Projects – Page 2

My Debian related goals for 2011

January 26, 2011 by Raphaël Hertzog

Like last year, here’s a list of Debian related projects that I’d like to tackle this year. I might not do them all, but I like to write them down, I am more productive when I have concrete objectives.

Translate my Debian book into English.
I will run a fundraising campaign with Ulule.com and if enough people are interested, I will spend a few months with Roland Mas to translate the book. Hopefully this project can be completed until the summer.
Finish multiarch support in dpkg.
I’m working on this with Guillem Jover right now, thanks to Linaro who is sponsoring my work.
Make deb files use XZ compression by default.
It’s a simple change in dpkg-deb and it would literally save gigabytes of space on mirrors. It’s particularly important so that single CD/DVD can have a more complete set of software. #556407 (on DAK) needs to be fixed first though and a project-wide discussion is in order. Some archs might want to have a different default.
Be more reactive to review/merge dpkg patches.
While we welcome help, we have a backlog of patches sitting in the BTS and it happened several times that we failed to review/merge submitted branches in a decent time. It’s very frustrating for the contributor. I already tried to improve the situation by creating the Review/Merge Queue but nobody stepped up to help review and update the patches.
As I am getting more familiar with the C part of dpkg, I hope to be able to jump in when Guillem doesn’t have the time or the interest.
Implement the rolling distribution proposed as part of the CUT project and try to improve the release process.
I really want the new rolling distribution but it will inevitably have an impact on the release process. It can’t be done as a standalone project. I would also like to see progress in the way we deal with transitions (see discussion here).
Work more regularly on the developers-reference.
Hopefully I will be able to combine this with my blog writing activities, i.e. write blog articles on the topics that the developers-reference shall cover and then adapt my articles with some docbook markup.

To the above list, I shall add a few supplementary goals related to funding my Debian work:

Write a 10-lesson course called “Smart Package Management”.
It will delivered by email to my newsletter subscribers.
Create an information product (most likely an ebook or an online training) and sell it on my blog.
The precise topic has not yet been defined although I have a few ideas. Is there something that you would like me to teach you? Leave your suggestions in a comment.
By the end of the year, have at least 1/3 of my time funded by donations and/or earnings of my information products.
More concretely it means 700 € each month or a 9-fold increase compared to the current income level (around 80 €/month mostly via Flattr).

That makes up lots of challenges for this year. You can help me reach those goals, join my Debian Supporters Guild and you’ll be informed every time that I start something new or when you can help in specific ways.

Librement: a new way to help people who want to contribute to free software

December 3, 2010 by Raphaël Hertzog

Find your way in the free software world I have this project in my head, I want to work on it but I always lack the time. In order to go forward, I thought I could write about it, at least it would let me clarify my ideas and the core goals. So here I am, I will present you Librement (I have registered the alioth project but it’s empty).

The core goal is to make it easy for every user to contribute to free software in some way. I will now present the main features that I envision.

Defining skills and interests

In order to propose tasks that the user can do, we must have an idea of his skills. So on the first run (and later through a preferences menu) the user will be invited to define his skills:

his native languages (multiple allowed)
other languages he can understand
programming languages he knows
version control systems he can use
markup language he knows (HTML, DocBook, Wiki-like formats, etc.)
etc.

Maybe we can also ask which skills he would like to learn. Because contributing to free software is a nice opportunity to learn new skills!

We should also find out what the user is interested in. What are his favorite free software projects? What kind of contributions would he like to do (documentation, translation, coding, bug fixing, bug triaging, creating artwork, donations, etc.)?

Choose activities and pick concrete tasks

Based on the user’s skills and his interests, the software shows a list of possible activities. The user can then sort that list, from the most interesting one to those that he doesn’t want to do.

Each activity can generate concrete tasks. For example, the activity “Do translation for Debian” could generate a task “Translate strings in debconf/fr.po” or “Review translations in partman/fr.po”.

Work on tasks

When the user decides to work on a task, a step-by-step assistant helps him/her. It can automate some steps and provide explanations for the remaining ones, for example in the case of a translation for Debian:

grab the PO file (from a VCS, from an HTTP URL, from a translation server, etc.);
select and install a software to work with PO file (if not already done);
edit the PO file with the preferred program;
check the PO file (is it complete? is there no mistakes like missing substitutions?);
send back the completed PO file in a mail to the Debian bugtracking system.

If the tasks is not completed in one go, the user can resume it the next time.

Each free software project must provide some meta-information describing the various workflows involved for contributing to the different parts of the project. If necessary the project can also provide new plugins to support new operations that are not available in the default library.

Setting goals

In order to keep the user motivated, the software could track how much time he spent contributing to free software and it could verify if the user reached the goals he picked up for himself. Maybe it can also hook into the OMG Trophy Awarding System.

The sky is the limit

I hope that you now have a clearer idea of what this desktop application is supposed to be. There are literally hundreds of ways to contribute to free software and I like the idea that we can streamline the process for most users.

All the plugins implementing activities can use local information (list of packages installed with their versions, configuration settings, etc.) to propose tasks targetted to the user and highly beneficial for the corresponding free software projects. For example, a bug tagged unreproducible might benefit from a few more users trying to reproduce it. The software could direct the user to this bug report if it detects that he/she runs the same version on the same architecture and that this software is regularly run on the system.

Many projects have created “operations” or “events” to encourage people to contribute, they could all be implemented as dedicated activities in Librement. I’m thinking of stuff like Gnome Love, Ubuntu’s 5-a-day, Ubuntu’s 100 papercuts, etc.

Even for people who have no time to contribute, the application can still be useful by referencing the various ways to donate money (or material) to projects that they are using.

Feedback welcome

I’m excited by the potential of such an application, but it’s normal since it’s my idea. Do you believe it can be useful and popular? Do you have ideas of exciting activities that such a framework can offer?

PS: If you wonder how I came up with the name “Librement”, here’s the explanation. It’s a French word which means “freely”. And users who want to give back are trying to live up to the principles of free software, which I sum up by “they are trying to live freely”.

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Debian related goals for 2010

January 9, 2010 by Raphaël Hertzog

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!

Flights for Debconf

March 26, 2009 by Raphaël Hertzog

I have booked my flights for Debconf9 in July. I will arrive in Madrid on July 23th at 10:30 from Lyon Saint-Exupéry (LYS-MAD, flight AF5891) and I will leave on July 31th at 17:40 (MAD-LYS, flight AF5892). I plan to use the train to go to Cáceres but it’s too early to buy tickets on renfe.es. I also have no idea how far the train station is (from the airport) but it looks like I will have several hours transit time anyway. There aren’t so many trains for Cáceres. The train tickets will likely cost around 30 EUR each.

I’m glad that I can attend again this year. I’m sure it will be very productive. At least concerning dpkg it will be good to meet Guillem Jover IRL.