ISRG (Let's Encrypt) | 315,476,402 | 161 | 1 in 1,959,480 |
GoDaddy | 56,121,429 | 141 | 1 in 398,024 |
DigiCert | 144,713,475 | 81 | 1 in 1,786,586 |
GlobalSign | 1,438,485 | 46 | 1 in 31,271 |
Entrust | 23,166 | 3 | 1 in 7,722 |
SSL.com | 171,816 | 1 | 1 in 171,816 |
Issuer | Issuance Volume | Compromised Count | Compromise Rate |
---|---|---|---|
Entrust | 23,166 | 3 | 1 in 7,722 |
GlobalSign | 1,438,485 | 46 | 1 in 31,271 |
SSL.com | 171,816 | 1 | 1 in 171,816 |
GoDaddy | 56,121,429 | 141 | 1 in 398,024 |
Sectigo | 88,323,068 | 170 | 1 in 519,547 |
DigiCert | 144,713,475 | 81 | 1 in 1,786,586 |
ISRG (Let's Encrypt) | 315,476,402 | 161 | 1 in 1,959,480 |
SELECT SUM(sub.NUM_ISSUED[2] - sub.NUM_EXPIRED[2]) FROM ( SELECT ca.name, max(coalesce(coalesce(nullif(trim(cc.SUBORDINATE_CA_OWNER), ''), nullif(trim(cc.CA_OWNER), '')), cc.INCLUDED_CERTIFICATE_OWNER)) as OWNER, ca.NUM_ISSUED, ca.NUM_EXPIRED FROM ccadb_certificate cc, ca_certificate cac, ca WHERE cc.CERTIFICATE_ID = cac.CERTIFICATE_ID AND cac.CA_ID = ca.ID GROUP BY ca.ID ) sub WHERE sub.name ILIKE '%Amazon%' OR sub.name ILIKE '%CloudFlare%' AND sub.owner = 'DigiCert';The number I get from running that query is 104,316,112, which should be subtracted from DigiCert s total issuance figures to get a more accurate view of what DigiCert s regular customers do with their private keys. When I do this, the compromise rates table, sorted by the compromise rate, looks like this:
Issuer | Issuance Volume | Compromised Count | Compromise Rate |
---|---|---|---|
Entrust | 23,166 | 3 | 1 in 7,722 |
GlobalSign | 1,438,485 | 46 | 1 in 31,271 |
SSL.com | 171,816 | 1 | 1 in 171,816 |
GoDaddy | 56,121,429 | 141 | 1 in 398,024 |
"Regular" DigiCert | 40,397,363 | 81 | 1 in 498,732 |
Sectigo | 88,323,068 | 170 | 1 in 519,547 |
All DigiCert | 144,713,475 | 81 | 1 in 1,786,586 |
ISRG (Let's Encrypt) | 315,476,402 | 161 | 1 in 1,959,480 |
The less humans have to do with certificate issuance, the less likely they are to compromise that certificate by exposing the private key. While it may not be surprising, it is nice to have some empirical evidence to back up the common wisdom. Fully-managed TLS providers, such as CloudFlare, AWS Certificate Manager, and whatever Azure s thing is called, is the platonic ideal of this principle: never give humans any opportunity to expose a private key. I m not saying you should use one of these providers, but the security approach they have adopted appears to be the optimal one, and should be emulated universally. The ACME protocol is the next best, in that there are a variety of standardised tools widely available that allow humans to take themselves out of the loop, but it s still possible for humans to handle (and mistakenly expose) key material if they try hard enough. Legacy issuance methods, which either cannot be automated, or require custom, per-provider automation to be developed, appear to be at least four times less helpful to the goal of avoiding compromise of the private key associated with a certificate.
Plug in a USB stick - use dmesg or your favourite method to see how it is identified.
