[Soc-coordination] GSOC idea for next year: undusting some packages

[Michael Vogt]

On Wed, Oct 01, 2008 at 12:05:10PM -0700, Cameron Dale wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 8:23 AM, Michael Vogt <mvo at debian.org> wrote:
> > I think the reason is that apt is "good enough". It works most of the
> > time for most people. Anohter problem might be because people just
> > assume that because it is a key package it is certainly well
> > maintained and has a good code base (that was my assumption at least a
> > long time back :). And a third problem could be that its such a core
> > package that it might be a bit scary for some contributors.
> 
> My schedule has recently opened up and so I have time to contribute
> and would like to help, but just finding the documentation of how to
> do so with APT is quite difficult. Perhaps a Teams page on the wiki
> similar to http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Dpkg would help?

That is a good idea. I created a (initial) page on
http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Apt - everyone is welcome to add to it :)

> In particular, the VCS usage should be described or formalized
> better (as I have heard that the link on packages.qa.d.o is not
> where development actually occurs), and the link/differences between
> the ubuntu and debian development is not clear to me.

I added instructions on how to use the VCS there as well, its a bit
short, but hopefully good enough to get started. 

The difference between the ubuntu and debian development is basicly
the different release schedules. I merge stuff into my personal
development tree, stuff gets merged into the debian-sid tree, stuff
gets merged into the ubuntu tree. Because the ABI is so fragile,
certain stuff is kept out longer in one tree than the other, but both
branches are closely releated. 

Cheers,
 Michael