the days are getting warmer (in the northern hemisphere), debian is getting
colder,
& quite a few debian events are taking place.
in innsbruck, we are organizing MountainCamp, an event in the tradition of
SunCamp & SnowCamp: no schedule, no talks, meet other debian people, fix
bugs, come up with crazy ideas, have fun, develop things.
teamwork, or: why I love the Debian Perl Group:
elbrus has introduced a (very untypical) package into the
Debian Perl Group in 2022.
after changes of the default compiler options
(-Werror=implicit-function-declaration) in debian, it didn't
build any more & received an RC bug.
because I sometimes like challenges, I had a look at it & cobbled together
a patch. as I hardly speak any C, I sent my notes to the bug report
& (implictly) asked for help. & went out to meet a
friend.
when I came home, I found an email from ntyni, sent less than 2 hours
after my mail, where he friendly pointed out the issues with my patch
& sent a corrected version.
all I needed to do was to adjust the patch & upload the package. one
more bug fixed, one less task for us, & elbrus can concentrate on more
important tasks :) thanks again, niko!
in the Debian Perl
Group we are maintaining a lot of packages (around 4000 at the time of
writing). this also means that we are spending some time on improving our
tools which allow us to handle this amount of packages in a reasonable time.
many of the tools are shipped in the pkg-perl-tools package
since 2013, & lots of them are scripts which are called as subcommands
of the dpt(1) wrapper script.
in the last years I got the impression that not all team members are aware
of all the useful tools, & that some more promotion might be called for.
& last week I was in the mood for creating a short demo video to
showcase how I use some dpt(1) subcommands when updating a
package to a new upstream release. (even though I prefer text over videos
myself :))
probably not a cinematographic masterpiece but as the feedback of a few
viewers has been positive, I'm posting it here as well:
(direct
link as planets ignore iframes )
Dealing with the void during MiniDebConf Online #1
Between 28 and 31 May this year, we set out to create our first ever online MiniDebConf for Debian. Many people have been meaning to do something similar for a long time, but it just didn t work out yet. With many of us being in lock down due to COVID-19, and with the strong possibility looming that DebConf20 might have had to become an online event, we rushed towards organising the first ever Online MiniDebConf and put together some form of usable video stack for it.
I could go into all kinds of details on the above, but this post is about a bug that lead to a pretty nifty feature for DebConf20. The tool that we use to capture Jitsi calls is called Jibri (Jitsi Broadcasting Infrustructure). It had a bug (well, bug for us, but it s an upstream feature) where Jibri would hang up after 30s of complete silence, because it would assume that the call has ended and that the worker can be freed up again. This would result in the stream being ended at the end of every talk, so before the next talk, someone would have to remember to press play again in their media player or on the video player on the stream page. Hrmph.
Easy solution on the morning that the conference starts? I was testing a Debian Live image the night before in a KVM and thought that I might as well just start a Jitsi call from there and keep a steady stream of silence so that Jibri doesn t hang up.
It worked! But the black screen and silence on stream was a bit eery. Because this event was so experimental in nature, and because we were on such an incredibly tight timeline, we opted not to seek sponsors for this event, so there was no sponsors loop that we d usually stream during a DebConf event. Then I thought Ah! I could just show the schedule! .
The stream looked bright and colourful (and was even useful!) and Jitsi/Jibri didn t die. I thought my work was done. As usual, little did I know how untrue that was.
The silence was slightly disturbing after the talks, and people asked for some music. Playing music on my VM and capturing the desktop audio in to Jitsi was just a few pulseaudio settings away, so I spent two minutes finding some freely licensed tracks that sounded ok enough to just start playing on the stream. I came across mini-albums by Captive Portal and Cinema Noir, During the course of the MiniDebConf Online I even started enjoying those. Someone also pointed out that it would be really nice to have a UTC clock on the stream. I couldn t find a nice clock in a hurry so I just added a tmux clock in the meantime while we deal with the real-time torrent of issues that usually happens when organising events like this.
Speaking of issues, during our very first talk of the last day, our speaker had a power cut during the talk and abruptly dropped off. Oops! So, since I had a screenshare open from the VM to the stream, I thought I d just pop in a quick message in a text editor to let people know that we re aware of it and trying to figure out what s going on.
In the end, MiniDebConf Online worked out all right. Besides the power cut for our one speaker, and another who had a laptop that was way too under-powered to deal with video, everything worked out very well. Even the issues we had weren t show-stoppers and we managed to work around them.
DebConf20 Moves Online
For DebConf, we usually show a sponsors loop in between sessions. It s great that we give our sponsors visibility here, but in reality people see the sponsors loop and think Talk over! and then they look away. It s also completely silent and doesn t provide any additional useful information. I was wondering how I could take our lessons from MDCO#1 and integrate our new tricks with the sponsors loop. That is, add the schedule, time, some space to type announcements on the screen and also add some loopable music to it.
I used OBS before in making my videos, and like the flexibility it provides when working with scenes and sources. A scene is what you would think of as a screen or a document with its own collection of sources or elements. For example, a scene might contain sources such as a logo, clock, video, image, etc. A scene can also contain another scene. This is useful if you want to contain a banner or play some background music that is shared between scenes.
The above screenshots illustrate some basics of scenes and sources. First with just the DC20 banner, and then that used embedded in another scene.
For MDCO#1, I copied and pasted the schedule into a LibreOffice Impress slide that was displayed on the stream. Having to do this for all 7 days of DebConf, plus dealing with scheduling changes would be daunting. So, I started to look in to generating some schedule slides programmatically. Stefano then pointed me to the Happening Now page on the DebConf website, where the current schedule block is displayed. So all I would need to do in OBS was to display a web page. Nice!
Unfortunately the OBS in Debian doesn t have the ability to display web pages out of the box (we need to figure out CEF in Debian), but fortunately someone provides a pre-compiled version of the plugin called Linux Browser that works just fine. This allowed me to easily add the schedule page in its own scene.
Being able to display a web page solved another problem. I wasn t fond of having to type / manage the announcements in OBS. It would either be a bit prone to user error, and if you want to edit the text while the loop is running, you d have to disrupt the loop, go to the foreground scene, and edit the text before resuming the loop. That s a bit icky. Then I thought that we could probably just get that from a web page instead. We could host some nice html snippet in a repository in salsa, and then anyone could easily commit an MR to update the announcement.
But then I went a step further, use an etherpad! Then anyone in the orga team can quickly update the announcement and it would be instantly changed on the stream. Nice! So that small section of announcement text on the screen is actually a whole web browser with an added OBS filter to crop away all the pieces we don t want. Overkill? Sure, but it gave us a decent enough solution that worked in time for the start of DebConf. Also, being able to type directly on to the loop screen works out great especially in an emergency. Oh, and uhm the clock is also a website rendered in its own web browser :-P
So, I had the ability to make scenes, add elements and add all the minimal elements I wanted in there. Great! But now I had to figure out how to switch scenes automatically. It s probably worth mentioning that I only found some time to really dig into this right before DebConf started, so with all of this I was scrambling to find things that would work without too many bugs while also still being practical.
Now I needed the ability to switch between the scenes automatically / programmatically. I had never done this in OBS before. I know it has some API because there are Android apps that you can use to control OBS with from your phone. I discovered that it had an automatic scene switcher, but it s very basic. It can only switch based on active window, which can be useful in some cases, but since we won t have any windows open other than OBS, this tool was basically pointless.
After some quick searches, I found a plugin called Advanced Scene Switcher. This plugin can do a lot more, but has some weird UI choices, and is really meant for gamers and other types of professional streamers to help them automate their work flow and doesn t seem at all meant to be used for a continuous loop, but, it worked, and I could make it do something that will work for us during the DebConf.
