Debian Monthly [debian-devel]: AI News Report 2024/10
This is an experiment, by letting LLM go through all 369 emails from debian-devel on Oct. The command for producing the news report is included below. Use debgpt's git HEAD if you want to try. THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS AI-GENERATED CONTENT (pth25) ~/Git/debgpt debgpt -Hx ldo:debian-devel/2024/10 -a 'gather interesting and important information from there and write a news report. You may expand on important matter. Important matters include but are not limited to technical discussions, incidents, critical bugs, and heated discussions.' [01:07:31] OpenAIFrontend> Starting conversation frontend.py:99 d9fb92a7-19ab-4dca-8fc5-4c642a5fadbc [01:07:32] Got 369 threads from reader.py:470 https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2024/10/threads. html. Working... 100% 0:00:00 MapReduce: Got 369 chunks from 'ldo:debian-devel/2024/10' MapReduce: reducing 369 intermediate results MapReduce: reducing 9 intermediate results LLM[2]> Debian Community News: Key Developments and Technical Discussions The Debian development community has been buzzing with activity, marked by significant technical discussions, critical bug reports, and proposals aimed at enhancing the Debian ecosystem. This report summarizes the most important developments from recent communications within the community. New Package Introductions One of the most notable advancements is the introduction of the libqt6pas package, which provides bindings for Qt6 in Pascal. This package is expected to streamline GUI development for Pascal applications, building on the success of its predecessor, libqtpas, which catered to Qt5. Additionally, a proposal for the esphome package has been submitted, designed to facilitate firmware creation for ESP32 and ESP8266 microcontrollers, thereby bolstering the integration of smart home technologies. Critical Bugs and Urgent Issues The community is currently grappling with several critical bugs that could impact the stability and performance of the Debian system: • dpkg-maintscript-helper Warnings: A contentious discussion has emerged regarding the firmware-sof-signed package upgrade process. Developers are urged to investigate the warnings generated during the usrmerge transition, highlighting the complexities of package management that can affect user experiences. • Hanging fakeroot Package: A critical bug in the fakeroot package has been identified, causing it to hang and consume excessive CPU resources. Developer Chris Hofstaedtler has stressed the urgency of backporting fixes to prevent delays in software updates for the stable release, indicating a pressing need for immediate action. • Lintian Dependency Management: Reports of installation issues with the Lintian package have surfaced, underscoring ongoing challenges with dependency management in Debian's unstable distribution, Sid. These issues are critical as they affect the ability of developers to maintain package integrity. Technical Discussions on Package Management The community has also engaged in important discussions regarding package management practices: • Signify Package Renaming: A proposal to rename the signify package to signify-mail has been put forth to eliminate confusion with the OpenBSD version. This highlights the importance of clear naming conventions in package management. • Future of i386 Architecture Support: Concerns have been raised about the future of i386 architecture support, prompting suggestions for a more streamlined package removal process. This could alleviate the burden on developers and ensure more efficient package management. Security Enhancements In a move to bolster security, rebuilds for arm64 packages are planned to enable Pointer Authentication (PAC) and Branch Target Identification (BTI) support. These enhancements are crucial for maintaining a secure environment within the Debian ecosystem, reflecting the community's commitment to safeguarding user data and software integrity. Compatibility Concerns with zlib-ng Discussions have also centered around the compatibility of zlib-ng with existing software systems. Developers have raised critical concerns about backward compatibility, particularly its implications for widely-used applications such as nginx. Ensuring compatibility is vital for maintaining the seamless operation of software within the Debian environment. New Module Proposals for Tryton In a positive development, Mathias Behrle has submitted several proposals for new Tryton modules aimed at enhancing the platform's functionality. These proposals include modules for
Re: Debian Monthly [debian-devel]: AI News Report 2024/10