Make a couple of mount points under /mnt - /mnt/data and /mnt/cdrom
1. Grab a USB stick, Partition using MBR. Make a single VFAT
partition, type 0xEF (i.e. EFI System Partition)
For a USB stick (identified as sdX) below:
$ sudo parted --script /dev/sdX mklabel msdos $ sudo parted --script /dev/sdX mkpart primary fat32 0% 100% $ sudo mkfs.vfat /dev/sdX1
$ sudo mount /dev/sdX1 /mnt/data/
Download an arm64 netinst.iso
https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/arm64/iso-cd/debian-12.2.0-arm64-netinst.iso
2. Copy the complete contents of partition *1* from a Debian arm64
installer image into the filesystem (partition 1 is the installer
stuff itself) on the USB stick, in /
$ sudo kpartx -v -a debian-12.2.0-arm64-netinst.iso # Mount the first partition on the ISO and copy its contents to the stick $ sudo mount /dev/mapper/loop0p1 /mnt/cdrom/ $ sudo rsync -av /mnt/cdrom/ /mnt/data/ $ sudo umount /mnt/cdrom
3. Copy the complete contents of partition *2* from that Debian arm64
installer image into that filesystem (partition 2 is the ESP) on
the USB stick, in /
# Same story with the second partition on the ISO
$ sudo mount /dev/mapper/loop0p2 /mnt/cdrom/
$ sudo rsync -av /mnt/cdrom/ /mnt/data/ $ sudo umount /mnt/cdrom
$ sudo kpartx -d debian-testing-amd64-netinst.iso $ sudo umount /mnt/data
4. Grab the rpi edk2 build from https://github.com/pftf/RPi4/releases
(I used 1.35) and extract it. I copied the files there into *2*
places for now on the USB stick:
/ (so the Pi will boot using it)
/rpi4 (so we can find the files again later)
5. Add the preseed.cfg file (attached) into *both* of the two initrd
files on the USB stick
- /install.a64/initrd.gz and
- /install.a64/gtk/initrd.gz
cpio is an awful tool to use :-(. In each case:
$ cp /path/to/initrd.gz .
$ gunzip initrd.gz
$ echo preseed.cfg cpio -H newc -o -A -F initrd
$ gzip -9v initrd
$ cp initrd.gz /path/to/initrd.gz
If you look at the preseed file, it will do a few things:
- Use an early_command to unmount /media (to work around Debian bug
#1051964)
- Register a late_command call for /cdrom/finish-rpi (the next
file - see below) to run at the end of the installation.
- Force grub installation also to the EFI removable media path,
needed as the rpi doesn't store EFI boot variables.
- Stop the installer asking for firmware from removable media (as
the rpi4 will ask for broadcom bluetooth fw that we can't
ship. Can be ignored safely.)
6. Copy the finish-rpi script (attached) into / on the USB stick. It
will be run at the end of the installation, triggered via the
preseed. It does a couple of things:
- Copy the edk2 firmware files into the ESP on the system that's
just been installer
- Remove shim-signed from the installed systems, as there's a bug
that causes it to fail on rpi4. I need to dig into this to see
what the issue is.
That's it! Run the installer as normal, all should Just Work (TM).
BlueTooth didn't quite work : raspberrypi-firmware didn't install until adding a symlink for boot/efi to /boot/firmware
20231127 - This may not be necessary because raspberrypi-firmware path has been fixed
$ debputy plugin list automatic-discard-rules
+-----------------------+-------------+
Name Provided By
+-----------------------+-------------+
python-cache-files debputy
la-files debputy
backup-files debputy
version-control-paths debputy
gnu-info-dir-file debputy
debian-dir debputy
doxygen-cruft-files debputy
+-----------------------+-------------+
$ debputy plugin show automatic-discard-rules la-files
Automatic Discard Rule: la-files
================================
Documentation: Discards any .la files beneath /usr/lib
Example
-------
/usr/lib/libfoo.la << Discarded (directly by the rule)
/usr/lib/libfoo.so.1.0.0
api.automatic_discard_rule(
"la-files",
_debputy_prune_la_files,
rule_reference_documentation="Discards any .la files beneath /usr/lib",
examples=automatic_discard_rule_example(
"usr/lib/libfoo.la",
("usr/lib/libfoo.so.1.0.0", False),
),
)
# Output if the code or example is broken
$ debputy plugin show automatic-discard-rules la-files
[...]