I had a chicken and egg problem because I had to figure out a programming flow, but didn t really have any content to work with, or an idea of all the content that we would eventually have. I ve been toying with the idea in my mind and had some idea that we could add fun facts, postcards (an image with some text), time now in different timezones, Debian news (maybe procured by the press team), cards that contain the longer announcements that was sent to debconf-announce, perhaps a shout out or two and some photos from previous DebConfs like the group photos. I knew that I wouldn t be able to build anything substantial by the time DebConf starts, but adding content to OBS in between talks is relatively easy, so we could keep on building on it during DebConf.
Nattie provided the first shout out, and I made 2 video loops with the DC18/19 pictures and also two Did you know cards. So the flow I ended up with was: Sponsors -> Happening Now -> Random video (which would be any of those clips) -> Back to sponsors. This ended up working pretty well for quite a while. With the first batch of videos the sponsor loop would come up on average about every 2 minutes, but as much shorter clips like shout outs started to come in faster and faster, it made sense to play a few 2-3 shout-outs before going back to sponsors.
So here is a very brief guide on how I set up the sequencing in Advanced Scene Switcher.
If no condition was met, a video would play from the Random tab.
Then in the Random tab, I added the scenes that were part of the random mix. Annoyingly, you have to specify how long it should play for. If you don t, the no condition thingy is triggered and another video is selected. The time is also the length of the video minus one second, because
You can t just say that a random video should return back to a certain scene, you have to specify that in the sequence tab for each video. Why after 1 second? Because, at least in my early tests, and I didn t circle back to this, it seems like 0s can randomly either mean instantly, or never. Yes, this ended up being a bit confusing and tedious, and considering the late hours I worked on this, I m surprised that I didn t manage to screw it up completely at any point.
I also suspected that threads would eventually happen. That is, when people create video replies to other videos. We had 3 threads in total. There was a backups thread, beverage thread and an impersonation thread. The arrow in the screenshot above points to the backups thread. I know it doesn t look that complicated, but it was initially somewhat confusing to set up and make sense out of it.
For the next event, the Advanced Scene Switcher might just get some more taming, or even be replaced entirely. There are ways to drive OBS by API, and even the Advanced Scene Switcher tool can be driven externally to some degree, but I think we definitely want to replace it by the next full DebConf. We had the problem that when a talk ended, we would return to the loop in the middle of a clip, which felt very unnatural and sometimes even confusing. So Stefano helped me with a helper script that could read the socket from Vocto, which I used to write either Loop or Standby to a file, and then the scene switcher would watch that file and keep the sponsors loop ready for start while the talks play. Why not just switch to sponsors when the talk ends? Well, the little bit of delay in switching would mean that you would see a tiny bit of loop every time before switching to sponsors. This is also why we didn t have any loop for the ad-hoc track (that would have probably needed another OBS instance, we ll look more into solutions for this for the future).
Then for all the clips. There were over 50 of them. All of them edited by hand in kdenlive. I removed any hard clicks, tried to improve audibility, remove some sections at the beginning and the end that seemed extra and added some music that would reduce in volume when someone speaks. In the beginning, I had lots of fun with choosing music for the clips. Towards the end, I had to rush them through and just chose the same tune whether it made sense or not. For comparison of what a difference the music can make, compare the original and adapted version for Valhalla s clip above, or this original and adapted video from urbec. This part was a lot more fun than dealing with the video sequencer, but I also want to automate it a bit. When I can fully drive OBS from Python I ll likely instead want to show those cards and control music volume from Python (what could possibly go wrong ).
The loopy name happened when I requested an @debconf.org alias for this. I was initially just thinking about loop@debconf.org but since I wanted to make it clear that the purpose of this loop is also to have some fun, I opted for loopy instead:
I was really surprised by how people took to loopy. I hoped it would be good and that it would have somewhat positive feedback, but the positive feedback was just immense. The idea was that people typically saw it in between talks. But a few people told me they kept it playing after the last talk of the day to watch it in the background. Some asked for the music because they want to keep listening to it while working (and even for jogging!?). Some people also asked for recordings of the loop because they want to keep it for after DebConf. The shoutouts idea proved to be very popular. Overall, I m very glad that people enjoyed it and I think it s safe to say that loopy will be back for the next event.
Also throughout this experiment Loopy Loop turned into yet another DebConf mascot. We gain one about every DebConf, some by accident and some on purpose. This one was not quite on purpose. I meant to make an image for it for salsa, and started with an infinite loop symbol. That s a loop, but by just adding two more solid circles to it, it looks like googly eyes, now it s a proper loopy loop!
I like the progress we ve made on this, but there s still a long way to go, and the ideas keep heaping up. The next event is quite soon (MDCO#2 at the end of November, and it seems that 3 other MiniDebConf events may also be planned), but over the next few events there will likely be significantly better graphics/artwork, better sequencing, better flow and more layout options. I hope to gain some additional members in the team to deal with incoming requests during DebConf. It was quite hectic this time! The new OBS also has a scripting host that supports Python, so I should be able to do some nice things even within OBS without having to drive it externally (like, display a clock without starting a web browser).
The Loopy Loop Music
The two mini albums that mostly played during the first few days were just a copy and paste from the MDCO#1 music, which was:
I have much more things to say about DebConf20, but I ll keep that for another post, and hopefully we can get all the other video stuff in a post from the video team, because I think there s been some real good work done for this DebConf. Also thanks to Infomaniak who was not only a platinum sponsor for this DebConf, but they also provided us with plenty of computing power to run all the video stuff on. Thanks again!
Here is my monthly update covering what I have been doing in the free software world during March 2020 (previous month):
Patched the browserify-lite Javascript compiler to ensure that module dependency maps are rendered in a deterministic order. (#14)
Pushed a change to the "pmemkv" key-value data store to make their documentation build reproducibly. (#615)
As part of my duties of being on the board of directors of the Open Source Initiative and Software in the Public Interest I attended their respective monthly meetings and participated in various licensing and other discussions occurring on the internet as well as the usual internal discussions regarding logistics, licensing, policy and liaising with the ClearlyDefined and so
Congratulations to Megan Sanicki and Josh Simmons who were elected and re-elected respectively to the OSI Board's two individual member seats and to Italo Vignoli who was elected to the affiliate member seat. These newly-elected Directors will took their seats on March 20, 2020.
As part of being on being on the judging panel of the OpenUK Awards I am pleased to announce that after some discussion nominations are now open until 15th June in five different categories.
Merged a number of contributions to my django-cache-toolbox "non-magical" caching library for Django web applications, including caching negative relation lookups locally (#14) and to include the README file in the package long description (#17).
Made some small changes to my tickle-me-email library which implements Gettings Things Done (GTD)-like behaviours in IMAP inboxes to support to optionally limiting the number of messages in the send-later functionality. [...]
In addition, I did even more hacking on the Lintian static analysis tool for Debian packages, including:
New features:
Check for py3versions -i in autopkgtests and debian/rules files. (#954763)
Warn when py3versions -s is used without a python3-all dependency. (#954763)
Correct reference to a bug in a previous debian/changelog entry. [...]
Avoid indenting approximately 150 lines by returning early from a subroutine and other code improvements. [...]
Reproducible builds
One of the original promises of open source software is that distributed peer review and transparency of process results in enhanced end-user security. However, whilst anyone may inspect the source code of free and open source software for malicious flaws, almost all software today is distributed as
pre-compiled binaries. This allows nefarious third-parties to compromise systems by injecting malicious code into ostensibly secure software during the various compilation and distribution processes.
The motivation behind the Reproducible Builds effort is to ensure no flaws have been introduced during this compilation process by promising identical results are always generated from a given source, thus allowing multiple third-parties to come to a consensus on whether a build was compromised.
The initiative is proud to be a member project of the Software Freedom Conservancy, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) charity focused on ethical technology and user freedom.
Conservancy acts as a corporate umbrella allowing projects to operate as non-profit initiatives without managing their own corporate structure. If you like the work of the Conservancy or the Reproducible Builds project, please consider becoming an official supporter.
