[Debian-iot-maintainers] vcspd; Looking for sponsor

[Ake Hedman]

Hi Carsten,

and thanks for your response.

On 2019-12-28 08:08, Carsten Schoenert wrote:
> Hello Ake,
>
> Am 27.12.19 um 18:06 schrieb Ake Hedman:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am not sure this is the correct way to reach out but please tell me
>> the right way if it's not.
> the current IOT team within Debian isn't a big bunch of people (yet?),
> so far I know only Thorsten and myself are maintaining packages in that
> category. Using the mailing list to contact the people within that team
> is the best way. So you have done nothing wrong. :)

Good, the last thing I want is upset people by doing the wrong thing.

>
>> I want to pack the VSCP daemon (package: vscpd 947035)
>> (https://www.vscp.org) for Debian and look for a sponsor that can help
>> me make this in the correct way. 
> I haven't noticed this ITP in detail, but probably more due the current
> holidays and some other work I'm dealing with.
> Seems this framework is the right peace of software for getting
> maintained within the IOT team.
>
> Looking at the website for vscp I see multiple parts, one of them is the
> deamon vscpd you want to package. I guess you will do packaging of the
> other parts too we can build a own project group within the IOT name
> space later on Salsa. But let's start on the needed real work first, the
> Debian packaging itself.

Yes my plan is to pack the daemon in one package, a helper library in
another and a packages for each driver. There is a user space tool
(vscpworks) also. This part is being rewritten at the moment and is
marked deprecated but it is still useful and should probably be packed
also as it will take several month still to get a replacement ready.

>
> To do so I'd like to know how much knowledge do you have on building and
> maintaining Debian packages? Because the best in along term is you know
> the technologies and the reasoning behind the package build.
>
> Do know and have looked at https://mentors.debian.net/ especially the
> Q&A sub site?
>
> Do you have started any technical packaging work on vcspd?

I am a total novice building Debian packages. I have been a bit
overwhelmed by all the information and rules. It's a lot to digest if
you want to understand what you do and why you do it.

For the upcoming 14.0.0 release of VSCP (which is a major rewrite and
split into parts) I decided that Debian packaging is one of the main
goals and have created test packages and scripts to generate them on
different platforms with pbuilder. I have changed install structures to
fit the Debian policy for everything and tried to fulfill other
requirements as of the policy document. I am sure I still have got
things wrong but at least the generated packages  install and uninstall
as they should here locally.

For the daemon I have this left that lintian complains about

E: vscpd changes: bad-distribution-in-changes-file stable
E: vscpd source: source-is-missing
src/common/third_party/duktape-1.5.2/src-separate/duk_initjs_min.js
E: vscpd source: source-is-missing
src/common/third_party/duktape-1.8.0/src-separate/duk_initjs_min.js
W: vscpd source: orig-tarball-missing-upstream-signature
vscpd_14.0.0.orig.tar.gz
W: vscpd source: debian-watch-could-verify-download
debian/upstream/signing-key.asc
W: vscpd: new-package-should-close-itp-bug

and on other packages it's just the bad distribution and itp-bug close.
At this stage none of the above look to serious as far as I can see.

>> As I have been and still works with IoT I also very much like to be part
>> of the IoT team if possible,
> You are welcome!
>
Thanks for that and your kind response/help. Very much appreciated.
/Ake