date:20120726

On Thu, 2012-07-26 at 07:47 +0200, Jean-Christophe Dubacq wrote:
> On 26/07/2012 02:39, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> > On 2012-07-25 21:28:16 +0100, Neil Williams wrote:
> >> On Wed, 25 Jul 2012 21:58:20 +0200
> >> Svante Signell  wrote:
> >>
> >>> Is emacs24 going to be the default package for Wheezy? 
...
> And AucTeX does not work with emacs24. Even following some indications
> in the bug reports I didn't succeed in having it work, so I uninstalled it.

This might be caused by the build-dependency of auctex on emacs23. Have
you tried with an auctex package built with emacs24? (just build from
source and change the debian/control file from emacs23 to emacs24)


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Re: emacs23 and/or emacs24 in Wheezy?

On Thu, 2012-07-26 at 02:39 +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> On 2012-07-25 21:28:16 +0100, Neil Williams wrote:
> > On Wed, 25 Jul 2012 21:58:20 +0200
> > Svante Signell  wrote:
> > 
> > > Is emacs24 going to be the default package for Wheezy? 
...
> > emacs24 wouldn't seem to meet any of the criteria for a freeze
> > exception and emacs23 currently doesn't have any RC issues in Wheezy,
> > so there would be no particular reason to do anything with emacs24.
> 
> emacs23 doesn't have RC issues, but bug 608417 is close to one. This
> bug is worse that I expected in the first place. I got corrupted files
> several times without noticing the problem because of this bug. And
> it is fixed in emacs24.

I've seen this problem several times too, but did not know there was a
bug report and an upstream solution already. Does an upstream/backport
patch for emacs23 exist? in case not the severity of that bug should be
much higher than normal as it is now! I have had several files corrupted
due to this bug (fortunately being able to recover them).



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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

On Wed, 2012-07-25 at 15:13 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Svante Signell  writes:
> 
> > I think this issue is very relevant to Wheezy. Why are there so many
> > outdated packages going into this release? The whole idea of unstable is
> > (to my understanding) to package the latest upstream releases, and get
> > the bugs squeezed out, right? And when the freeze happens, the latest
> > stable software is available to the next Debian release.
> 
> Yes.  And therefore you have just answered your own question.
> 
> Older software goes into the wheezy release because, at the time of the
> freeze, just as you said above, one of the following was true:
> 
> 1. The new release was not packaged for unstable.
> 2. The bugs weren't squeezed out in unstable before the freeze.
> 
> It's not particularly complicated, although of course fixing any one
> particular case where we want newer software can be quite complicated
> (because 1 and 2 both have to happen before the freeze).

Well there is experimental that could be used to package pre-releases
and new releases to make them suitable for unstable and testing _before_
the freeze! 

Add to that unresponsive package maintainers, refusing to package new
versions of upstream software, even with wishlist bugs filed. Take a
look at the age of some of these bug, both in time and release numbers. 
There are people willing to package new releases, but they are blocked
by the current package maintainer. That problem is maybe more related to
the d-d thread entitled: "Hijacking packages for fun and profit" BoF at
DebConf

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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

2012-07-26 Thread Lars Wirzenius

On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 11:02:10AM +0200, Svante Signell wrote:
> Well there is experimental that could be used to package pre-releases
> and new releases to make them suitable for unstable and testing _before_
> the freeze! 
> 
> Add to that unresponsive package maintainers, refusing to package new
> versions of upstream software, even with wishlist bugs filed. Take a
> look at the age of some of these bug, both in time and release numbers. 
> There are people willing to package new releases, but they are blocked
> by the current package maintainer. That problem is maybe more related to
> the d-d thread entitled: "Hijacking packages for fun and profit" BoF at
> DebConf

There are a ton of reasons why Debian may have an older version of
an upstream release. For example, and I hasten to point out that
the following list is by no means exhaustive, and not all of the
possibilities are common:

* The Debian package maintainer is dead, but nobody noticed it yet, and
  nobody has wanted an update badly enough to do an NMU or to adopt the
  package.
* The upstream release is actually a fake. It's a trojan, which was
  put there by the NSA in order to infiltrate the CIA mainframe. The
  Debian package maintainer noticed this and uploaded that version of
  the package to non-free instead of main, since the trojan code does
  not come with proper source.
* Upstream has moved the RSS feed for new releases without notifying
  the old feed of the move, so the Debian package maintainer missed that,
  and doesn't actually know about the new release. Due to a complicated
  series of happenstance involving rainbows, midget unicorns, and the
  ongoing rewrite of the Netsurf web browser, the Debian package maintainer
  is not able to find the new feed because it would require doing a
  web search and their browser doesn't have working form support now.
  No other browser is available on the Amiga they're using as their only
  computer, either.
* The new release is requested by insistent Hurd porters, and the Debian
  package maintainer absolutely loathes the Hurd, and will refuse to
  upload any packages that work on the Hurd.
* The Debian package maintainer suffers from mental problems cause by
  reading debian-devel too much, and now has a nervous breakdown every
  time they recognize a name as someone whom they've seen on the list.
* The Debian development process is being sabotaged by Microsoft sending
  people to the developers' houses pretending to be TV license checkers
  or Jehova's witnesses every time they detect, using the hardware 
  wireless keylogger embeddded in every PC, that the developer is trying
  to run any Debian packaging command.
* Apple is also sabotaging Debian by paying me to write snarky e-mails on
  Debian mailing lists to distract everyone from working on the actual
  release, so that we can get past the freeze and start uploading things
  again without having to worry that it breaks things in ways that 
  makes the freeze longer.