The tone can change: http://paste.debian.net/1335055/ LLMs are being improved rapidly over time. I guess it's due to some potential safety issues so that LLM uses a dull corporate tone by default. Those models should have been trained on different tones, as long as we instruct it to use them. On 11/9/24 14:27, G. Branden Robinson wrote: At 2024-11-09T21:44:40+, Steve McIntyre wrote: Please, no further. We don't need hallucinated summaries on our lists. If you want to publish them, publish them somewhere separately IMHO. Oh, good--since it's not a CoC violation to express an unflattering opinion of this experiment, did anyone notice how deadly dull the prose style is? It's like the LLM had been trained solely on corporate press releases. I miss the Joeys. Regards, Branden
Re: Debian Monthly [debian-devel]: AI News Report 2024/10
Hi Charles, On 11/9/24 15:48, Charles Plessy wrote: Thanks a lot Mo for this exciting experiment! And having two ex-DPLs pressing the big red stop button is not necessarly a bad sign in an ageing project. Often you will see ideas rejected in a very dismissive if not insulting way (for example source-only uploads or HTTPS URLs in /etc/apt/sources.list), and a couple of years later they are mainstream! Those new technologies are sure to make more impact in the future. We need to find a proper place where people are comforatable with LLM noises. Currently it seems to me posting AI-generated news on the main mailing lists leads to a "pollution effect" -- LLM will grab its report from the last month If I don't mention it... What do people do when there is a long thread on debian-devel, debian-project, debian-private or the like? Well, what I do is that I check the first ~6 messages and then cherry-pick 3 or 4 answers deeper in the thread from I do more or less the same, or even worse -- keep them marked as unread and see my unread mail in inbox go to 10k+. Those LLM tools, while noisy, can still provide some help for me to keep me updated a little bit -- to know what happened, what are being discussed and what is the conclusion. The LLM reports are not quite accurate. But I still see value there -- as long as we ask it to provide URL citations to the information source, I can still catch up something with minimum read. I see a big transformative potential for our future discussions: even if a crowd is shouting circular arguments around, we can use AI to reassure participants that original point of views can have good chances to be part of a summary. Taking the effort to contribute is rewarded. This can change Debian considerably. So please, more DebGPT summaries ! DebGPT is now more about a general terminal LLM tool which I develop and use very frequently. Summarizing mailing list is just one of the not yet announced new features. Efforts in exploring the way to make LLM useful will continue. While hallucinating too much, LLMs can still correctly teach me how to use urwid (which I could never understand by going through their tutorial many times...). That leads to the `debgpt config` TUI configuration wizard. Any suggestion on a place where I can safely direct those generated contents, with the audience being comfortable with LLM noise? As noted by the ex-DPLs, it should happen at a dedicated experiment ground.
Re: Debian Monthly [debian-devel]: AI News Report 2024/10
Thanks a lot Mo for this exciting experiment! And having two ex-DPLs pressing the big red stop button is not necessarly a bad sign in an ageing project. Often you will see ideas rejected in a very dismissive if not insulting way (for example source-only uploads or HTTPS URLs in /etc/apt/sources.list), and a couple of years later they are mainstream! What do people do when there is a long thread on debian-devel, debian-project, debian-private or the like? Well, what I do is that I check the first ~6 messages and then cherry-pick 3 or 4 answers deeper in the thread from, for instance Andreas, Russ, Stefano, and maybe also Steve and Branden to broaden my perspectives, and the rest I do not read. It means: people with little reputation have little chance to contribute original points of view to Debian unless they jump on the keyboard as fast as they can, which does not increase the quality of the discussion and biases against people who are in non-mainstream timezones and who are slower to write in English. Our mailing lists were a ground-breaking technological avance in the past that would open Debian to the whole World, but now are they not working exactly against that? I see a big transformative potential for our future discussions: even if a crowd is shouting circular arguments around, we can use AI to reassure participants that original point of views can have good chances to be part of a summary. Taking the effort to contribute is rewarded. This can change Debian considerably. So please, more DebGPT summaries ! Have a nice week-end, Charles