This month, I:
Filed an issue against IMAP Spam Begone a script by Louis-Philippe V ronneau (pollo) that makes it easy to process an email inbox using SpamAssassin to report that a (duplicate) documentation entry includes nondeterministic value taken from the value of the XDG cache directory (#151) and filed an upstream pull requests against the pmemkv key-value data store to make their documentation build reproducibly (#615).
Further refined my merge request against the debian-installer component to allow all arguments from sources.list files (such as [check-valid-until=no]) in order that we can test the reproducibility of the installer images on the Reproducible Builds own testing infrastructure. (#13)
Submitted two following patches to fix reproducibility-related toolchain issues within Debian:
node-browserify-lite: Please make the output reproducible. (#954409)
pdb2pqr: Please make the aconf.py file reproducible. (#955287)
Submitted eight patches to fix specific reproducibility issues in beep (caused by a variation between /bin/dash and /bin/bash), cloudkitty (due to a default value being taken from the number of CPUs on the build machine), font-manager (embedding the value of @abs_top_srcdir@ into the resulting binary), gucharmap (due to embedding the absolute build path when generating a comment in a header file), infernal (timestamps are injected into a Python example, which should not be shipped anyway), ndisc6 (embeds the value of CFLAGS into the binary without sanitising any absolute build paths), node-nodedbi (embedded timestamp in binary) & pmemkv (does not respect SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH when populating a YEAR variable).
Improved our website, including correcting the syntax of some CSS class formatting [...], improved some "filed against" copy a little better [...] and corrected a reference to calendar.monthrange Python method. [...]
In our tooling, I also made the following changes to diffoscope, our in-depth and content-aware diff utility that can locate and diagnose reproducibility issues, including preparing and uploading version 138 to Debian:
Improvements:
Don't allow errors with R script deserialisation cause the entire operation to fail, for example if an external library cannot be loaded. (#91)
Experiment with memoising output from expensive external commands, eg. readelf. (#93)
Use dumppdf from the python3-pdfminer if we do not see any other differences from pdftext, etc. (#92)
Prevent a traceback when comparing two R .rdx files directly as the get_member method will return a file even if the file is missing. [...]
Reporting:
Display the supported file formats into the package long description. (#90)
Print a potentially-helpful message if the PyPDF2 module is not installed. [...]
Remove any duplicate comparator descriptions when formatting in the --help output or in the package long description. [...]
Weaken "Install the X package to get a better output." message to "... may produce a better output." as the former is not guaranteed. [...]
Misc:
Ensure we only parse the recommended packages from --list-debian-substvars when we want them for debian/tests/control generation. [...]
Inline the RequiredToolNotFound.get_package method's functionality as it is only used once. [...]
Drop the deprecated "py36 = [..]" argument in the pyproject.toml file. [...]
The Reproducible Builds project also operates a fully-featured and comprehensive Jenkins-based testing framework that powers tests.reproducible-builds.org. This month, I reworked the web-based package rescheduling tool to:
Require a HTTP POST method in the web-based scheduler as not only should HTTP GET requests be idempotent but this will allow many future improvements in the user interface. [...][...][...]
Improve the authentication error message in the rescheduler to suggest that the developer's SSL certificate may have expired. [...]
Investigated and triaged glibc (CVE-2020-1751), jackson-databind, libbsd (CVE-2019-20367), libvirt (CVE-2019-20485), netkit-telnet & netkit-telnet-ssl (CVE-2020-10188), pdfresurrect (CVE-2020-9549) & shiro (CVE-2020-1957), etc.
In the script that reserves a unique advisory number don't warn about potential duplicate work when issuing a regression in order to avoid this message being missed when it does apply. [...]
Frontdesk duties, responding to user/developer questions, reviewing others' packages, participating in mailing list discussions, etc.
xtrlock versions 2.8+deb9u1 (#949112) and 2.8+deb10u1 (#949113) was accepted to the Debian jessie and buster distributions.
Issued DLA 2115-2 to correct a regression in a previous fix (a use-after-free vulnerability) in the ProFTPD FTP server.
Issued DLA 2132-1 to fix an issue where incorrect default permissions on a HTTP cookie store could have allowed local attackers to read private credentials in libzypp, the library underpinning package management tools such as YaST, zypper and the openSUSE/SLE implementation of PackageKit.
Issued DLA 2134-1 to patch an out-of-bounds write vulnerability in pdfresurrect, a tool for extracting or scrubbing versioning data from PDF documents.
Issued DLA 2136-1, addressing an out-of-bounds buffer read vulnerability in libvpx, a library implementing the VP8 & VP9 video codecs.
Issued DLA 2142-1. It was discovered that there was a buffer overflow vulnerability in slirp, a SLIP/PPP emulator for using a dial up shell account. This was caused by the incorrect usage of return values from snprintf(3).
Issued DLA 2145-1 and DLA 2145-2 for twisted to prevent a large number of HTTP request splitting vulnerabilities in Twisted, a Python event-based framework for building various types of internet applications.
Issued ELA-219-1 to address an out-of-bounds read vulnerability during string comparisons in libbsd, a library of functions commonly available on BSD systems but not on others such as GNU.
You can find out more about the Debian LTS project via the following video:
Debian Uploads
xtrlock (2.13) Add a warning that X11 does not support grabbing events under the Wayland display server protocol. (#953319)
gunicorn (20.0.4-4) Ensure that the Python 3.x gunicorn binary package replaces the now-legacy gunicorn3 that was removed in 19.9.0-2 upon installation. I also backported this version to buster-backports. (#953883)
xcb (2.4-6) Remove a vague "pigeon holes" metaphor from package description.
For the Debian Privacy Maintainers team I requested that the pyptlib package be removed from the archive (#953429) as well as uploading onionbalance (0.1.8-6) to fix test failures under Pytest 3.x (#953535) and a new upstream release of nautilus-wipe.
Finally, I sponsored an upload of bilibop (0.6.1) on behalf of Yann Amar.
long time no blog post. & the stretch release
happened without many RC bug fixes from me; in practice, the
auto-removals are faster & more convenient.
what I nevertheless did in the last months was to fix RC bugs in
pkg-perl packages (it still surprises me how fast rotting &
constantly moving code is); prepare RC bug fixes for jessie (also for
pkg-perl packages); & in the last weeks provide patches
& carry out NMUs for perl packages as part of the ongoing perl
5.26 transition.