-- 
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Re: Bug#682804: ITP: libtenum -- C++ metaprogramming library to make enums a little bit nicer

2012-07-26 Thread Salvo Tomaselli



>   Description : C++ metaprogramming library to make enums a little bit
> nicer
if you could make that description more meaningful, _that_ would be very nice

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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

2012-07-26 Thread Samuel Thibault

Hello,

Lars Wirzenius, le Thu 26 Jul 2012 10:31:24 +0100, a écrit :
> * The new release is requested by insistent Hurd porters,

I would just like to confirm that the Hurd porter team does *not*
back Svante's request for new releases.  Even though we have already
explained him several times why in general new versions are not well
tested, etc. he seems to continue asking for them.

Please consider that he is speaking on his own, do not take him as "the
Hurd porters".  The Hurd porter team wants to avoid anything that would
delay the release.

> and the Debian
>   package maintainer absolutely loathes the Hurd, and will refuse to
>   upload any packages that work on the Hurd.

Samuel


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Re: glibc very old

2012-07-26 Thread Vincent Lefevre

On 2012-07-26 13:33:46 +0900, Miles Bader wrote:
> Vincent Lefevre  writes:
> > I think that there could be an optimization like that in
> > fesetround() too.
> 
> Do you think it's worth proposing this to the glibc people?

Yes, since this makes the code much faster on some processors,
I think it is. Then they'll have to decide what to do depending
on the processor (in particular on non-x86).

I've attached a new test program. It is also available here:

  http://www.vinc17.net/software/rndmode.c

It shows that this change would be useful on all the processors
I've tested: AMD Opteron, Intel Xeon, Intel Core2, POWER7. It
would be particularly important on Intel Core2 and, in a less
extent, AMD Opteron.

Summary of the results:

AMD Opteron 4.62s8.92s   4.72s
Intel Xeon X56503.22s4.69s   3.51s
Intel Xeon E55203.37s5.20s   3.66s
Intel Core2 Duo P8600   3.35s   11.77s   3.70s
POWER7  7.29s   11.16s   7.86s

1st timing: no calls to fegetround/fesetround.
2nd timing: fegetround/fesetround/fesetround to set and restore the RM.
3rd timing: fegetround with tests before fesetround, so that fesetround
doesn't need to be called.

This shows that the rounding mode test could be done in fesetround.
When the rounding mode really changes, this would just be a little
slower.

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre  - Web: 
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: 
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)
/* $Id: rndmode.c 53564 2012-07-26 11:10:38Z vinc17/ypig $

Compare the timings with OPT = 0, 1 and 2 to measure the
fegetround/fesetround performance when the rounding mode
doesn't change. See thread:
  http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/07/msg00466.html
and in particular:
  http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2012/07/msg00747.html

Possible test:

for opt in 0 1 2
do
  gcc -O2 rndmode.c -o rndmode -lm -DOPT=$opt
  echo "OPT=$opt"
  for i in 0 1 2; do time ./rndmode; done
done

On a Debian/squeeze x86_64 Quad-Core AMD Opteron 8378 @ 2.40GHz machine
with libc6 2.11.3-3 and GCC 4.4.5: 4.62s / 8.92s / 4.72s

On a Debian/squeeze x86_64 Intel Xeon X5650 @ 2.67GHz machine
with libc6 2.11.3-3 and GCC 4.4.5: 3.22s / 4.69s / 3.51s

On a Debian/unstable x86_64 Intel Xeon E5520 @ 2.27GHz machine
with libc6 2.13-35 and GCC 4.7.1: 3.37s / 5.20s / 3.66s

On a Debian/unstable x86_64 Intel Core2 Duo P8600 @ 2.40GHz machine
with libc6 2.13-35 and GCC 4.7.1: 3.35s / 11.77s / 3.70s

On a Red Hat Fedora release 16 (Verne) POWER7 @ 3.55GHz machine
with glibc 2.14.90-24 and GCC 4.6.3: 7.29s / 11.16s / 7.86s
*/

#include 
#include 
#include 
#pragma STDC FENV_ACCESS ON

#ifndef N
#define N 1
#endif

int main (void)
{
  volatile double x = 1.0, y = 0.0;
  int i;

  for (i = 0; i < N; i++)
{
#if OPT
  int r = fegetround();
#if OPT > 1
  if (r != FE_TONEAREST)
#endif
fesetround (FE_TONEAREST);
#endif
  y += exp(x);
#if OPT
#if OPT > 1
  if (r != FE_TONEAREST)
#endif
fesetround (r);
#endif
}
  return y == 0.0;
}

Re: [CTTE #614907] Resolution of node/nodejs conflict

2012-07-26 Thread Martin Bagge / brother

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA256

On 2012-07-26 02:19, Filipus Klutiero wrote:
> The above is incorrect. The keyring only contains Debian developers
> which are packagers or members. Note that we have terminological
> issues on this front (the constitution equates "Debian Developer"
> with member of Debian).