Automatic Discard Rule: la-files
================================
Documentation: Discards any .la files beneath /usr/lib
Example
-------
/usr/lib/libfoo.la !! INCONSISTENT (code: keep, example: discard)
/usr/lib/libfoo.so.1.0.0
debputy: warning: The example was inconsistent. Please file a bug against the plugin debputy
$ debputy plugin list plugable-manifest-rules
+-------------------------------+------------------------------+-------------+
Rule Name Rule Type Provided By
+-------------------------------+------------------------------+-------------+
install InstallRule debputy
install-docs InstallRule debputy
install-examples InstallRule debputy
install-doc InstallRule debputy
install-example InstallRule debputy
install-man InstallRule debputy
discard InstallRule debputy
move TransformationRule debputy
remove TransformationRule debputy
[...] [...] [...]
remove DpkgMaintscriptHelperCommand debputy
rename DpkgMaintscriptHelperCommand debputy
cross-compiling ManifestCondition debputy
can-execute-compiled-binaries ManifestCondition debputy
run-build-time-tests ManifestCondition debputy
[...] [...] [...]
+-------------------------------+------------------------------+-------------+
$ debputy plugin show plugable-manifest-rules install
Generic install ( install )
===========================
The generic install rule can be used to install arbitrary paths into packages
and is *similar* to how dh_install from debhelper works. It is a two "primary" uses.
1) The classic "install into directory" similar to the standard dh_install
2) The "install as" similar to dh-exec 's foo => bar feature.
Attributes:
- source (conditional): string
sources (conditional): List of string
A path match ( source ) or a list of path matches ( sources ) defining the
source path(s) to be installed. [...]
- dest-dir (optional): string
A path defining the destination *directory*. [...]
- into (optional): string or a list of string
A path defining the destination *directory*. [...]
- as (optional): string
A path defining the path to install the source as. [...]
- when (optional): manifest condition (string or mapping of string)
A condition as defined in [Conditional rules](https://salsa.debian.org/debian/debputy/-/blob/main/MANIFEST-FORMAT.md#Conditional rules).
This rule enforces the following restrictions:
- The rule must use exactly one of: source , sources
- The attribute as cannot be used with any of: dest-dir , sources
[...]
$ debputy plugin list manifest-variables
+----------------------------------+----------------------------------------+------+-------------+
Variable (use via: NAME ) Value Flag Provided by
+----------------------------------+----------------------------------------+------+-------------+
DEB_HOST_ARCH amd64 debputy
[... other DEB_HOST_* vars ...] [...] debputy
DEB_HOST_MULTIARCH x86_64-linux-gnu debputy
DEB_SOURCE debputy debputy
DEB_VERSION 0.1.8 debputy
DEB_VERSION_EPOCH_UPSTREAM 0.1.8 debputy
DEB_VERSION_UPSTREAM 0.1.8 debputy
DEB_VERSION_UPSTREAM_REVISION 0.1.8 debputy
PACKAGE <package-name> debputy
path:BASH_COMPLETION_DIR /usr/share/bash-completion/completions debputy
+----------------------------------+----------------------------------------+------+-------------+
+-----------------------+--------+-------------------------------------------------------+
Variable type Value Option
+-----------------------+--------+-------------------------------------------------------+
Token variables hidden --show-token-variables OR --show-all-variables
Special use variables hidden --show-special-case-variables OR --show-all-variables
+-----------------------+--------+-------------------------------------------------------+
$ debputy plugin show manifest-variables path:BASH_COMPLETION_DIR
Variable: path:BASH_COMPLETION_DIR
==================================
Documentation: Directory to install bash completions into
Resolved: /usr/share/bash-completion/completions
Plugin: debputy
Next.