#783656 libhtml-microformats-perl: "libhtml-microformats-perl: missing dependency on libmodule-pluggable-perl" fix in jessie (pkg-perl)
#788008 libcgi-application-plugin-anytemplate-perl: "libcgi-application-plugin-anytemplate-perl: missing dependency on libclone-perl" fix in jessie (pkg-perl)
#808454 src:libdata-faker-perl: "libdata-faker-perl: FTBFS under some locales (eg. fr_CH.UTF-8)" fix in jessie (pkg-perl)
#824843 libsys-syscall-perl: "libsys-syscall-perl: FTBFS on arm64: test suite failures" fix in jessie (pkg-perl)
#824936 libsys-syscall-perl: "libsys-syscall-perl: FTBFS on mips*: test failures" fix in jessie (pkg-perl)
#825012 libalgorithm-permute-perl: "libalgorithm-permute-perl: FTBFS with Perl 5.24: undefined symbol: PUSHBLOCK" upload new upstream release (pkg-perl)
#826136 libsys-syscall-perl: "libsys-syscall-perl FTBFS on hppa arch (with patch)" fix in jessie (pkg-perl)
#826471 intltool: "intltool: Unescaped left brace in regex is deprecated at /usr/bin/intltool-update line 1070" extend existing patch, uploaded by maintainer
#826502 quilt: "quilt: FTBFS with perl 5.26: Unescaped left brace in regex" apply patch from ntyni (pkg-perl)
#826505 swissknife: "swissknife: FTBFS with perl 5.26: Unescaped left brace in regex" add patches from ntyni, upload to DELAYED/5
#839208 libio-compress-perl: "libio-compress-perl: uninstallable, current version superseded by Perl 5.24.1" upload newer upstream release (pkg-perl)
#839218 nama: "nama: FTBFS because of perl's lack of stack reference counting" apply patch from Balint Reczey (pkg-perl)
#865224 src:uwsgi: "uwsgi: ftbfs with multiple supported python3 versions" adjust build dependencies, upload NMU with maintainer's permission
#865380 libtest-unixsock-perl: "libtest-unixsock-perl: Build-Conflicts-Indep: libtest-simple-perl (>= 1.3), including Perl 5.26" conditionally skip a test (pkg-perl)
#865888 nagios-plugin-check-multi: "nagios-plugin-check-multi: FTBFS with Perl 5.26: Unescaped left brace in regex is deprecated here" update unescaped-left-brace-in-regex.patch, upload to DELAYED/5
#866317 html2ps: "html2ps: relies on deprecated Perl syntax/features, breaks with 5.26" prepare a patch, later do QA upload
#866934 libhttp-oai-perl: "libhttp-oai-perl: /usr/bin/oai_pmh uses the 'encoding' pragma, breaks with Perl 5.26" patch out "use encoding" (pkg-perl)
#866944 libmecab-perl: "libmecab-perl: FTBFS: no such file or directory: /var/lib/mecab/dic/debian/dicrc" build-depend on fixed version (pkg-perl)
#866981 src:libpgobject-type-datetime-perl: "libpgobject-type-datetime-perl FTBFS: You planned 15 tests but ran 5." upload new upstream release (pkg-perl)
#866984 src:libpgobject-type-json-perl: "libpgobject-type-json-perl FTBFS: You planned 9 tests but ran 5." upload new upstream release (pkg-perl)
#866991 libcpan-meta-perl: "libcpan-meta-perl: uninstallable in unstable" fix versioned Breaks/Replaces (pkg-perl)
#867046 gwhois: "gwhois: fails with perl 5.26: The encoding pragma is no longer supported at /usr/bin/gwhois line 80." drop "use encoding", upload to DELAYED/5
#867208 src:libpgobject-type-bytestring-perl: "libpgobject-type-bytestring-perl FTBFS: Failed 1/5 test programs. 0/8 subtests failed." upload new upstream release (pkg-perl)
#867210 libtext-mecab-perl: "libtext-mecab-perl: FTBFS: test failures: Failed to create mecab instance" build-depend on fixed version (pkg-perl)
debian is in deep freeze for the upcoming stretch release. still, I haven't
dived into fixing "general" release-critical bugs yet; so far I mostly kept to
working on bugs in the debian perl group:
#834912 src:libfile-tee-perl: "libfile-tee-perl: FTBFS randomly (Failed 1/2 test programs)" add patch from ntyni (pkg-perl)
#845167 src:lemonldap-ng: "lemonldap-ng: FTBFS randomly (failing tests)" upload package prepared by xavier with disabled tests (pkg-perl)
#849362 libstring-diff-perl: "libstring-diff-perl: FTBFS: test failures with new libyaml-perl" add patch from ntyni (pkg-perl)
#851033 src:jabref: "jabref: FTBFS: Could not find org.postgresql:postgresql:9.4.1210." update maven.rules
#851347 libjson-validator-perl: "libjson-validator-perl: uses deprecated Mojo::Util::slurp, makes libswagger2-perl FTBFS" upload new upstream release (pkg-perl)
#854859 lemonldap-ng-doc: "lemonldap-ng-doc: unhandled symlink to directory conversion: /usr/share/doc/lemonldap-ng-doc/pages/documentation/current" help with dpkg-maintscript-helper, upload on xavier's behalf (pkg-perl)
thanks to the release team for pro-actively unblocking the packages with
fixes which were uploaded after the begin of the freeze!
it's amazing how many new bugs appear; luckily in the Debian Perl Group
we're not too bad at fixing them as well. here's the list of my
contributions over the last weeks:
#828387 src:libcrypt-openssl-rsa-perl: "libcrypt-openssl-rsa-perl: FTBFS with openssl 1.1.0" add patch from Sebastian Andrzej Siewior (pkg-perl)
#839322 src:libmoops-perl: "libmoops-perl: FTBFS: build-dependency not installable: libkavorka-perl" close, as dependency is fixed (pkg-perl)
#840305 src:libatteanx-store-memorytriplestore-perl: "libatteanx-store-memorytriplestore-perl: depends on unavailable AtteanX::RDFQueryTranslator" investigate (pkg-perl)
#842753 libnet-sip-perl: "FTBFS: test failures" import new upstream release (pkg-perl)
#844141 src:libsys-cpuaffinity-perl: "libsys-cpuaffinity-perl: FTBFS: Failed test 'bind to all processors successful 18446744073709551615 == 18446744073709551616-1'" import new upstream release, later reopen & downgrade (pkg-perl)
#844538 src:libdbd-mysql-perl: "libdbd-mysql-perl: FTBFS on some architectures" import new upstream release (pkg-perl)
#844950 src:libdatetime-format-duration-perl: "libdatetime-format-duration-perl must build-depend on libparams-validate-perl" add missing (build) dependency, upload to DELAYED/5
#846059 src:libmath-bigint-gmp-perl: "libmath-bigint-gmp-perl: FTBFS: Failed 1/12 test programs (t/bigintpm.t)" import new upstream release (pkg-perl)
#846721 src:libaudio-mpd-perl: "libaudio-mpd-perl: FTBFS: Test failures" skip a brittle test (pkg-perl)
#846731 src:libbio-scf-perl: "libbio-scf-perl: FTBFS: Test failures" add patch from ntyni (pkg-perl)
time for a quick update, I guess. here's the list of release-critical bugs
in debian I've worked on during the last couple of weeks.
#825608 libnet-jifty-perl: "libnet-jifty-perl: FTBFS: t/006-uploads.t failure" patch test for compatibility with newer Encode, not uploaded in the end because the problem is more likely in the code (pkg-perl)
#826192 libmath-gsl-perl: "libmath-gsl-perl: FTBFS with GSL 2" import new upstream release (pkg-perl)
#828386 src:libcrypt-openssl-pkcs12-perl: "libcrypt-openssl-pkcs12-perl: FTBFS with openssl 1.1.0" sponsor upload with upstream patch (pkg-perl)
#828388 src:libcrypt-openssl-x509-perl: "libcrypt-openssl-x509-perl: FTBFS with openssl 1.1.0" cherry-pick 2 commits from upstream git repo (pkg-perl)
#828389 src:libcrypt-smime-perl: "libcrypt-smime-perl: FTBFS with openssl 1.1.0" import new upstream release (pkg-perl)
#828408 src:libpoe-filter-ssl-perl: "libpoe-filter-ssl-perl: FTBFS with openssl 1.1.0" use openssl 1.0.2, & downgrade severity (pkg-perl)
#830280 src:libfurl-perl: "libfurl-perl: accesses the internet during build" disable DNS queries during build (pkg-perl)
#834730 src:libdist-zilla-plugins-cjm-perl: "libdist-zilla-plugins-cjm-perl: FTBFS: Failed 1/9 test programs. 2/126 subtests failed." add patch from CPAN RT (pkg-perl)
#839200 libcpanplus-perl: "libcpanplus-perl: FTBFS: Failed test 'Cwd has correct version in report'" add patch from upstream git (pkg-perl)
#839505 src:mongodb: "mongodb: FTBFS: Tests failures" propose a possible solution
#839580 src:request-tracker4: "request-tracker4: FTBFS in testing (failed tests)" prepare a workaround patch
#839987 libcompress-raw-lzma-perl: "libcompress-raw-lzma-perl: Version Mismatch due to new src:xz-utils" patch out version check at runtime (pkg-perl)
#839992 libmath-quaternion-perl: "libmath-quaternion-perl: autopkgtest failure: not ok 48 - rotation_angle works" some triaging (pkg-perl)
#840479 src:libdbd-firebird-perl: "libdbd-firebird-perl: FTBFS: libfbembed.so not found" versioned close (pkg-perl)
#840980 libperinci-sub-normalize-perl: "libperinci-sub-normalize-perl: FTBFS: Can't locate Sah/Schema/rinci/function_meta.pm in @INC" add new (build) dependency, after packaging it (pkg-perl)
Thats So Raven
If I could sum up the past year in one word, that word would be distraction. There have been so many strange, confusing or simply unforseen things going on I have had trouble focusing like never before.
