Update for Debian 6.0: 6.0.7 released

The seventh update for Debian 6.0 (codenamed Squeeze) has been released. This update mainly adds corrections of security problems to the stable release, along with some adjustments for serious problems.

Call for projects and mentors for Debian GSoC 2013

Paul Tagliamonte, newly appointed administrator for Debian participation in the Google Summer of Code program 2013, asked all Debian contributors for projects and mentors to help Debian participate in the initiative this year. Everyone (member of the Debian project or not, student or not) is welcome to submit their ideas, and to try and find people willing to mentor the projects, explained Paul in his mail. Information on how to submit proposals is available in the relevant wiki page. You can also contact Paul and the other GSoC administrators for Debian on their mailing list or on their IRC channel, #debian-soc on irc.debian.org.

Wheezy release progress

Niels Thykier, release team member, noticed that the current pace of RC bug fixes is slowing down, with only 1.1 RC bugs fixed a day since his last report. About 200 RC bugs are left to be fixed, and if the pace of RC bug fixes does not pick up, the release team may need to remove packages along with their reverse dependencies.

Debian at Open Source Conference 2013 Tokyo/Spring

Hideki Yamane reported about Debian participation at Open Source Conference 2013 Tokyo/Spring at Meisei University, in Tokyo, Japan. Debian was present with a booth where Hideki and other contributors talked with users and enthusiasts. Takahide Nojima delivered a talk titled Debian Update focused on the latest Debian achievements.

arm64 image available

Wookey announced the availability of the arm64 image. This is the culmination of a three year long effort to make Debian bootstrappable, which has been used for the first time on the port to the 64-bit ARMv8 architecture. Whilst it should be considered alpha-grade for now, it represents a great achievement: all these packages were cross-built on raring, untangling cyclic dependencies with build profiles making this the first (non x86) self-bootstrapped Debian port ever, explained Wookey. Getting this port working has been interesting because it's attempting four new things all at once: multiarch (file layouts and dependencies), crossbuilding (tools and packaging support in a distro that historically was always natively built), arm64 (aarch64) support in packages that need it, and build-profiles to linearise the build-order, he added. The current status of the bootstrap is online, whilst more information on the port (and how to build images) is available on the wiki page of the project.

Other news

Paul Wise blogged about a QA tool for finding packages' inadequacies (broken symlinks, missing copyright files, obsolete conffiles, etc.) called adequate and developed by Jakub Wilk. People interested in software quality are invited to participate in Debian's QA initiatives.

Kurt Roeckx, Debian Project Secretary, announced the timetable for the DPL election.

Hideki Yamane blogged about the series of articles about Debian he is writing for the Japanese magazine Software Design.

Olivier Sallou sent a report from the Debian Med sprint held during the last weekend of February in Schönberg, Germany. The team worked mainly on packaging new software as well as updating existing packages.

Upcoming events

There is one upcoming Debian-related event:

New Debian Contributors Release-Critical bugs statistics for the upcoming release Important Debian Security Advisories New and noteworthy packages ePub book format validator dynamically managed firewall with support for network zones tintin++ style text-based MUD client video game with mice in a maze graphical experiment builder for the social sciences tool to display regulator, sensor and clock information Python implementation of the Thermodynamic Equation of Seawater Work-needing packages Want to continue reading DPN?