[Pkg-electronics-devel] Request to join the Debian Electronics group - Jaminy Prabaharan

[Carsten Schoenert]

Am 16.08.18 um 09:10 schrieb Andreas Tille:
> May be you check with the contributors (in CC) what help might be needed
> but as far as I can see that's a complex package and not really a target
> for a one month packaging lesson.
> 
> KiCAD is packaged as well:

I hope so. ;)

...
> It is also registered in Debian Electronics tasks[4].  In contrast to
> arduino it seems to be up to date with upstream and Vcs fields are
> pointing corretly to Salsa.  It seems here is not much work to do left.

Yes, currently KiCad is gladly in a recent state, there is an issue on
i386 architecture which is known and also a fix available. I will
prepare a new upload with this fix soon. But KiCad is also a package
with some things to care on and a new version or upload takes mostly a
day to prepare.

There is always something to improve but this requires some deeper
knowledge about the packages software and the possible tools inside the
Debian universe. So obviously nothing for a beginner.

For KiCad I can always point to the localization of the documentation
and UI itself. There is mostly every time something to do were
contributors can help.

https://github.com/KiCad/kicad-doc
https://github.com/KiCad/kicad-i18n
https://lists.launchpad.net/kicad-doc-devs/
https://launchpad.net/~kicad-doc-devs

The package eeshow has been orphaned while DebConf, it's a quite easy
package with no big upstream activity (it's doing what it should do). If
you like you can adopt this package. It just needs some small
adjustments, like updating the Maintainer, Uploader and
Standards-Version field. I can sponsor a upload later if wanted.

https://bugs.debian.org/905828

> So may be either you think you are fit to do some relevant contribution
> to get the latest version of arduino packaged or you possibly find some
> more simple package (any hints from readers on this mailing list) which
> is a good candidate for learning to package.

That's what I wanted to address in my first email in this thread, it's
not really needed for a complete beginner to have directly access to the
Salsa group to contribute something, there is always the possibility of
communicate directly to the actual maintainers in case of questions or
suggestions. Also this list here is also a good place for questions
within a broader audience and last but not least Salsa provides the
possibility to create a merge request against some package.

But the most important part is to be responsive and to be a quite
communicative person so a trust relationship can evolving. Becoming a
skilled Debian Package Maintainer is a ongoing process and will not just
simply happen. It will take it's time to get most of the things done
"right". The learning curve is sometimes really straight.

-- 
Regards
Carsten Schoenert