For instance, on the opposite side of the street from me is one of Jersey City's old resorvoirs. It's not used for drinking water anymore and the city eventually plans on merging it into the park on the other side. In the meantime it has become something of a wildlife refuge. Which is nice except one of the newly settled critters was a bird of prey -- the consensus is possibly some kind of hawk or raven. Starting your morning commute under the eyes of a harbinger of death is very goth and I even learned to deal with the occasional piece of deconstructed rodent on my doorstep but nighttime was a big problem. For contrary to popular belief, ravens do not quoth "nevermore" but "KRRAAAA". Very loudly. Just as soon as you have drifted of to sleep. Eventually my sleep-deprived neighbors and I appealed to the NJ division of enviromental protection to get it removed but by the time they were ready to swing into action the bird had left for somewhere more congenial like Transylvania or Newark.
Or here are some more complete wastes of time: I go the doctor for my annual physical. The insurance company codes it as Adult Onset Diabetes by accident. One day I opened the lid of my laptop and there's a "ping" sound and a piece of the hinge flies off. Apparently that also severed the connection to the screen and naturally the warranty had just expired so I had to spend the next month tethered to an external monitor until I could afford to buy a new one. Mix in all the usual social, political, family and work drama and you can see that it has been a very trying time for me.
Dovecot
I have managed to get some Debian work done. On Dovecot, my principal package, I have gotten tremendous support from Apollon Oikonomopolous who I belatedly welcome as a member of the Dovecot maintainer team. He has been particularly helpful in fixing our systemd support and cleaning out a lot of the old and invalid bugs. We're in pretty good shape for the freeze. Upstream has released an RC of 2.2.26 and hopefully the final version will be out in the next couple of days so we can include it in Stretch. We can always use more help with the package so let me know if you're interested.
Debian-IN
Most of the action has been going on without me but I've been lending support and sponsoring whenever I can. We have several new DDs and DMs but still no one north of the Vindhyas I'm afraid.
Debian Perl Group
gregoa did a ping of inactive maintainers and I regretfully had to admit to myself that I wasn't going to be of use anytime soon so I resigned. Perl remains my favorite language and I've actually been more involved in the meetings of my local Perlmongers group so hopefully I will be back again one day. And I still maintain the Perl modules I wrote myself.
Debian-Axe-Murderers*
May have gained a recruit.
*Stricly speaking it should be called Debian-People-Who-Dont-Think-Faults-in-One-Moral-Domain-Such-As-For-Example-Axe-Murdering-Should-Leak-Into-Another-Moral-Domain-Such-As-For-Example-Debian but come on, that's just silly.
the last two weeks have seen the migration of perl 5.24 into testing,
most of the bugs I worked on were related to it. additionally a few more
build dependencies on tzdata werde needed. here's the
list:
#784845 libdevel-gdb-perl: "libdevel-gdb-perl: FTBFS: t/expect.t #8 sometimes fails" skip brittle test (pkg-perl)
#825629 src:libgd-perl: "libgd-perl: FTBFS: Could not find gdlib-config in the search path. " add patch to use pkg-config instead of the removed gdlib-config (pkg-perl)
#832840 src:license-reconcile: "license-reconcile: FTBFS: dh_auto_test: perl Build test --verbose 1 returned exit code 255" sponsor upload prepared by gfa (pkg-perl)
#838310 keyboard-configuration: "keyboard-configuration: user configuration lost + error message from setupcon" propose a patch
#838851 libcoro-perl: "libcoro-perl: FTBFS with Perl 5.24: panic: corrupt saved stack index -144185424" resurrect parts of the removed patch (pkg-perl)
#838933 libio-compress-lzma-perl: "libio-compress-lzma-perl: uninstallable and unbuildable with Perl 5.24" fix dependencies (pkg-perl)
#838934 libperl-apireference-perl: "libperl-apireference-perl: FTBFS with Perl 5.24.1" add support for 5.24.1 (pkg-perl)
#839187 sa-compile: "sa-compile: failed make after perl upgraded to 5.24.1~rc3-3 on testing" close on suggestion of submitter after investigation
#837055 src:fftw: "fftw: FTBFS due to bfnnconv.pl failing to execute m-ascii.pl (. removed from @INC in perl)" add patch to call require with "./", upload to DELAYED/2, rescheduled to 0-day on maintainer's request
#837221 src:metacity-themes: "metacity-themes: FTBFS: Can't locate debian/themedata.pm in @INC" call helper scripts with "perl -I." in debian/rules, QA upload
#837242 src:jwchat: "jwchat: FTBFS: Can't locate scripts/JWCI18N.pm in @INC" add patch to call require with "./", upload to DELAYED/2
#837264 src:libsys-info-base-perl: "libsys-info-base-perl: FTBFS: Couldn't do SPEC: No such file or directory at builder/lib/Build.pm line 42." upload with patch from ntyni (pkg-perl)
#837284 src:libimage-info-perl: "libimage-info-perl: FTBFS: Can't locate inc/Module/Install.pm in @INC" call perl with -I. in debian/rules, upload to DELAYED/2
as before, my work on release-critical bugs was centered around perl
issues. here's the list of bugs I worked on:
#687904 interchange-ui: "interchange-ui: cannot install this package" (re?)apply patch from #625904, upload to DELAYED/5
#754755 src:libinline-java-perl: "libinline-java-perl: FTBFS on mips: test suite issues" prepare a preliminary fix (pkg-perl)
#821994 src:interchange: "interchange: Build arch:all+arch:any but is missing build- arch,indep targets" apply patch from sanvila to add targets, upload to DELAYED/5
#834550 src:interchange: "interchange: FTBFS with '.' removed from perl's @INC" patch to "require ./", upload to DELAYED/5
#834731 src:kdesrc-build: "kdesrc-build: FTBFS with '.' removed from perl's @INC" add patch from Dom to "require ./", upload to DELAYED/5
#834738 src:libcatmandu-mab2-perl: "libcatmandu-mab2-perl: FTBFS with '.' removed from perl's @INC" add patch from Dom to "require ./" (pkg-perl)
#835075 src:libmail-gnupg-perl: "libmail-gnupg-perl: FTBFS: Failed 1/10 test programs. 0/4 subtests failed." add some debugging info
#835133 libnet-jabber-perl: "libnet-jabber-perl: FTBFS in testing" add patch from CPAN RT (pkg-perl)
#835206 src:munin: "munin: FTBFS with '.' removed from perl's @INC" add patch from Dom to call perl with -I., upload to DELAYED/5, then cancelled on maintainer's request
#835353 src:pari: "pari: FTBFS with '.' removed from perl's @INC" add patch to call perl with -I., upload to DELAYED/5
#835711 src:libconfig-identity-perl: "libconfig-identity-perl: FTBFS: Tests failures" run tests under gnupg1 (pkg-perl)
#837237 src:libtest-file-perl: "libtest-file-perl: FTBFS: Tests failures" add patch so tests find their common files again (pkg-perl)
#837249 src:libconfig-record-perl: "libconfig-record-perl: FTBFS: lib/Config/Record.pm: No such file or directory at Config-Record.spec.PL line 13." fix build in debian/rules (pkg-perl)
seems I've neglected both my blog & my RC bug fixing activities in the
last months. anyway, since I still keep track of RC bugs I worked
on, I thought I might as well publish the list:
#798023 src:cssutils: "cssutils: FTBFS with Python 3.5" sponsor NMU by Chris Knadle, upload to DELAYED/2