Re: Debian Monthly [debian-devel]: AI News Report 2024/10
At 2024-11-09T14:46:45-0800, Mo Zhou wrote: > The tone can change: http://paste.debian.net/1335055/ I recognize a different style there... > LLMs are being improved rapidly over time. ...but I'm not sure I would call the new example an improvement. With all those exclamation marks it seems more like advertising or a similar hyperventilating form. > I guess it's due to some potential safety issues Safety? As in human life and limb? If we're already entrusting AI- generated text to the instruction of humans in potentially hazardous situations, that could be enough to make even most wild-eyed anarchist cry out for the heavy boot of government regulation. I think Steve's point about hallucination should be taken seriously. In any communication the construction of meaning is effectively a negotiated process between the speaker and listener.[1] Humans have evolved our capacity for this over tens of thousands of years, such that one model of human language facility is a "mental organ".[2] From what I've seen of LLM language output, it seems to reside in an analogue to the "uncanny valley"; it closely resembles human language, but the metaphorical point at which meaning is constructed shifts from the site where discourses carried out by humans place it. (That such a point is susceptible to shifting at all may be the one of the theses of Derrida; all I can say for sure is that if it was, his English translators seemed bent on proving the point by example.) Chomsky's famous example of "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" has the virtue of advertising (to most humans) that it is nonsense. The construct of a network of Markov chains in a large number of dimensions isn't necessarily so obvious. > Those models should have been trained on different tones, as long as > we instruct it to use them. Has it got sliders for "Hunter S. Thompson" or "Christopher Hitchens"? ;-) Regards, Branden [1] or reader/writer, in which case the "negotiation" is more static than dynamic [2] My favorite piece of supporting evidence is the spontaneous development of sophisticated grammatical features by children in the case of Nicaraguan Sign Language. This is one of the coolest natural experiments ever to have taken place. Judy Shepherd-Kegl should be awarded a prize for applying an ethic of non-interference when so many others would have assumed a didactic one. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: DEP-18: Git and GitLab usage in other Linux distros (Re: Representing Debian Metadata in Git)
Hi! ... > > - The number of contributors/maintainers is low everywhere. Ending > > single-person maintainership is not going to happen any soon, but hopefully, > > we can work towards first increasing the pool of contributors who > > participate, and then expand on practices around Merge Requests and reviews > > and maybe have some kind of formal sign-offs from at least two people before > > upload. Initially, perhaps only for the top-150 packages. But before we can > > institute review workflows, we need to have more unification around the > > version control and basic packaging workflows. > > I'm still dubious any "2 people sign-off" can work [1]. In your > investigations, > did you find other distributions which implemented this successfully? > > I think "work towards easier collaboration" and "require more than one person > for every commit/upload" are two very different things which should be > discussed independently. > > Thanks! > > cheers, josch > > [1] My own experience with this comes from my contributions to devscripts > which > is in the debian group, thus "team" maintained and probably all of you have it > installed and should feel responsible for it (right?). Nevertheless, my MRs > mostly get zero replies, so I usually just merge them after waiting a couple > of > months. The situation is a bit better for sbuild but not by much. I see you have 41 MRs at https://salsa.debian.org/debian/devscripts/-/merge_requests?scope=all&state=all&author_username=josch Some of them were approved by Niels, but indeed most go without approval nor even comments. I Salsa CI and in Lintian for example I do see pretty good review activity. Perhaps we just need to have more visibility and reminders for people to check out https://salsa.debian.org/debian/devscripts/-/merge_requests or even https://salsa.debian.org/groups/debian/-/merge_requests which has now 993 MRs open (and nearly 10k MRs in total). I wonder if it would make sense to organize some kind of "office hours" for code reviews and code testing best practices and guidance...
Re: Any Progress on DEP-18 ("Enable true open collaboration on all Debian packages")?
