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Latest features of dpkg-dev: debian packaging tools

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I’m attending the mini-Debconf Paris and I just gave a talk about the latest improvement of dpkg-dev—the package providing the basic tools used to build Debian packages. Latest is a bit stretched since it embraces the last 2-3 years of development.

My talk covered the following topics:

  • Support of symbols files by dpkg-shlibdeps, dpkg-gensymbols
  • Support of new source formats by dpkg-source
  • Supplementary options for dpkg-source
  • Cross distribution collaboration with dpkg-vendor
  • Custom compilation flags with dpkg-buildflags
  • Miscellaneous improvements to other tools

The slides are relatively verbose so that you can understand them even if you did not attend the talk. Click here to get the slides.

Related links

This section points to various articles that cover more extensively some of the features mentioned in my talk.

Concerning dpkg-source:

Concerning dpkg-maintscript-helper:

Concerning dpkg-vendor:

Nice OpenOffice.org template for Debian presentations

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OpenOffice.org Impress Template for Debian Presentations While preparing for the upcoming mini-debconf Paris, I noticed that we don’t have any good presentation template for OpenOffice.org Impress. I spent a few hours browsing Debian presentations put online by many speakers and was unable to find one that would suit me.

This situation was clearly unacceptable and I decided to spend a few hours to fix this. I selected a very nice wallpaper created by Alexis Younes, used The Gimp to add a translucent white box so that the text can still be read, and combined all this in a OpenOffice.org Impress template.

Click here to download the template. You can also get the Gimp XCF file for the background image.

By the way, the same wallpaper has been used by Sam Hocevar to create nice-looking Debian business cards.

PS: I contacted Alexis Younes by mail and he agreed to put the wallpapers under GPL-2+. It has been clarified on his webpage.

PPS: Given that the selected background image is inspired by Debian’s restricted use logo, this template should only be used by official Debian members.

What Debian & Ubuntu topics would you like to read about?

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A woman enjoying this blogAfter having looked back at the first months of this blog, I also want to look forward and see how I can improve its content. If you’re a Debian/Ubuntu user and/or contributor, I want this blog to be a truly useful resource for you. What kind of articles would you like me to write?

I have lots of ideas but I can’t do everything. I’ll share some of them so that you can discuss them:

  • New in Debian testing: a regular column covering changes affecting testing users.
  • Short presentations of software available in Debian/Ubuntu (like debaday.debian.net used to do).
  • Articles covering wishlist bugs on developers-reference so that they can be easily reused to improve the documentation!
  • Interviews of Debian contributors.
  • Description of small tasks that one can do to start contributing.

Pleases discuss and share your ideas in the comments. Don’t limit yourself to the above list, you know better than me what you need: tell me what kind of documentation was lacking in your daily usage of Debian/Ubuntu, or what could have been better explained while you tried to contribute to Debian/Ubuntu.

While I set no limits on Debian/Ubuntu topics that I accept to cover, my main focus is around documentation for end-users and/or contributors.

If you prefer you can also send your feedback with Identi.ca, Twitter or leave a comment in the entry for this article in my facebook page.

Secret figures of a Debian/Ubuntu blogger: what you liked most on raphaelhertzog.com

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Chart goes up on screenI launched raphaelhertzog.com this summer (taking over the English content of my former multi-lingual blog), when I decided that I would be more serious about blogging on Debian/Ubuntu related topics. On September, I decided to write 2 articles per week and up to now I managed to keep the schedule.

Two of my articles were published by Linux Weekly News, those are much more researched than the average blog article (they are tagged with [LWN] in the list below).

The most popular articles

Most people read my blog through the RSS feed which happens to be syndicated on Planet Debian and Planet Ubuntu. According to the feedburner’s statistics, the top-5 articles are:

  1. 5 reasons why I still contribute to Debian after 12 years (32700 views)
  2. [LWN] Understanding Membership Structures in Debian and Ubuntu (31700 views)
  3. Social Micropayment Can Foster Free Software, Discover Flattr (30100 views)
  4. Everything you need to know about conffiles: configuration files managed by dpkg (29900 views)
  5. How to make 110.28 EUR in one month with free software and Flattr (29400 views)

But I also have occasional readers visiting my blog because my articles are announced on Identi.ca, Twitter and Facebook (and they circulate on social networks, thanks to those who are sharing them!). The top-5 articles according to the statistics of my website are:

  1. 5 reasons why I still contribute to Debian after 12 years (6000 views)
  2. [LWN] Can Debian offer a Constantly Usable Testing distribution? (5000 views)
  3. Understanding Debian’s release process (1500 views)
  4. Flattr FOSS (1400 views, not an article but I regularly blog about this project)
  5. Can Debian achieve world domination without being on Facebook? (1100 views)

The most flattered

Since I am using Flattr on my blog, it can be interesting to see the articles which generated lots of flattr micro-donations. The top-3 articles are my articles about Flattr (1, 2, 3). Excluding articles related to Flattr, the top-5 is:

  1. 5 reasons why I still contribute to Debian after 12 years (12 flattr)
  2. The secret plan behind the “3.0 (quilt)” Debian source package format (10 flattr)
  3. How to use multiple upstream tarballs in Debian source packages? (5 flattr)
  4. [LWN] Understanding Membership Structures in Debian and Ubuntu (4 flattr)
  5. Do You Want a Free Debian Book? Read on. (4 flattr)

Most articles get 2 to 3 flattr clicks.

The most commented

I usually get 4-5 comments on most articles but some generate much more feedback:

  1. [LWN] Can Debian offer a Constantly Usable Testing distribution? (40 comments)
  2. 5 reasons why I still contribute to Debian after 12 years (22 comments)
  3. Can Debian achieve world domination without being on Facebook? (15 comments)
  4. How to generate different dependencies on Debian and Ubuntu with a common source package (14 comments)
  5. [LWN] Understanding Membership Structures in Debian and Ubuntu (12 comments)

Factoids

Here are my conclusions based on the above figures:

  • Writing about your Debian/Ubuntu work and your long term involvement makes for highly popular content that spreads well.
  • In-depth and well researched articles (like those written for LWN) do not generate more flattr revenues than the average article even if they take 4 to 8 times as long to write.
  • People are more likely to flattr you for your free software contribution than for the value they get out of your article.
  • People care a lot about the Debian release process, and like to discuss the topic.

If you also appreciate the above-linked articles, you should click here to subscribe to my email newsletter.

Tags

3.0 (quilt) Activity summary APT aptitude Blog Book Cleanup conffile Contributing CUT d-i Debconf Debian Debian France Debian Handbook Debian Live Distro Tracker dpkg dpkg-source Flattr Flattr FOSS Freexian Funding Git GNOME GSOC HOWTO Interview LTS Me Multiarch nautilus-dropbox News Packaging pkg-security Programming PTS publican python-django Reference release rolling synaptic Ubuntu WordPress

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