#800303 src:libipc-signal-perl: "libipc-signal-perl: Please migrate a supported debhelper compat level" bump debhelper compat level, upload to DELAYED/5
#809056 src:xca: "xca: FTBFS due to CPPFLAGS containing spaces" sponsor NMU by Chris Knadle, upload to DELAYED/5
#810017 src:psi4: "psi4: FTBFS with perl 5.22" propose a patch
#810707 src:libdbd-sqlite3-perl: "libdbd-sqlite3-perl: FTBFS: t/virtual_table/21_perldata_charinfo.t (Wstat: 512 Tests: 4 Failed: 1)" investigate a bit (pkg-perl)
#810710 src:libdata-objectdriver-perl: "libdata-objectdriver-perl: FTBFS: t/02-basic.t (Wstat: 256 Tests: 67 Failed: 1)" add patch to handle sqlite 3.10 in test suite's version comparison (pkg-perl)
#810900 libanyevent-rabbitmq-perl: "libanyevent-rabbitmq-perl: Can't locate object method "bind_exchange" via package "AnyEvent::RabbitMQ::Channel"" add info, versioned close (pkg-perl)
#810910 libmath-bigint-gmp-perl: "libmath-bigint-gmp-perl: FTBFS: test failures with newer libmath-bigint-perl" upload new upstream release (pkg-perl)
#810912 libx11-xcb-perl: "libx11-xcb-perl: missing dependency on libxs-object-magic-perl" update dependencies (pkg-perl)
#813420 src:libnet-server-mail-perl: "libnet-server-mail-perl: FTBFS: error: Can't call method "peerhost" on an undefined value at t/starttls.t line 78." close, as the underlying problem is fixed (pkg-perl)
#814730 src:libmath-mpfr-perl: "libmath-mpfr-perl: FTBFS on most architectures" upload new upstream release (pkg-perl)
#815775 zeroc-ice: "Build-Depends on unavailable packages mono-gmcs libmono2.0-cil" sponsor NMU by Chris Knadle, upload to DELAYED/2
#816527 src:libtest-file-contents-perl: "libtest-file-contents-perl: FTBFS with Text::Diff 1.44" upload new upstream release (pkg-perl)
#816638 mhonarc: "mhonarc: fails to run with perl5.22" propose a patch in the BTS
#817528 src:libemail-foldertype-perl: "libemail-foldertype-perl: Removal of debhelper compat 4" raise debhelper compat level, upload to DELAYED/2
#817529 src:libimage-base-bundle-perl: "libimage-base-bundle-perl: Removal of debhelper compat 4" raise debhelper compat level, upload to DELAYED/2
#817530 src:liberror-perl: "liberror-perl: Removal of debhelper compat 4" raise debhelper compat level, upload to DELAYED/2
#817531 src:libimage-info-perl: "libimage-info-perl: Removal of debhelper compat 4" raise debhelper compat level, upload to DELAYED/2
#817647 src:randomplay: "randomplay: Removal of debhelper compat 4" raise debhelper compat level, upload to DELAYED/2
#819787 libdbix-class-schema-loader-perl: "libdbix-class-schema-loader-perl: FTBFS: t/10_01sqlite_common.t failure" close bug, works again with recent sqlite3 (pkg-perl)
#823310 libnanomsg-raw-perl: "libnanomsg-raw-perl: FTBFS: test failures" add patch from upstream git repo (pkg-perl)
#824046 src:libtkx-perl: "libtkx-perl: FTBFS: Tcl error 'Foo at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl5/5.22/Tcl.pm line 585.\n' while invoking scalar result call" first investigation (pkg-perl)
#824143 libperinci-sub-normalize-perl: "libperinci-sub-normalize-perl: FTBFS: Can't locate Sah/Schema/Rinci.pm in @INC" upload new upstream version (pkg-perl)
#825424 libdist-zilla-plugin-test-podspelling-perl: "libdist-zilla-plugin-test-podspelling-perl: FTBFS: Can't locate Path/Class.pm in @INC" first triaging, forward upstream, import new release (pkg-perl)
#825608 libnet-jifty-perl: "libnet-jifty-perl: FTBFS: t/006-uploads.t failure" triaging, mark unreproducible (pkg-perl)
#825629 src:libgd-perl: "libgd-perl: FTBFS: Could not find gdlib-config in the search path. " first triaging, forward upstream (pkg-perl)
#829064 libparse-debianchangelog-perl: "libparse-debianchangelog-perl: FTBFS with new tidy version" patch TML template (pkg-perl)
#829066 libparse-plainconfig-perl: "FTBFS: Can't modify constant item in scalar assignment" new upstream release (pkg-perl)
#829176 src:libapache-htpasswd-perl: "libapache-htpasswd-perl: FTBFS: dh_clean: Please specify the compatibility level in debian/compat" add debian/compat, upload to DELAYED/2
#829409 src:libhtml-tidy-perl: "libhtml-tidy-perl: FTBFS: Failed 7/21 test programs. 8/69 subtests failed." apply patches from Simon McVittie (pkg-perl)
#829668 libparse-debianchangelog-perl: "libparse-debianchangelog-perl: FTBFS: Failed test 'Output of dpkg_str equal to output of dpkg-parsechangelog'" add patch for compatibility with new dpkg (pkg-perl)
#829746 src:license-reconcile: "license-reconcile: FTBFS: Failed 7/30 test programs. 11/180 subtests failed." versioned close, already fixed in latest upload (pkg-perl)
#830275 src:libgravatar-url-perl: "libgravatar-url-perl: accesses the internet during build" skip test which needs internet access (pkg-perl)
#830324 src:libhttp-async-perl: "libhttp-async-perl: accesses the internet during build" add patch to skip tests with DNS queries (pkg-perl)
#830354 src:libhttp-proxy-perl: "libhttp-proxy-perl: accesses the internet during build" skip tests which need internet access (pkg-perl)
#830355 src:libanyevent-http-perl: "libanyevent-http-perl: accesses the internet during build" skip tests which need internet access (pkg-perl)
#830356 src:libhttp-oai-perl: "libhttp-oai-perl: accesses the internet during build" add patch to skip tests with DNS queries (pkg-perl)
#830476 src:libpoe-component-client-http-perl: "libpoe-component-client-http-perl: accesses the internet during build" update existing patch (pkg-perl)
#831233 src:libmongodb-perl: "libmongodb-perl: build hangs with sbuild and libeatmydata" lower severity (pkg-perl)
#832361 src:libmousex-getopt-perl: "libmousex-getopt-perl: FTBFS: Failed 2/22 test programs. 2/356 subtests failed." upload new upstream release (pkg-perl)
DebConf 16 in Capetown/South Africa was fantastic for many reasons.
My Capetown/South Africa/Culture/Flight related lessons:
Avoid flying on Sundays (especially in/from Austria where plenty of hotlines are closed on Sundays or at least not open when you need them)
Actually turn back your seat on the flight when trying to sleep and not forget that this option exists *cough*
While UCT claims to take energy saving quite serious (e.g. turn off the lights mentioned at many places around the campus), several toilets flush all their water, even when trying to do just small business and also two big lights in front of a main building seem to be shining all day long for no apparent reason
There doesn t seem to be a standard for the side of hot vs. cold water-taps
Soap pieces and towels on several toilets
For pedestrians there s just a very short time of green at the traffic lights (~2-3 seconds), then red blinking lights show that you can continue walking across the street (but *should* not start walking) until it s fully red again (but not many people seem to care about the rules anyway :))
Warning lights of cars are used for saying thanks (compared to hand waving in e.g. Austria)
The 40km/h speed limit signs on the roads seem to be showing the recommended minimum speed :-)
There are many speed bumps on the roads
Geese quacking past 11:00 p.m. close to a sleeping room are something I m also not used to :-)
Announced downtimes for the Internet connection are something I m not used to
WLAN in the dorms of UCT as well as in any other place I went to at UCT worked excellent (measured ~22-26 Mbs downstream in my room, around 26Mbs in the hacklab) (kudos!)
