On Wed, Dec 04, 2024 at 04:53:07PM +0100, Robert Chéramy wrote: > 1) Documentation > There was a lot of reading involved (no problem here - it is great to have a > detailed documentation) but it was very confusing that there were different > guides addressing the same things: > > Debian Developper's Reference > - https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/index.en.html > - More the organizational aspects - OK, no problem here. > > Then three different guides which cover more or less the same topics and > reference to each other and are/were partially outdated: > - Debian New Maintainer's Guide > https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/index.en.html > - Guide for Debian Maintainers > https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debmake-doc/index.en.html > - Debian Policy Manual https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/
There is a big dfference between the Policy and any other guide. The Policy is not a guide but a normative document. As for maint-guide and debmake-doc, there are indeed several big problems around them. An IMO neither are enough to learn basic packaging. > 2) What should I read first if I want to make a new package? > > When I read https://www.debian.org/devel/join/index.en.html This link is not among answers to this question. This is the reason for the confusion you describe below. The correct answer to this question is https://mentors.debian.net/intro-maintainers/ >, I miss a link > to the Debian Developper's Reference and the Guide for Debian Maintainers or > the Debian Policy Manual. > > I read that I should subscribe to a lot of mailing lists, work on > work-needing packages, do secondary tasks (docs, website, translation, QA), > but nothing about how I can start the rough path to make a debian package. > > Even in https://www.debian.org/devel/join/newmaint , I do not find a link to > a documentation on how to make a package. > > Sure, I will finally land on on of the three documents above. With some bad > luck, I will land on the (old) "Debian New Maintainer's Guide". > 3) Salsa > It is not clear to me if salsa is exclusive for DD or open to anyone. > https://www.debian.org/devel/join/newmaint.en.html states "prospective > Debian Developers" should create an account. This, again, is a wrong doc and it provided you a wrong perspective. > My understanding is that salsa should be open for everyone, like in github. It is. > If I have a problem with a debian package, I would like to fork it on salsa, > patch it an submit a PR. Sometimes you can, sometimes you cannot, and this is cannot be fixed at the current state of the project. So we cannot document that you always can. > 4) Localization on www.debian.org > I live in Germany, and was born in France, so my language preference in > firefox is de > fr > en. > When I visit debian.org, I get it in German. So far, so good. > When working in an English context, I prefer using the document in English > (for example in order to write this email). > I choose "English" at the bottom of debian.org and get the page in English. > So far, so good > > When I click on most of the links, I get the generic URL and not the > localized one (index.en.html). So I'm back to German and have to choose > English manually or in some docs (developers-reference / debian-policy) I > must click on a link, manually replace ".de." into ".en." in the URL, and > click on the home of the document). This is very annoying and make the > process of learning how to package harder than it could be. > > Sure, I could read it in German, change my browser preferences or use Chrome > with English preferences. It's just one more challenge in the way. Yes. I gave up on this years ago. Apparently it works as intended. > With these difficulties plus the constant need of prioritizing my time, I > ended in installing gns3 with `pip install` and pushing my next time trying > to package something for debian (doing the things right) in some future day. Makes total sense. > I probably did not tried hard enough, or the challenges along the way were > too big for the effort I was ready to invest in it at the time. I work on > other open source projects where the entry barrier was lower. Yeah. -- WBR, wRAR
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