You could elaborate on this.

debian-keyring.gpg -> DDs
debian-nonupload.gpg -> DDs

There are cases (unlikely but still) where a DD hasn't uploaded a
package in a long time and is not in the first keyring. You claim you
are part of that batch?

http://anonscm.debian.org/loggerhead/keyring/debian-keyring/annotate/head:/README#L141
(but that file does not mention the new keyring for us without upload
rights. I guess it will be updated to reflect that soon.)

- -- 
brother
http://sis.bthstudent.se
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Re: emacs23 and/or emacs24 in Wheezy?

2012-07-26 Thread Vincent Lefevre

On 2012-07-26 10:50:52 +0200, Svante Signell wrote:
> On Thu, 2012-07-26 at 02:39 +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> > emacs23 doesn't have RC issues, but bug 608417 is close to one. This
> > bug is worse that I expected in the first place. I got corrupted files
> > several times without noticing the problem because of this bug. And
> > it is fixed in emacs24.
> 
> I've seen this problem several times too, but did not know there was a
> bug report and an upstream solution already. Does an upstream/backport
> patch for emacs23 exist? in case not the severity of that bug should be
> much higher than normal as it is now! I have had several files corrupted
> due to this bug (fortunately being able to recover them).

I don't know whether there is a patch for emacs23. If I understand
correctly, the change is quite large, but I'm not sure.

-- 
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100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: 
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)


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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

On Thu, 2012-07-26 at 10:31 +0100, Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 11:02:10AM +0200, Svante Signell wrote:
> > Well there is experimental that could be used to package pre-releases
> > and new releases to make them suitable for unstable and testing _before_
> > the freeze! 
> > 
> > Add to that unresponsive package maintainers, refusing to package new
> > versions of upstream software, even with wishlist bugs filed. Take a
> > look at the age of some of these bug, both in time and release numbers. 
> > There are people willing to package new releases, but they are blocked
> > by the current package maintainer. That problem is maybe more related to
> > the d-d thread entitled: "Hijacking packages for fun and profit" BoF at
> > DebConf
> 
> There are a ton of reasons why Debian may have an older version of
> an upstream release. For example, and I hasten to point out that
> the following list is by no means exhaustive, and not all of the
> possibilities are common:

Very informative reply, thank you very much!


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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

2012-07-26 Thread Lars Wirzenius

On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 08:28:34PM +0900, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> Please consider that he is speaking on his own, do not take him as "the
> Hurd porters".  The Hurd porter team wants to avoid anything that would
> delay the release.

I apologize for implying that the Hurd porter team would do that. It
was not my intention to do that, and I should have worded it differently.

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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

2012-07-26 Thread Samuel Thibault

Lars Wirzenius, le Thu 26 Jul 2012 13:46:40 +0100, a écrit :
> On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 08:28:34PM +0900, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> > Please consider that he is speaking on his own, do not take him as "the
> > Hurd porters".  The Hurd porter team wants to avoid anything that would
> > delay the release.
> 
> I apologize for implying that the Hurd porter team would do that. It
> was not my intention to do that, and I should have worded it differently.

Ok, good, thanks :)

Samuel


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Re: Modified http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDeveloper to mention non-packagers (Re: [CTTE #614907] Resolution of node/nodejs conflict)

2012-07-26 Thread Ian Jackson

Jon Dowland writes ("Re: Modified http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDeveloper to 
mention non-packagers (Re: [CTTE #614907] Resolution of node/nodejs conflict)"):
> On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 12:15:15AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > We are in the process of discussing a variety of constitutional amendments
> > to be raised by the tech-ctte that will hopefully end up creating a sort
> > of bundle of constitutional fixes to vote on.  Perhaps it would be good to
> > include in that a terminology standardization on member for the places in
> > the constitution that we refer to voting project members rather than
> > specifically people who upload software.
> 
> Yes please!

I am not in favour of this change.  The point about a Debian Developer
is that the basis of their claim to the rights and responsibilities
enumerated in the constitution, is that they help develop Debian.

I don't think the word "Developer" implies that one can't develop
Debian in other ways than by directly editing software.

The word "member" is very weak and suggests that anyone might simply
choose to join and become a member.

Ian.

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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

On Thu, 2012-07-26 at 10:31 +0100, Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 11:02:10AM +0200, Svante Signell wrote:
> > Well there is experimental that could be used to package pre-releases
> > and new releases to make them suitable for unstable and testing _before_
> > the freeze! 
...
> * The new release is requested by insistent Hurd porters, 

I can give a few examples of outdated packages having non-responsive
maintainers, wine is one of them. See the wishlist bugs! Finally a set
of NMUs solved that problem. And that package is not at all related to
Hurd. Wine does not even build there yet. Don't confuse my contributions
to the Hurd with my opinions on the Weezy release, please.

