Hello there Mark, thanks for your email, and for the followup ping; weeks are well-filled with $job, baby and other involvements.
Regarding firmware-nonfree updates, I have related my last-years' experience on d-devel: https://lists.debian.org/msgid-search/2390124.3VsfAaAtOV@turnagra I insist: I am absolutely not implying that Ben is doing anything wrong; I just observed that he was mostly alone in a bottleneck position for that package. What I did back then to try to help getting the firmware package in better shape was to dive in the (complex) packaging and try to produce "ready-to- merge" merge-requests for new upstream releases, fixes, etc, then pinging Ben at (what I considered) reasonable intervals. I see that Diederik (CC'ed) has started to do the same for recent versions. The package is complex and a mined land of legal concerns, the upstream repo needs repacking, and the (upstream & debian/) repositories are split; I have not found this a very pleasant experience, sadly. And again; no-one to blame here: there _is_ tooling to help, and immense work has been put towards making this manageable! I'm merely saying it's not a matter of running "debian/rules get-new-upstream" at all. From where I sit (that is: I only modestly contributed in the past, and cannot commit to much these days), there are two angles to address: A) lift the bottleneck: there needs to be more Debian Developers confident to comment and merge MRs, and then upload. B) regular commitment: I feel it would be easier to get regular updates merged, rather than doing the huge batch shortly before release; that would also appease the tensions that many probably feel when they get new hardware but no available package. As to how I can get involved in any of the above; I can't reasonably add this to my plate these days (and would rather _not do_, than commit to do and fail). But I wonder if some financial sponsorship (if Lenovo and others would be open to something like that) could help, via Freexian for example (disclaimer: not for me to do it; I'm not a Freexian person). I'd be concerned that this would only solve B above though. It would feel like a 1-2 hours job / week. I hope the above helps you navigate that question, and that it helps the situation in general. Best, Didier Le vendredi, 26 avril 2024, 20.35:41 h CEST Mark Pearson a écrit : > Hi Didier & Ben, > > I hope all is well. > I wanted to check in with you guys, as with the new 2024 platforms coming > out there are some updates to linux-firmware - for CPU, GPU, Wifi, > Bluetooth, etc devices > > I checked and it looked like firmware-nonfree and it hadn't been updated > since last year - and I wondered if that is something I can help with? I'd > like to make sure the Debian experience on this years platforms is good > out-of-the-box. > > Let me know if that would be helpful, and any pointers on how best to > contribute and be useful > > Thanks > Mark > > PS - in case anyone notices, I've mothballed my old markpear...@lenovo.com > address because the Lenovo outlook servers there became horribly unusable. > I am using my personal domain for open source collaboration instead. I > still have access to that address (if anybody wants to check I am who I say > I am) and am still employed at Lenovo (if that makes any difference to > anything) -- OdyX
