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You are here: Home / News / Debian News / Tracker.debian.org is live

Tracker.debian.org is live

July 4, 2014 by Raphaël Hertzog

Maybe do you remember, last year I mentored a Google Summer of code whose aim was to replace our well known Package Tracking System with something more modern, usable by derivatives and more easily hackable. The result of this project is a new Django-based software called Distro Tracker.

Warning, some internals aheadWith the help of the Debian System Administrators, it’s now setup on tracker.debian.org!

This service is also managed by the Debian QA team, it’s deployed in /srv/tracker.debian.org/ (on ticharich.debian.org, a VM) if you want to verify something on the live installation. It runs under the “qa” user (so members of the “qa-core” group can administer it).

That said you can reproduce the setup on your workstation quite easily, just by checking out the git repository and applying this change:

--- a/distro_tracker/project/settings/local.py
+++ b/distro_tracker/project/settings/local.py
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@ overrides on top of those type-of-installation-specific settings.
 
 from .defaults import INSTALLED_APPS
 from .selected import *
+from .debian import *
 
 ## Add your custom settings here

--- a/distro_tracker/project/settings/local.py +++ b/distro_tracker/project/settings/local.py @@ -10,6 +10,7 @@ overrides on top of those type-of-installation-specific settings. from .defaults import INSTALLED_APPS from .selected import * +from .debian import * ## Add your custom settings here

Speaking of contributing, the documentation includes a “Contributing” section to get you up and running, ready to do your first contribution!

Now go use this new service and report any issue against the new tracker.debian.org pseudo-package (BTW tracker.debian.org knows about pseudo-packages, example here).

There are many small things that need to be fixed/improved, if you know Python/Django and would like to start contributing to Debian, here’s your chance! 🙂

Filed Under: Debian News, News Tagged With: Debian, Distro Tracker, GSOC, tracker.debian.org

Comments

  1. Anonymous says

    July 4, 2014 at 1:35 pm

    I do like the new tracker but I’m disturbed by the colors of the panels. Compared to the old PTS the grey colors are making it harder to quickly identify a section as the contrast between the grey and the background is quite weak. (Compare this with this.)

    How about something like the following CSS?

    .panel-heading {
    background-color: #FF90AF;
    }

    • Raphaël Hertzog says

      July 4, 2014 at 4:33 pm

      Might be, I’m not good at evaluating those. If enough people find it better to use something more dark, we can certainly do it.

    • Billy Larlad says

      July 4, 2014 at 9:29 pm

      I’m going to have to agree with anonymous above. In its current iteration, tracker’s UI is a bit too white. It is indeed hard to differentiate sections. Also, it seems to me that there is just a bit too much white space between everything.

      Then again, that seems like the way sites are designed nowadays. Perhaps I am just looking at Tracker with outdated eyes!

      Anyway, it seems like a good replacement. Thanks for the good work, people!

  2. toobuntu says

    July 4, 2014 at 1:53 pm

    Seems to be missing the ability to subscribe to a package like one can do on the PTS. Are there plans to add this?

    • Raphaël Hertzog says

      July 4, 2014 at 4:23 pm

      Hello toobuntu, It’s not missing, but you need to have an account to be able to subscribe. On the plus side, once you have done this, there’s no need to confirm the subscription by email. See the subscribe button on the top-right.

  3. Rainer Dorsch says

    July 5, 2014 at 9:36 pm

    I did not see the rss link. Will that be available as well?

    • Raphaël Hertzog says

      July 6, 2014 at 10:07 pm

      Please file a bug about it (against the tracker.debian.org pseudo-package) so that we don’t forget about it. It should not be too difficult to add.

      • Rainer Dorsch says

        July 6, 2014 at 10:23 pm

        Thanks for the quick reply.

        Done:

        https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=753989

  4. iMedia Designs says

    July 7, 2014 at 7:43 am

    That’s cool thanks.

  5. andrew says

    July 18, 2014 at 4:31 pm

    Google does some financial sposoring, and useful things come from that as it seems.
    I don’t want to use any of their services in spite of it. If it was possible, I would opt out from Google-Groups and websearch with my e-mail-adresses, because I do not want to support their business-model with my data.
    It’s also a bit sad, that today one practically cannot do without any online tracking- oder adblocker.

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