> > and the Debian
> >   package maintainer absolutely loathes the Hurd, and will refuse to
> >   upload any packages that work on the Hurd.
> > 

Things like that happens too, but is not related to the Wheezy release,
Hurd is not a release architecture, didn't you know that?

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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

On Thu, 2012-07-26 at 20:28 +0900, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Lars Wirzenius, le Thu 26 Jul 2012 10:31:24 +0100, a écrit :
> > * The new release is requested by insistent Hurd porters,
...
> I would just like to confirm that the Hurd porter team does *not*
> back Svante's request for new releases.  Even though we have already
> explained him several times why in general new versions are not well
> tested, etc. he seems to continue asking for them.

Again, this is not Hurd related, it is related to the subject: Outdated
packages in the next Debian release!

> Please consider that he is speaking on his own, do not take him as "the
> Hurd porters".  The Hurd porter team wants to avoid anything that would
> delay the release.

Of course I'm not talking about the Hurd here. And it is my personal
opinion, not related to the Hurd porter team, got it?


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Re: Modified http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDeveloper to mention non-packagers (Re: [CTTE #614907] Resolution of node/nodejs conflict)

2012-07-26 Thread Jon Dowland

On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 01:55:06PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Jon Dowland writes ("Re: Modified http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDeveloper to 
> mention non-packagers (Re: [CTTE #614907] Resolution of node/nodejs 
> conflict)"):
> > On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 12:15:15AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > > We are in the process of discussing a variety of constitutional amendments
> > > to be raised by the tech-ctte that will hopefully end up creating a sort
> > > of bundle of constitutional fixes to vote on.  Perhaps it would be good to
> > > include in that a terminology standardization on member for the places in
> > > the constitution that we refer to voting project members rather than
> > > specifically people who upload software.
> > 
> > Yes please!
> 
> I am not in favour of this change.  The point about a Debian Developer
> is that the basis of their claim to the rights and responsibilities
> enumerated in the constitution, is that they help develop Debian.
> 
> I don't think the word "Developer" implies that one can't develop
> Debian in other ways than by directly editing software.

The problem to solve is not that "Developer" implies a *limitation* of
responsibity for Developers; it's that non-packaging contributions are
not considered to carry the same value or esteem as traditional packaging.

I agree that 'developer' is a fine word to describe a valued contributor
to the project and does not — on its own — suggest packaging software,
but sadly the historical context does.

I'm not overly interested in the word developer being eradicated, but at
the very least having some consistency in Debian's documents would be
very welcome. ('New Maintainer' → route to 'Developer' vs. 'Debian
Maintainer' is another area of confusion).  Perhaps an entirely new set
of nouns should be chosen, free of historical baggage?

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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

2012-07-26 Thread Jon Dowland

On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 12:20:23AM +0300, Timo Juhani Lindfors wrote:
> Svante Signell  writes:
> > NMUs should be made/allowed/encouraged? I know all packaging is made by
> > volunteers at their spare time, but anyway. Debian is one of the best
> > distributions, what about raising the bar a little higher?
> 
> The only way you can really improve the situation is to help with the
> packages.

I disagree.

Fundamentally the problem is lack of manpower. There are not enough
incoming people interested in addressing the problem (like Svante)
to make an appreciable difference if they dedicate their time soley
to packaging.

There is work to be done to make Debian attract more contributors.

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Re: Modified http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDeveloper to mention non-packagers (Re: [CTTE #614907] Resolution of node/nodejs conflict)

2012-07-26 Thread Andrey Rahmatullin

On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 01:55:06PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > > We are in the process of discussing a variety of constitutional amendments
> > > to be raised by the tech-ctte that will hopefully end up creating a sort
> > > of bundle of constitutional fixes to vote on.  Perhaps it would be good to
> > > include in that a terminology standardization on member for the places in
> > > the constitution that we refer to voting project members rather than
> > > specifically people who upload software.
> > Yes please!
> I am not in favour of this change.  The point about a Debian Developer
> is that the basis of their claim to the rights and responsibilities
> enumerated in the constitution, is that they help develop Debian.
Not only Debian Developers help develop Debian.

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Re: Modified http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDeveloper to mention non-packagers (Re: [CTTE #614907] Resolution of node/nodejs conflict)

2012-07-26 Thread Ian Jackson

Jon Dowland writes ("Re: Modified http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDeveloper to 
mention non-packagers (Re: [CTTE #614907] Resolution of node/nodejs conflict)"):
> I'm not overly interested in the word developer being eradicated, but at
> the very least having some consistency in Debian's documents would be
> very welcome. ('New Maintainer' → route to 'Developer' vs. 'Debian
> Maintainer' is another area of confusion).  Perhaps an entirely new set
> of nouns should be chosen, free of historical baggage?

Heh, like that's going to work in Debian.  What we could do though is
try harder to use the nouns we do have more consistently.

I think we have these:

 Developer, DD
  As per the constitution; includes non-uploading DDs.
  New Maintainer needs to be renamed to New Developer.

 [Non-]Uploading Developer
  To distinguish where necessary, but usually we can use
  Sponsor instead.

 Sponsor
  An uploading DD signing off on another package.

