I am interested in possibly co-maintaining the xerces packages or in taking them over. Ivo Timmermans, the current maintainer of the xerces packages, indicated on [1]debian-devel that he is "looking for people interested in working on the xerces packages, as a comaintainer or maybe to take it over entirely."
1. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/debian-devel-200402/msg01047.html There hasn't been any activity relating to that post on the debian-devel list. (There are no other messages in the February or March archives with the word "xerces" in their subject lines.) In [2]Bug 225305, I submitted a patch for libxml-xerces-perl to bring it up to the latest upstream version. In response to my comments to this bug report (prior to submitting the patch), Ivo Timmermans replied, "Go ahead and do an NMU." Of course, I can't do that because I'm not (yet, I hope) a DD. 2. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=225305 My patch in Bug 225305 requires a change to the xerces23 package as well. In [3]Bug 234230, I have submitted a patch to the xerces23 source package that would allow the config.status file leftover from building xerces to be installed in /usr/lib/xerces23. The config.status file is needed in order to build libxml-xerces-perl which needs to know how xerces was configured. The config.status file, though text, is definitely architecture-dependent since it encapsulates the output of running "configure", which is why I figured it would go in /usr/lib/xerces23 rather than /usr/share/xerces23. I discuss this in the bug report. 3. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=234230 Both patches are suitable for NMUs. They follow the policy of not making any gratuitous changes. In other words, the packages built by applying my patch and following the procedure outlined in the bug report do have one lintian warning (an executable header file), but so do the existing packages. I explicitly did not fix the problem (though it is easy to fix) because I was considering this to be fodder for an NMU rather than a new packaging job. If I were to assist with maintenance or take over as maintainer of the xerces packages, I would plan to fix this problem and also to create a xerces24 package for the latest upstream Xerces-C package. (At present, the latest version of Xerces perl is not compatible with the latest version of Xerces-C. There's no reason, however, that one can't have more than one version of the runtime libraries installed even though only one version of the Xerces-C development packages can be installed.) I am definitely interested in becoming a Debian developer and getting onto the new maintainer track. I have not yet gotten by GPG key signed by a developer, but I have made contact and intend to pursue the key signing a bit more aggressively. I am relatively new to Debian, but I have been running Linux since 1992 and have been reasonably active in the Open Source community since the late 80's, submitting small to medium patches to a wide range of packages. I am also capable of [4]following the convention of embedding references in my email, which indicates that I am able to observe and mimic prevailing habits. :-) I have read the policy, social contract, developer's reference, and various other materials, and I have close to 20 years of programming and system administration experience under my belt. Luckily, I'm also very patient and don't expect any special treatment on the basis of these stated qualifications. :-) 4. This message I've been lurking on this list long enough to realize that requesting a sponsor for an NMU is somewhat unusual, so I'd welcome advice about how to proceed. Although I have not spoken with Ivo Timmermans about this in the last couple of weeks, I did discuss this some with him including stating my intentions to post here. See [5]Bug 232474 (defunct, superseded by Bug 234230) for details, though keep in mind that this message includes some rambling as I come to the conclusions asserted in Bug 234230. I believe that my patches here are sufficiently simple that someone with the inclination should be able to decide to do an NMU with very little time or effort. If you're willing to sponsor me as a comaintainer of the packages, I'd like to know that too. We would, of course, have to coordinate with Ivo. Thanks for your time. -- Jay Berkenbilt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.ql.org/q/