Hi! Thanks for following up. Based on the feedback about the goal/scope I decided to rewrite the DEP-18 almost completely, and published a new draft at https://salsa.debian.org/dep-team/deps/-/merge_requests/12 On Tue, 5 Nov 2024 at 03:14, Jonathan Dowland wrote: > > It's been a while since -devel has heard anything about DEP-18¹, which > (Back in August or so) encouraged a large healthy discussion here, and > got some coverage on LWN². > > Is there any news? Where are we at with this (pre-)³proposal? > > > > > [1] > https://salsa.debian.org/dep-team/deps/-/raw/798bfa5a1e1609afd4e48ee20aff80a82bcd4a2f/web/deps/dep18.mdwn > [2] https://lwn.net/Articles/986480/ > [3] Not actually a DEP at all, yet: at least not present on > https://dep-team.pages.debian.net/ > > -- > Please do not CC me for listmail. > > 👱🏻Jonathan Dowland > ✎j...@debian.org > 🔗 https://jmtd.net >
Re: Debian packaging for git-credential-libsecret
On Mon, 1 Apr 2024 at 21:42, M Hickford wrote: > > Hi. It'd be great to package Git credential helper > git-credential-libsecret in Debian. There's a patch prepared, but it > needs the attention of a Debian developer. Is anyone here able to > help? https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=878599 Hi. Is any Debian developer able to please look at patch to package Git credential helper git-credential-libsecret? https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=878599
Re: Debian packaging for git-credential-libsecret
* M Hickford [241109 12:45]: > On Mon, 1 Apr 2024 at 21:42, M Hickford wrote: > > > > Hi. It'd be great to package Git credential helper > > git-credential-libsecret in Debian. There's a patch prepared, but it > > needs the attention of a Debian developer. Is anyone here able to > > help? https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=878599 > > Hi. Is any Debian developer able to please look at patch to package > Git credential helper git-credential-libsecret? I think Debian is mostly waiting for Jonathan to show up again, and we won't disturb his circles, more than necessary, in the meantime. Chris
Re: Debian Monthly [debian-devel]: AI News Report 2024/10
I just realized that the news report could be more useful if it cites the information source. Here we go: debgpt -Hx ldo:debian-devel/2024/10 -a 'write a news report based on the provided information. Cover as many topics as possible. You may expand a little bit on important matter. include links to the report.' --no-render BTW, which mailing lists should I cover with those montly reports? I currently tried on debian-ai, debian-devel, and debian-science. -- THE FOLLOWING CONTENTS ARE GENERATED BY AI -- ### Recent Developments in the Debian Community: A Snapshot **Date:** October 31, 2024 The Debian development community has seen a flurry of activity in recent weeks, marked by new package proposals, discussions concerning architecture support, and enhancements in package management practices. Here’s a comprehensive overview of the latest developments. New Package Proposals for Tryton Developer Mathias Behrle has put forth several promising new modules for the Tryton application platform, which is gaining traction in business and healthcare sectors. The proposed modules include: - **tryton-modules-account-invoice-watermark**: This module introduces the ability to add watermarks to invoices, enhancing document authenticity. - **tryton-modules-marketing-campaign**: Aimed at improving marketing efforts, this module facilitates the collection and analysis of data related to campaigns. - **tryton-modules-account-stock-shipment-cost**: This module allows for the allocation of shipment costs based on invoices, streamlining financial processes. - **tryton-modules-document-incoming-invoice**: This innovative module automates the creation of supplier invoices from incoming documents, improving efficiency. These proposals signify a strong commitment to bolstering the functionalities of the Tryton platform. For more details, visit [Tryton Downloads](https://downloads.tryton.org/7.0). Lomiri Applications Packaging In a parallel effort, Mike Gabriel has commenced the packaging of several applications designed for the Lomiri operating environment, which is essential to the Ubuntu Touch mobile OS. Key applications being packaged include: - **Lomiri Address Book App**: A user-friendly application for managing contacts. - **Lomiri Dialer App**: An application providing essential telephony features. - **Lomiri Messaging App**: A messaging