 Maintainer, package maintainer,  maintainer
  Someone in the Maintainer or Uploaders field.
  Uploaders needs to be abolished in favour of multiple
  Maintainers.  In wheezy perhaps ?

 DM, Debian Maintainer
  Someone in the DM keyring.  This may need renaming.
  In the meantime we need to never write "Debian maintainer"
  to mean "maintainer of a Debian package".

 User
  Might be a DD or DM or Maintainer too of course.

 Submitter
  Someone who filed a bug.  Might be zero or more of the above.

We also need a general word for "someone involved with Debian in a
positive way".  "Participant" is clumsy; "member of the community"
even more so.  "Person" might do but word with a more positive spin
would be nice.

Ian.


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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

2012-07-26 Thread Timo Juhani Lindfors

Jon Dowland  writes:
> I disagree.

Maybe my statement was overly general indeed. I certainly agree with

> There is work to be done to make Debian attract more contributors.


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Re: Modified http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDeveloper to mention non-packagers (Re: [CTTE #614907] Resolution of node/nodejs conflict)

2012-07-26 Thread Ian Jackson

Andrey Rahmatullin writes ("Re: Modified http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDeveloper 
to mention non-packagers (Re: [CTTE #614907] Resolution of node/nodejs 
conflict)"):
> On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 01:55:06PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > I am not in favour of this change.  The point about a Debian Developer
> > is that the basis of their claim to the rights and responsibilities
> > enumerated in the constitution, is that they help develop Debian.
>
> Not only Debian Developers help develop Debian.

This is true.  But it is Debian Developers whose contributions have
been formally recognised by the project.  We could come up with a
longer name like "Governing Developer" or something but it would be
clumsy.

Ian.


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Re: Modified http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDeveloper to mention non-packagers (Re: [CTTE #614907] Resolution of node/nodejs conflict)

2012-07-26 Thread The Fungi

On 2012-07-26 14:29:14 +0100 (+0100), Ian Jackson wrote:
[...]
> We also need a general word for "someone involved with Debian in a
> positive way". "Participant" is clumsy; "member of the community"
> even more so. "Person" might do but word with a more positive spin
> would be nice.

As a long-time participant and non-DD, I've always liked the term
"contributor" in that context.
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Re: Modified http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDeveloper to mention non-packagers (Re: [CTTE #614907] Resolution of node/nodejs conflict)

2012-07-26 Thread Michael Shuler

On 07/26/2012 08:37 AM, The Fungi wrote:
> On 2012-07-26 14:29:14 +0100 (+0100), Ian Jackson wrote:
> [...]
>> We also need a general word for "someone involved with Debian in a
>> positive way". "Participant" is clumsy; "member of the community"
>> even more so. "Person" might do but word with a more positive spin
>> would be nice.
> 
> As a long-time participant and non-DD, I've always liked the term
> "contributor" in that context.

Although it is likely to not stay this way forever, this is exactly how
I describe my participation - Debian Contributor

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Re: Bug#682804: ITP: libtenum -- C++ metaprogramming library to make enums a little bit nicer

2012-07-26 Thread Beren Minor

This is a header only library to wrap C++ enums and automatically
provide some functionality for (de)serialization from text streams. It
also provides some different semantics on the way enumerations can be
combined.
I can give more detail as I'm the author of the library, but I'm not
sure how to summarize this in one line for the bug title.

The most obvious use-case for it is to read and write key combination
to key mapping files. For example "Alt+S" could automatically be
parsed using the "Bit field" concept as the bitwise or combination of
enum values "Alt" and "S".
Some test cases and samples are also available in the source code:
https://github.com/berenm/libtenum/tree/master/test.

Here is an excerpt of the README:

This library introduces three new variation over the enum concept. The
main difference between them is the way these enums are (de)serialized
and the available enum / enum and enum / integer operators when this
is meaningful (only when using C++0x).

- Static enums only allow explicitely defined constants (with
specified or implicit integer values), any other value will result in
a (de)serialization to special value "unknown".

- Dynamic enums allow explicitely defined constants and offsets from
these constants, within a given global range (from the first constant
to the specified upper integer limit).
Every value whithin the range will be serializable, any other will
result in "unknown". An integer value between two enum constants will
be (de)serialized as the nearest lower enum constant plus an offset.
For example, if the enum is defined as { value1 = 1, value2 = 5...,
unknown = 10 }, the available range would be from 1 to 9, and the
integer 4 will be serialized as "value1#3" which means (value1 + 3).

- Bit fields only allow combination of explicitely defined constants.
These will be (de)serialized as a combination of every defined enum
constants, any other value will be (de)serialized as "unknown". This
flavor restricts constants values to bitwise distinct integers, and to
values different from 0 in order to be able to decompose the enum into
the specified enum constants. 0 being the special "unknown" value for
this flavor.
For example, for an enum defined as { bit1 = 0b001, bit2 = 0b010,
bit3 = 0b100... }, an instance of this enum with an integer value of 3
will be serialized as "bit1+bit2", and "bit1+bit3" will be
deserialized as an enum instance of integer value 5.

I also did a package on mentors.debian.net if anybody is interested in
sponsoring it : http://mentors.debian.net/package/libtenum.