WLAN is available even on top of the Table Mountain (WLAN working and being free without any registration)
Number26 credit card is great to withdraw money from ATMs without any extra fees from common credit card companies (except for the fee the ATM itself charges but displays ahead on-site anyway)
Splitwise is a nice way to share expenses on the road, especially with its mobile app and the money beaming using the Number26 mobile app
My technical lessons from DebConf16:
ran into way too many yak-shaving situations, some of them might warrant separate blog posts
finally got my hands on gbp-pq (manage quilt patches on patch queue branches in git): very nice to be able to work with plain git and then get patches for your changes, also having upstream patches (like cherry-picks) inside debian/patches/ and the debian specific changes inside debian/patches/debian/ is a lovely idea, this can be easily achieved via Gbp-Pq: Topic debian with gbp s pq and is used e.g. in pkg-systemd, thanks to Michael Biebl for the hint and helping hand
David Bremner s gitpkg/git-debcherry is something to also be aware of (thanks for the reminder, gregoa)
autorevision: extracts revision metadata from your VCS repository (thanks to pabs)
ifupdown2 (its current version is also available in jessie-backports!) has some nice features, like ifquery running $interface to get the life configuration of a network interface, json support ( ifquery format=json ) and makotemplates support to generate configuration for plenty of interfaces
BTW, thanks to the video team the recordings from the sessions are available online.
& another round of RC bug fixes, still related to the perl 5.22
transition (& yay, 5.22 is in testing since some days!):
#808209 amanda-common: "amanda-common: Depends on virtual package "perl5" which will is gone with perl/5.22" replace perl5 dependencies, NMU with maintainer's approval
#808321 votca-csg-scripts: "votca-csg-scripts: Depends on virtual package "perl5" which will is gone with perl/5.22" fix dependency, upload to DELAYED/3
#809192 src:libterm-termkey-perl: "libterm-termkey-perl: FTBFS: 05flags.t: Non-zero wait status: 11" set TERM for tests (pkg-perl)
#809198 maildirsync: "maildirsync broken with perl 5.22" add upstream patch, upload to DELAYED/3
#809583 src:libgenome-model-tools-music-perl: "libgenome-model-tools-music-perl: FTBFS: use Genome::Model::Tools::Music::Survival': Can't use 'defined(@array)" fix 'defined(@array)' error (pkg-perl)
the upload of perl 5.22 to unstable some days ago provided ample opportunity
to fix some new RC bugs. here's the list of my work:
#768687 src:libdata-hal-perl: "libdata-hal-perl: FTBFS: test suite broken by newer liburi-namespacemap-perl versions" add patch from new upstream's git repo (pkg-perl)
#787912 src:libdata-dump-streamer-perl: "libdata-dump-streamer-perl: FTBFS with perl 5.22" upload new upstream release (pkg-perl)
#789142 src:libdata-hal-perl: "libdata-hal-perl: FTBFS with perl 5.22 (Module::Build)" upload with explicit build dependency on Module::Build (pkg-perl)
#791520 libmojomojo-perl: "libmojomojo-perl: FTBFS: test failures" close bug in the BTS, already fixed since months (pkg-perl)
#801659 libxml-compile-dumper-perl: "libxml-compile-dumper-perl: depends on libdata-dump-streamer-perl, broken by perl 5.22" close as the dependency is fixed (pkg-perl)
#808284 libalien-wxwidgets-perl: "libalien-wxwidgets-perl: Broken dependencies in binary package after BinNMU" fix wxwidgets version detection logic (pkg-perl)
#808310 libchemistry-formula-perl: "libchemistry-formula-perl: bogus dependency on perlapi-5.20.2" fix perl library paths in debian/rules, NMU
#808327 wmanager: "wmanager: Depends on virtual package "perl5" which will is gone with perl/5.22" sponsor maintainer upload
#808412 src:ippl: "ippl: Depends on virtual package "perl5-base" which is gone with perl/5.22" drop perl5-base dependency, NMU with maintainer's permission
#808454 src:libdata-faker-perl: "libdata-faker-perl: FTBFS under some locales (eg. fr_CH.UTF-8)" set C locale for tests (pkg-perl)
#808473 liblemonldap-ng-manager-perl: "liblemonldap-ng-manager-perl: manager unaccessible without doc symlink in /var/lib/lemonldap-ng" upload package prepared by Xavier Guimard (pkg-perl)
#808474 liblemonldap-ng-manager-perl: "liblemonldap-ng-manager-perl: Manager shows garbage where the menu is supposed to be" upload package prepared by Xavier Guimard (pkg-perl)
#808480 libdevel-bt-perl: "libdevel-bt-perl: FTBFS on mips*: test failures" add (build)dep on perl-debug (pkg-perl)
#808489 src:acm: "acm: FTBFS: Type of arg 1 to dbmclose must be hash (not constant item) at ./create-tables-5 (perl 5.22?)" send patch to BTS
#808507 uwsgi-plugin-mono: "uwsgi-plugin-mono: Please refresh architectures list for current Mono in Unstable" sponsor upload for jonas
#808825 libperl-apireference-perl: "libperl-apireference-perl: FTBFS: missing support for Perl 5.22.1" add support for 5.22.1 (pkg-perl)
#809006 libnet-cups-perl: "libnet-cups-perl: empty package" add patch to fix broken version check in Makefile.PL (pkg-perl)
the upload of perl 5.22 to unstable some days ago provided ample opportunity
to fix some new RC bugs. here's the list of my work:
#768687 src:libdata-hal-perl: "libdata-hal-perl: FTBFS: test suite broken by newer liburi-namespacemap-perl versions" add patch from new upstream's git repo (pkg-perl)
#787912 src:libdata-dump-streamer-perl: "libdata-dump-streamer-perl: FTBFS with perl 5.22" upload new upstream release (pkg-perl)
#789142 src:libdata-hal-perl: "libdata-hal-perl: FTBFS with perl 5.22 (Module::Build)" upload with explicit build dependency on Module::Build (pkg-perl)
#791520 libmojomojo-perl: "libmojomojo-perl: FTBFS: test failures" close bug in the BTS, already fixed since months (pkg-perl)
#801659 libxml-compile-dumper-perl: "libxml-compile-dumper-perl: depends on libdata-dump-streamer-perl, broken by perl 5.22" close as the dependency is fixed (pkg-perl)
#808284 libalien-wxwidgets-perl: "libalien-wxwidgets-perl: Broken dependencies in binary package after BinNMU" fix wxwidgets version detection logic (pkg-perl)
#808310 libchemistry-formula-perl: "libchemistry-formula-perl: bogus dependency on perlapi-5.20.2" fix perl library paths in debian/rules, NMU
#808327 wmanager: "wmanager: Depends on virtual package "perl5" which will is gone with perl/5.22" sponsor maintainer upload
#808412 src:ippl: "ippl: Depends on virtual package "perl5-base" which is gone with perl/5.22" drop perl5-base dependency, NMU with maintainer's permission
#808454 src:libdata-faker-perl: "libdata-faker-perl: FTBFS under some locales (eg. fr_CH.UTF-8)" set C locale for tests (pkg-perl)
#808473 liblemonldap-ng-manager-perl: "liblemonldap-ng-manager-perl: manager unaccessible without doc symlink in /var/lib/lemonldap-ng" upload package prepared by Xavier Guimard (pkg-perl)
#808474 liblemonldap-ng-manager-perl: "liblemonldap-ng-manager-perl: Manager shows garbage where the menu is supposed to be" upload package prepared by Xavier Guimard (pkg-perl)
#808480 libdevel-bt-perl: "libdevel-bt-perl: FTBFS on mips*: test failures" add (build)dep on perl-debug (pkg-perl)
#808489 src:acm: "acm: FTBFS: Type of arg 1 to dbmclose must be hash (not constant item) at ./create-tables-5 (perl 5.22?)" send patch to BTS
#808507 uwsgi-plugin-mono: "uwsgi-plugin-mono: Please refresh architectures list for current Mono in Unstable" sponsor upload for jonas
#808825 libperl-apireference-perl: "libperl-apireference-perl: FTBFS: missing support for Perl 5.22.1" add support for 5.22.1 (pkg-perl)
#809006 libnet-cups-perl: "libnet-cups-perl: empty package" add patch to fix broken version check in Makefile.PL (pkg-perl)
it looks like this autumn was not my best blogging time: this is the first
posting in 3 months. anyway, I wanted to give a quick overview about
my work on RC bugs. again nothing exciting, mostly just trying to fix the
ones popping up in the pkg-perl team.