platform facilitating seamless communication. These applications aim to significantly enhance the user experience within the Lomiri environment. Further information can be found in the [Debian Development Mailing List](https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2024/10/msg00368.html). Discussions on s390x Architecture Support A significant topic of discussion has been the future of the s390x architecture in Debian. Developer Chris Hofstaedtler has raised concerns regarding the dwindling number of active maintainers and a growing number of packages that do not support s390x. The community is currently evaluating the viability of continuing support for this architecture, especially in light of IBM's involvement and commitment to maintaining s390x. For more insights, see the ongoing discussion [here](https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2024/10/msg00295.html). Challenges with Lintian and Package Uploads The community continues to address challenges associated with Lintian, the Debian package checker. Recent issues concerning license compliance in the `warzone2100` package have sparked discussions on how to manage Lintian overrides more effectively. Developers are actively exploring solutions to streamline the package upload process and minimize friction. More information is available [here](https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2024/10/msg00203.html). Upcoming Changes and Improvements In a bid to enhance package management practices, the Debian community is focusing on refining the Non-Maintainer Uploads (NMUs) process. Developers are advocating for standardized workflows that would improve collaboration and efficiency, ultimately reducing confusion and workload for maintainers. For further details on NMUs, check out the discussion [here](https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2024/10/msg00276.html). Technical Updates and Backlogs Colin Watson has confirmed that the Debian upload server is currently facing delays due to a backlog caused by a mass rebuild for Pointer Authentication (PAC) and Branch Target Identification (BTI) support. Developers are advised to anticipate longer processing times for uploads during this period. For updates on the upload delays, refer to the discussion [here](https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2024/10/msg00365.html). ### Conclusion These developments highlight the vibrant and dynamic nature of the Debian community, characterize
Re: Debian Monthly [debian-devel]: AI News Report 2024/10
On Sat Nov 9, 2024 at 10:00 PM CET, Mo Zhou wrote: > I just realized that the news report could be more useful if it cites > the information source. Here we go: thanks! the links are really key, given the known hallucination issues of LLMs signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian Monthly [debian-devel]: AI News Report 2024/10
Hello Lumin, El sáb, 9 nov 2024 a las 10:27, DebGPT () escribió: > > This is an experiment, by letting LLM go through all 369 emails from > debian-devel on Oct. The command for producing the news report > is included below. Use debgpt's git HEAD if you want to try. First time I see this kind of email, I thought time ago that'd be a really cool use of AI, to produce a summary of mailing lists - since I struggle to read everything. I just want to thank you for putting this together and, at least from my side, this is very much appreciated. Regards -- Héctor Orón -.. . -... .. .- -. -.. . ...- . .-.. --- .--. . .-.
Re: Debian Monthly [debian-devel]: AI News Report 2024/10
is it via ChatGPT or an llm self hosted ? Can we imagine having a Debian hosted computer with and AMD GPU dedicated to this use case ? Se should provide these summaries letter for most of our mailing list :) cheers Fred - Le 9 Nov 24, à 14:09, Hector Oron zu...@debian.org a écrit : > Hello Lumin, > > El sáb, 9 nov 2024 a las 10:27, DebGPT () escribió: >> >> This is an experiment, by letting LLM go through all 369 emails from >> debian-devel on Oct. The command for producing the news report >> is included below. Use debgpt's git HEAD if you want to try. > > First time I see this kind of email, I thought time ago that'd be a > really cool use of AI, to produce a summary of mailing lists - since I > struggle to read everything. > > I just want to thank you for putting this together and, at least from > my side, this is very much appreciated. > > Regards > -- > Héctor Orón -.. . -... .. .- -. -.. . ...- . .-.. --- .--. . .-.