Best,
--
Beren Minor

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Re: Bug#681418: debugfs is a big security hole

2012-07-26 Thread Ben Hutchings

On Fri, 2012-07-13 at 04:37 +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote:
[...]
> I would like to address this by backporting this feature:
> 
> commit d6e486868cde585842d55ba3b6ec57af090fc343
> Author: Ludwig Nussel 
> Date:   Wed Jan 25 11:52:28 2012 +0100
> 
> debugfs: add mode, uid and gid options
> 
> and then changing the default mode (mask) to be 0700.  This should
> leave debugfs functional (most such applications will require root
> anyway) and allow users to relax permissions if they really don't
> care about the security problems.

This change is pending in linux and should be included in version
3.2.24-1.

> However, currently there is not a single place for the user options.
> I think that either (1) debugfs should be mounted by default in a
> similar way to other pseudo-filesystems, or (2) debugfs should have a
> noauto entry in /etc/fstab where users can set options, and packages
> may use 'mount /sys/kernel/debug' to mount debugfs with those options
> (not 'mount -t debugfs debugfs /sys/kernel/debug', as now).

This is still to be decided.

Ben.

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Humans are not rational beings; they are rationalising beings.


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Re: Modified http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDeveloper to mention non-packagers (Re: [CTTE #614907] Resolution of node/nodejs conflict)

2012-07-26 Thread Holger Levsen

Hi,

On Donnerstag, 26. Juli 2012, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Heh, like that's going to work in Debian.  What we could do though is
> try harder to use the nouns we do have more consistently.

Heh, like that's going to work in Debian.

;-)


Actually I do think introducing new _and better/good_ terms works, "salvaging 
a package" IMHO is an example for that.


cheers,
Holger


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Re: Modified http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDeveloper to mention non-packagers (Re: [CTTE #614907] Resolution of node/nodejs conflict)

2012-07-26 Thread Luk Claes

On 07/26/2012 03:29 PM, Ian Jackson wrote:
>  Developer, DD
>   As per the constitution; includes non-uploading DDs.
>   New Maintainer needs to be renamed to New Developer.
> 
>  [Non-]Uploading Developer
>   To distinguish where necessary, but usually we can use
>   Sponsor instead.
> 
>  Sponsor
>   An uploading DD signing off on another package.
> 
>  Maintainer, package maintainer,  maintainer
>   Someone in the Maintainer or Uploaders field.
>   Uploaders needs to be abolished in favour of multiple
>   Maintainers.  In wheezy perhaps ?
> 
>  DM, Debian Maintainer
>   Someone in the DM keyring.  This may need renaming.
>   In the meantime we need to never write "Debian maintainer"
>   to mean "maintainer of a Debian package".
> 
>  User
>   Might be a DD or DM or Maintainer too of course.
> 
>  Submitter
>   Someone who filed a bug.  Might be zero or more of the above.
> 
> We also need a general word for "someone involved with Debian in a
> positive way".  "Participant" is clumsy; "member of the community"
> even more so.  "Person" might do but word with a more positive spin
> would be nice.

Contributor?

Cheers

Luk


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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

Svante Signell  writes:

> Well there is experimental that could be used to package pre-releases
> and new releases to make them suitable for unstable and testing _before_
> the freeze!

Sure.  But that doesn't magically happen; someone has to actually do it.

> Add to that unresponsive package maintainers, refusing to package new
> versions of upstream software, even with wishlist bugs filed.

"Refusing" is a very confrontational way of putting this.  In my personal
experience, "refusing" is rare.  Nearly all of these cases are cases of a
volunteer not having time.  Filing a wishlist bug asking for the new
release is trivial; actually doing the work is sometimes not trivial at
all.

> There are people willing to package new releases, but they are blocked
> by the current package maintainer.

This gets a lot of attention and debate because it seems like a place
where we can Do Something, but I'm highly dubious that this is a
substantial percentage of the overall problem.  For every case where an
unresponsive maintainer is blocking forward progress, I'm fairly sure you
will find dozens, if not more, cases where there's just no one with both
the time and technical skills to do the work.

See, for example, the huge and growing list of RFH bugs where the
maintainer is explicitly asking for people to help and, by and large,
nothing is happening.

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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

2012-07-26 Thread Wookey

+++ Svante Signell [2012-07-26 14:45 +0200]:
> On Thu, 2012-07-26 at 10:31 +0100, Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> > 
> > There are a ton of reasons why Debian may have an older version of
> > an upstream release. For example, and I hasten to point out that
> > the following list is by no means exhaustive, and not all of the
> > possibilities are common:
> 
> Very informative reply, thank you very much!

One wonders if some posters recognise comedy when they see it :-)

Thank you Lars, it was a fine piece of work.

Now back to your normal programming of humourless pedants.

Wookey
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http://wookware.org/


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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

On Thu, 2012-07-26 at 15:24 -0400, Michael Gilbert wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 9:02 AM, Svante Signell wrote:
> > I can give a few examples of outdated packages having non-responsive
> > maintainers, wine is one of them. See the wishlist bugs! Finally a set
> > of NMUs solved that problem.
> 
> Pointing at wine at this point is a red herring.  A group of
> interested volunteers fixed it.  That's how these problems get solved.

