Here’s stuff that I’d like to do this year, more or less by decreasing order of importance:
- translate my Debian book into English and get it published;
- finish the cleanup of the perl API in dpkg-dev in order to create libdpkg-perl;
- create dpkg-buildflags to export default build flags that packages should use (and get rid of the code setting those environment variables in dpkg-buildpackage), needed to properly fix #489771;
- ensure the new source formats continue to gain acceptance by improving whatever is needed;
- design a generic vcs-buildpackage infrastructure to be integrated in dpkg-dev. This design will probably happen through a DEP (Debian Enhancement Proposal) to ensure we have had proper discussion before someone gets to the implementation;
- continue fixing dpkg bugs faster than they are reported;
- enhance our infrastructure to ease interaction between contributors and to have a better view of how each package is maintained (see my last blog entry on this topic);
- update the developers-reference where needed and fix some of the numerous wishlist bugs;
- rewrite in C the last perl scripts provided by the dpkg binary package (update-alternatives/mksplit mainly, for dpkg-divert there’s a preliminary patch available already) so that it’s easier to build a minimal system without perl-base;
- integrate the 3-way merge tool for Debian changelogs in dpkg-dev;
All of this probably doesn’t fit in my free time (being a father since last month does not help increasing my free time :-)), so if you’re interested in seeing one or more of those projects completed, and if you know some person/company that could sponsor them, get in touch with me!