Re: Debian Monthly [debian-devel]: AI News Report 2024/10
On 2024-11-09 14:19:53 +0100 (+0100), PICCA Frederic-Emmanuel wrote: > is it via ChatGPT or an llm self hosted ? [...] It's DebGPT: https://salsa.debian.org/deeplearning-team/debgpt -- Jeremy Stanley signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Debian Monthly [debian-devel]: AI News Report 2024/10
The LLM I used to produce that exact news report was gpt-4o-mini, from openai. ChatGPT is the name of openai's LLM web interface and its underlying LLM model name could change. It took roughly 3 minutes to perform the bulk API calls. That said, I basically implemented support for all commonly seen LLM inference services: (4 commercial ones) openai, anthropic, google, xai, (4 self-hosted) llamafile, ollama, vllm, zmq (built-in but kind of outdated.) Other services missing from the list are also supported as long as it has compatibility mode to the openai api. For the particular use case like summarizing a mailing list, self-hosted one will be much slower to respond to the bulk API call unless it is hosted on a GPU cluster :-) Small LLMs are not necessarily smart enough. The open llm leaderboard[3] is a good reference for figuring out the best open-access llm for self-hosting. In terms of "Debian hosted computer with AMD GPU for LLM inference" -- that is exactly one of the long term goals of debian deep learning team (debian-ai@l.d.o). Team members are working to prepare the ROCm packages and the ROCm version of pytorch. I find ollama[1] and llamafile[2] quite handy to use locally if do not mind using software from outside of debian archive, with a spare GPU. [1] https://github.com/ollama/ollama [2] https://github.com/Mozilla-Ocho/llamafile [3] https://huggingface.co/spaces/open-llm-leaderboard/open_llm_leaderboard On 11/9/24 05:19, PICCA Frederic-Emmanuel wrote: is it via ChatGPT or an llm self hosted ? Can we imagine having a Debian hosted computer with and AMD GPU dedicated to this use case ? Se should provide these summaries letter for most of our mailing list :) cheers Fred - Le 9 Nov 24, à 14:09, Hector Oron zu...@debian.org a écrit : Hello Lumin, El sáb, 9 nov 2024 a las 10:27, DebGPT () escribió: This is an experiment, by letting LLM go through all 369 emails from debian-devel on Oct. The command for producing the news report is included below. Use debgpt's git HEAD if you want to try. First time I see this kind of email, I thought time ago that'd be a really cool use of AI, to produce a summary of mailing lists - since I struggle to read everything. I just want to thank you for putting this together and, at least from my side, this is very much appreciated. Regards -- Héctor Orón -.. . -... .. .- -. -.. . ...- . .-.. --- .--. . .-.
Re: Debian Monthly [debian-devel]: AI News Report 2024/10
lu...@debian.org wrote: >I just realized that the news report could be more useful if it cites >the information source. Here we go: > >debgpt -Hx ldo:debian-devel/2024/10 -a 'write a news report based on the >provided information. Cover as many topics as possible. You may expand a >little bit on important matter. include links to the report.' --no-render > >BTW, which mailing lists should I cover with those montly reports? >I currently tried on debian-ai, debian-devel, and debian-science. Please, no further. We don't need hallucinated summaries on our lists. If you want to publish them, publish them somewhere separately IMHO. -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com Can't keep my eyes from the circling sky, Tongue-tied & twisted, Just an earth-bound misfit, I...
Re: Debian Monthly [debian-devel]: AI News Report 2024/10
At 2024-11-09T21:44:40+, Steve McIntyre wrote: > Please, no further. We don't need hallucinated summaries on our > lists. If you want to publish them, publish them somewhere separately > IMHO. Oh, good--since it's not a CoC violation to express an unflattering opinion of this experiment, did anyone notice how deadly dull the prose style is? It's like the LLM had been trained solely on corporate press releases. I miss the Joeys. Regards, Branden signature.asc Description: PGP signature