I happened to be the bug submitter for the wine 1.2 series, #585409 it
is dated June 10 2010!

>  If a you see an out-of-date package, please volunteer your time to
> help fix it.  If you're not a DD, you can do the work and send a
> message to debian-mentors.

I have tried several times and I can give you a recent example, see
#610209 and especially #669368. I have tried to contribute, but to no
avail (at least in this case).

> We've also started various discussions and changes toward making it
> more straightforward to fix these types of situations.  e.g.:
> http://bugs.debian.org/681833

Good to know! Progress is being made.



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Re: Modified http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDeveloper to mention non-packagers (Re: [CTTE #614907] Resolution of node/nodejs conflict)

On Thu, 2012-07-26 at 18:54 +0200, Luk Claes wrote:
> On 07/26/2012 03:29 PM, Ian Jackson wrote:
...
> > We also need a general word for "someone involved with Debian in a
> > positive way".  "Participant" is clumsy; "member of the community"
> > even more so.  "Person" might do but word with a more positive spin
> > would be nice.
> 
> Contributor?

That's a good  name, I happen to be in that state myself currently.



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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

Svante Signell  writes:
> On Thu, 2012-07-26 at 15:24 -0400, Michael Gilbert wrote:

>> If a you see an out-of-date package, please volunteer your time to help
>> fix it.  If you're not a DD, you can do the work and send a message to
>> debian-mentors.

> I have tried several times and I can give you a recent example, see
> #610209 and especially #669368. I have tried to contribute, but to no
> avail (at least in this case).

I think a relevant question here (other than whether Tollef wants
co-maintainers and the fact that it's too late to be uploading new
versions for wheezy now anyway) is whether the project wants to allow NMUs
to fix Hurd issues (not *now*, obviously, but back in April or May).
Historically, my impression is that people didn't want the Hurd porters to
do that, or for others to do that on their behalf, on the grounds that
Hurd support is not yet (sufficiently) important to the project.

I admit to personally having also postponed making Hurd-specific fixes
until it was convenient for me rather than acting on them right away as I
would have for releaseable ports, but I'm trying to get better about that,
since I know it's demotivating for the Hurd porters.

Looking at the changelog, I wonder if the change in 0.24:

- Use /proc/self/mountinfo for bind mount detection; recent distributions
  symlink /etc/mtab to /proc/self/mounts, losing information we need.

is important for us, given that we're now symlinking /etc/mtab to
/proc/mounts.

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Re: Modified http://wiki.debian.org/DebianDeveloper to mention non-packagers (Re: [CTTE #614907] Resolution of node/nodejs conflict)

2012-07-26 Thread Cyril Brulebois

Ian Jackson  (26/07/2012):
>   Uploaders needs to be abolished in favour of multiple
>   Maintainers.  In wheezy perhaps ?

I'm pretty sure the answer is no.

Mraw,
KiBi.


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Re: emacs23 and/or emacs24 in Wheezy?

2012-07-26 Thread Cyril Brulebois

Svante Signell  (25/07/2012):
> Is emacs24 going to be the default package for Wheezy?

No.

Mraw,
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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 3:44 PM, Svante Signell wrote:
>>  If a you see an out-of-date package, please volunteer your time to
>> help fix it.  If you're not a DD, you can do the work and send a
>> message to debian-mentors.
>
> I have tried several times and I can give you a recent example, see
> #610209 and especially #669368. I have tried to contribute, but to no
> avail (at least in this case).

While it's nice that you've prepared a package for the new mlocate
upstream version, getting it done after the freeze is simply far too
late.  Also, for packages that haven't been updated in a very long
time (two years in this case), a much better bet for a productive
exchange is to get it in front of -mentors instead of just the
(possibly mia) maintainer.

Best wishes,
Mike

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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

Michael Gilbert  writes:
> On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 3:44 PM, Svante Signell wrote:

>> I have tried several times and I can give you a recent example, see
>> #610209 and especially #669368. I have tried to contribute, but to no
>> avail (at least in this case).

> While it's nice that you've prepared a package for the new mlocate
> upstream version, getting it done after the freeze is simply far too
> late.  Also, for packages that haven't been updated in a very long time
> (two years in this case), a much better bet for a productive exchange is
> to get it in front of -mentors instead of just the (possibly mia)
> maintainer.

In this case, the maintainer is definitely not MIA.  Prompted by this
thread, I looked over the open bugs (and took the liberty of tagging a
couple since I was looking them over anyway), and they seem fairly
well-triaged to me and most have a maintainer response.  The only issue
with the package that I see at the moment is that there's a Hurd issue
solved by an upstream release, and another upstream fix that might be
relevant to Debian.  (The other upstream fixes are pretty minor.)  There's
some other pending work, which is mostly minor.