#728955 src:libatomic-ops: "FTBFS on powerpc: FAIL: test_stack" upload NMU prepared by Fernando Seiti Furusato, upload to DELAYED/5, and cancelled again later on maintainer's request
#784404 src:libssh: "libssh: CVE-2015-3146: null pointer dereference due to a logical error in the handling of a SSH_MSG_NEWKEYS and KEXDH_REPLY packets" upload NMU prepared by Chris Knadle
#787453 src:libdata-alias-perl: "libdata-alias-perl: FTBFS with perl 5.22" upload new upstream release (pkg-perl)
#790334 src:libb-lint-perl: "libb-lint-perl: FTBFS with perl 5.22: test failure" add patch from upstream bug tracker (pkg-perl)
#791848 src:zeroc-ice: "zeroc-ice: FTBFS with ruby2.2: Config.h:84:36: error: 'RBIGNUM' was not declared in this scope" upload NMU prepared by Chris Knadle
#795295 src:libsignatures-perl: "libsignatures-perl: broken by ABI change in libb-hooks-parser-perl" new upstream release, bump versioned dependency (pkg-perl)
#796535 src:libmodule-starter-plugin-cgiapp-perl: "libmodule-starter-plugin-cgiapp-perl: FTBFS: Failed 3/5 test programs. 0/1 subtests failed." add patch to deal with newer Module::Starter, upload to DELAYED/5, later cancelled in favour of maintainer upload
#796887 src:libmodule-info-perl: "libmodule-info-perl: FTBFS with perl 5.22: test failures" upload new upstream devel release (pkg-perl)
#799578 src:libevent-rpc-perl: "libevent-rpc-perl: FTBFS: hostname verification failed at t/04.cnct-auth-ssl-verifypeer-wrongca.t line 54" upload new upstream release (pkg-perl)
#805403 libpango-perl: "libpango-perl: FTBFS: undefined symbol: pango_cairo_update_layout (broken by pkg-config 0.29)" upload with patch fro ntyni (pkg-perl)
#805876 src:libclass-accessor-chained-perl: "libclass-accessor-chained-perl: FTBFS with perl 5.22: missing dependency on Module::Build" add missing build dependency (pkg-perl)
#805967 src:libextutils-cppguess-perl: "libextutils-cppguess-perl: FTBFS with perl 5.22: missing dependency on Module::Build" add missing build dependency (pkg-perl)
#805969 src:libmime-lite-tt-html-perl: "libmime-lite-tt-html-perl: FTBFS with perl 5.22: missing dependency on Module::Build" add missing build dependency (pkg-perl)
#805970 src:libtap-parser-sourcehandler-pgtap-perl: "libtap-parser-sourcehandler-pgtap-perl: FTBFS with perl 5.22: missing dependency on Module::Build" add missing build dependency, upload to DELAYED/2
#806859 src:libnet-frame-perl: "libnet-frame-perl: FTBFS: Attempts to access internet during build" skip a test (pkg-perl)
#807324 src:libio-pty-perl: "libio-pty-perl: FTBFS with perl 5.22 in experimental (MakeMaker changes)" use DESTDIR instead of PREFIX, upload to DELAYED/2, then rescheduled to 0-day with maintainer's permission
#807400 src:libtext-aspell-perl: "libtext-aspell-perl: FTBFS with perl 5.22 in experimental (MakeMaker changes)" use DESTDIR instead of PREFIX, upload to DELAYED/2
#807401 src:libtext-unaccent-perl: "libtext-unaccent-perl: FTBFS with perl 5.22 in experimental (MakeMaker changes)" use DESTDIR instead of PREFIX, upload to DELAYED/2
#807422 src:libsys-cpuload-perl: "libsys-cpuload-perl: FTBFS with perl 5.22 in experimental (MakeMaker changes)" use DESTDIR instead of PREFIX, upload to DELAYED/2
#807474 src:libfile-rsyncp-perl: "libfile-rsyncp-perl: FTBFS with perl 5.22 in experimental (MakeMaker changes)" use DESTDIR instead of PREFIX, upload to DELAYED/2
#807478 src:razor: "razor: FTBFS with perl 5.22 in experimental (MakeMaker changes)" use DESTDIR instead of PREFIX, upload to DELAYED/2
#807492 src:libmath-bigint-gmp-perl: "libmath-bigint-gmp-perl: FTBFS on 32 bit platforms" prepare preliminary patch based on proposal in CPAN RT (pkg-perl)
the days are getting warmer (in the northern hemisphere), debian is getting
colder,
& quite a few debian events are taking place.
in innsbruck, we are organizing MountainCamp, an event in the tradition of
SunCamp & SnowCamp: no schedule, no talks, meet other debian people, fix
bugs, come up with crazy ideas, have fun, develop things.
Here is my monthly update covering what I have been doing in the free software world during March 2020 (
Thats So Raven
If I could sum up the past year in one word, that word would be distraction. There have been so many strange, confusing or simply unforseen things going on I have had trouble focusing like never before.
For instance, on the opposite side of the street from me is one of Jersey City's old resorvoirs. It's not used for drinking water anymore and the city eventually plans on merging it into the park on the other side. In the meantime it has become something of a wildlife refuge. Which is nice except one of the newly settled critters was a bird of prey -- the consensus is possibly some kind of hawk or raven. Starting your morning commute under the eyes of a harbinger of death is very goth and I even learned to deal with the occasional piece of deconstructed rodent on my doorstep but nighttime was a big problem. For contrary to popular belief, ravens do not quoth "nevermore" but "KRRAAAA". Very loudly. Just as soon as you have drifted of to sleep. Eventually my sleep-deprived neighbors and I appealed to the NJ division of enviromental protection to get it removed but by the time they were ready to swing into action the bird had left for somewhere more congenial like Transylvania or Newark.
Or here are some more complete wastes of time: I go the doctor for my annual physical. The insurance company codes it as Adult Onset Diabetes by accident. One day I opened the lid of my laptop and there's a "ping" sound and a piece of the hinge flies off. Apparently that also severed the connection to the screen and naturally the warranty had just expired so I had to spend the next month tethered to an external monitor until I could afford to buy a new one. Mix in all the usual social, political, family and work drama and you can see that it has been a very trying time for me.
Dovecot
I have managed to get some Debian work done. On Dovecot, my principal package, I have gotten tremendous support from Apollon Oikonomopolous who I belatedly welcome as a member of the Dovecot maintainer team. He has been particularly helpful in fixing our systemd support and cleaning out a lot of the old and invalid bugs. We're in pretty good shape for the freeze. Upstream has released an RC of 2.2.26 and hopefully the final version will be out in the next couple of days so we can include it in Stretch. We can always use more help with the package so let me know if you're interested.
Debian-IN
Most of the action has been going on without me but I've been lending support and sponsoring whenever I can. We have several new DDs and DMs but still no one north of the Vindhyas I'm afraid.
Debian Perl Group
gregoa did a ping of inactive maintainers and I regretfully had to admit to myself that I wasn't going to be of use anytime soon so I resigned. Perl remains my favorite language and I've actually been more involved in the meetings of 