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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 6:09 PM, Russ Allbery wrote:
>> While it's nice that you've prepared a package for the new mlocate
>> upstream version, getting it done after the freeze is simply far too
>> late.  Also, for packages that haven't been updated in a very long time
>> (two years in this case), a much better bet for a productive exchange is
>> to get it in front of -mentors instead of just the (possibly mia)
>> maintainer.
>
> In this case, the maintainer is definitely not MIA.  Prompted by this
> thread, I looked over the open bugs (and took the liberty of tagging a
> couple since I was looking them over anyway), and they seem fairly
> well-triaged to me and most have a maintainer response.

True.  Part of the problem is appropriate terminology.  This is a case
of what I would call an "undermaintained" package.  Even though the
maintainer is still around, and may be quite active elsewhere, this
package has not gotten any attention in 2 years (even though multiple
upstreams have been released in the meantime).

This would be a case where I think liberal NMUing would certainly be
appropriate (of course prior to the freeze).  It's not really
appropriate to forcefully remove the maintainer, but for volunteers
interested in the package, they should feel free to help improve it
while it is in its "undermaintained" state.

Best wishes,
Mike

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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

Michael Gilbert  writes:
> On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 6:09 PM, Russ Allbery wrote:

>> In this case, the maintainer is definitely not MIA.  Prompted by this
>> thread, I looked over the open bugs (and took the liberty of tagging a
>> couple since I was looking them over anyway), and they seem fairly
>> well-triaged to me and most have a maintainer response.

> True.  Part of the problem is appropriate terminology.  This is a case
> of what I would call an "undermaintained" package.  Even though the
> maintainer is still around, and may be quite active elsewhere, this
> package has not gotten any attention in 2 years (even though multiple
> upstreams have been released in the meantime).

Putting aside this specific example, I don't think the criteria you're
using to evaluate whether a package is undermaintained is valid.  It's not
always correct that maintainers should be blindly packaging every upstream
release, and if upstream releases are minor and not important to Debian,
it's perfectly reasonable to not prioritize that packaging among the
various other things that one is doing.

> This would be a case where I think liberal NMUing would certainly be
> appropriate (of course prior to the freeze).

Yeah, I guess that makes sense, *if* the person doing the NMU then owns
any bugs they introduce and of course doesn't do anything drastic like
rewriting the build system.  And provides plenty of warning.

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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

On Thu, 2012-07-26 at 15:58 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Michael Gilbert  writes:
> > On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 6:09 PM, Russ Allbery wrote:
...
> > This would be a case where I think liberal NMUing would certainly be
> > appropriate (of course prior to the freeze).
> 
> Yeah, I guess that makes sense, *if* the person doing the NMU then owns
> any bugs they introduce and of course doesn't do anything drastic like
> rewriting the build system.  And provides plenty of warning.

Please, what can I do being a _contributor_ compared to  these "high
level package maintainers", except filing bug reports. Please advice a
stupid user who just wants to be using Debian as a GNU/* release(and
having recent software in them) .


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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 7:20 PM, Svante Signell wrote:
>> Yeah, I guess that makes sense, *if* the person doing the NMU then owns
>> any bugs they introduce and of course doesn't do anything drastic like
>> rewriting the build system.  And provides plenty of warning.
>
> Please, what can I do being a _contributor_ compared to  these "high
> level package maintainers", except filing bug reports. Please advice a
> stupid user who just wants to be using Debian as a GNU/* release(and
> having recent software in them) .

Anyone, anyone at all, can prepare an NMU (non-maintainer upload), but
non-DDs need to find a sponsor to do the actual upload (best
coordinated via mentors).  See:
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/pkgs.html#nmu
http://mentors.debian.net

Best wishes,
Mike


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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

Svante Signell  writes:
> On Thu, 2012-07-26 at 15:58 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:

>> Yeah, I guess that makes sense, *if* the person doing the NMU then owns
>> any bugs they introduce and of course doesn't do anything drastic like
>> rewriting the build system.  And provides plenty of warning.

> Please, what can I do being a _contributor_ compared to  these "high
> level package maintainers", except filing bug reports.

Take a deep breath, absorb the lesson that patience is vital when working
on volunteer projects, and realize that problems that you consider
critical are not necessarily prioritized that highly by other people.
(All useful for Debian developers too, for that matter.)

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   


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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 6:58 PM, Russ Allbery wrote:
>> True.  Part of the problem is appropriate terminology.  This is a case
>> of what I would call an "undermaintained" package.  Even though the
>> maintainer is still around, and may be quite active elsewhere, this
>> package has not gotten any attention in 2 years (even though multiple
>> upstreams have been released in the meantime).
>
> Putting aside this specific example, I don't think the criteria you're
> using to evaluate whether a package is undermaintained is valid.  It's not
> always correct that maintainers should be blindly packaging every upstream
> release, and if upstream releases are minor and not important to Debian,
> it's perfectly reasonable to not prioritize that packaging among the
> various other things that one is doing.

Agreed.  It is more complicated than just length of time without an
upload, but that is a very straightforward quantity to look up and
keep track of.

If one sees a package that has not been uploaded in 2 years (or 6
months or however long), I think we should make it so that they can
feel free to liberal NMU it with a 10-day delay.  If the maintainer
was really planning to hold the package back for some reason, they can
always cancel that (preferably with some kind of note as to why).

Best wishes,
Mike

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Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?