2
<heading>The web sentinel</heading>
4
<sect id="packageslist">
5
<heading>Existing and prospective packages</heading>
8
The result of the stuff described in this paragraph could for example
9
be viewed at the <url id="http://debian-med.alioth.debian.org/tasks/"
10
name="tasks page of the Debian Med project">. If you want stuff
11
like that just follow the instructions below.
14
If a Debian Pure Blend should be presented one of the first questions
15
is, what packages are available. The next question might be which
16
packages are on the todo list for inclusion in Debian to make Debian
17
even more attractive for people the Blend is targeting at. Both
18
questions can be answered if you point people to the dynamically
19
created tasks page. The page is rebuild daily to stay up to date
20
according to recent developments of the Blend. The build process works
23
<item>Read dependency information of the <file>tasks</file> files.</item>
24
<item>Verify whether there is really a package with this name and
25
print the description of this package.</item>
26
<item>If there is no such package in Debian try to parse
27
the <file>tasks</file> file whether there is some information
28
given and mark the result as prospective package for further
33
The rationale behind this is to provide as much as possible
34
information about packages that might be interesting for the target
35
user of the Blend. Moreover the page can provide useful information for
36
developers about things that might be a useful help for the project to
37
work down the todo list and build Debian packages for software that is
38
not yet included in Debian. To get the todo list builded it is
39
necessary to add some additional information to the task files which
40
are the main database of information for the Blend. The information is
41
following the RFC822 syntax as all Debian control files do and is
44
<tag>Depends / Recommends / Suggests</tag>
45
<item>Even if there is no Debian package available for the moment
46
the names of prospective packages are given as if they would
47
exists. The rationale behind is that once such a package
48
might exist the source of the metapackage does not have to
49
be changed and will work out of the box after rebuilding.
52
<item>The Ignore key should be the favourite way to use for
53
specifying prospective packages in case the packages should be
54
evaluated once it appears in the Debian package pool. If
55
"Depends", "Recommends" or "Suggests" are used for not yet
56
existing packages they will be turned into the list of Suggests
57
of the metapackage and thus might be possible to become
58
installed on a users machine if the user decides to install all
59
suggested packages. If some evaluation should be done first the
60
"Ignore" tag is your friend.
63
<item>This is the URL to the software that should be packaged.
66
<item>In case there might be a WNPP bug filed for this software the
67
bug number is given here. This helps to keep track of the
68
ongoing effort to package the software.
70
<tag>Responsible</tag>
71
<item>In case some developer claimed to care for the software
72
(perhaps by issuing the WNPP bug report) the e-mail address of
73
this developer is given here to enable an easy way to contact
77
<item>Debian cares always about the license. This information
78
about prospective packages should be easily available.
81
<item>If there is some Debian packaging stuff available this
82
can be addressed in this field. Unofficial packages which
83
have this field set are rendered in a separate section with
84
links to the packaging SVN.
87
<item>In some cases there are unofficial packages for some software
88
which are prepared by a third party. It helps our users if
89
they could install such a package and thus the URL to it might
90
be a helpful hint. This is also true for developers because
91
they might have a look at this packaging before they start from
92
scratch. Often packages are available
93
at <url id="http://mentors.debian.net/"
94
name="mentors.debian.net"> and prepared by people who do not
95
yet have an official Debian maintainer status and thus are not
96
able to upload packages to the Debian mirror. The packages at
97
mentors are waiting for sponsoring of an official Debian
98
maintainer and if such a package shows up in the Blend tasks list
99
it might speed up the inclusion into official Debian
102
<tag>Pkg-Description</tag>
103
<item>This tag should give reasonable information about the
104
software as it normally is done in <file>debian/control</file>
105
files. It can be either a copy of the description of the WNPP
106
bug or could be used to file a WNPP bug and thus helps to
107
simplify the packaging work.
115
<heading>Debian Description Translation Project</heading>
118
The <url id="http://ddtp.debian.net/" name="Debian Description
119
Translation Project"> (see <ref id="documentation">) provides users of
120
non English languages with information about Debian packages. The
121
sense of supporting especially the translations of descriptions which
122
are in the focus of a Blend is to make the Blend even more usable for our
123
target users. Moreover people interested in the special field of the
124
Blend are most probably able to provide good translations if it comes to
125
texts that are specific to their field of knowledge. Thus there is a
126
web page automatically created that parses the tasks packages for
127
package names and verifies the translation status of the package
131
Finally the DDTP descriptions can be used to create internationalised
132
pages of existing packages which might help users with insufficient
133
skills in English to easily find their software of interest.
139
<heading>Bugs overview</heading>
141
The goal of a Blend is to support their user as best as possible. So a
142
feature to have a quick overview about all packages in our focus might
143
be helpful. This is solved by the bugs overview page. To create this
144
page the <file>tasks</file> files are parsed for the listed
145
dependencies. Then the Debian Bug Tracking System is consulted about
146
known bugs of these packages. All bugs are listed and marked with
147
different colours according to their severity. So the developers can
148
easily check this page in case they plan to fix some bugs that are
149
relevant for the Blend.
153
<sect id="svnoverview">
154
<heading>SVN overview</heading>
156
This page gives a recent overview about the current development
157
activities of the Blend developers.
162
<heading>Quality assurance report</heading>
165
The Debian Quality Assurance group does a decent job in watching the
166
status o f Debian packages. If a package features a
167
valid <file>debian/watch</file> the tool <prgn>uscan</prgn> is able to
168
verify the upstream source location for newer versions. The QA report
169
page reports issues about the packages that are relevant for a Blend.
175
<!-- Keep this comment at the end of the file
180
sgml-namecase-general:t
181
sgml-general-insert-case:lower
182
sgml-minimize-attributes:nil
183
sgml-always-quote-attributes:t
186
sgml-parent-document:("../debian-blends.en.sgml" "book" "chapt")
187
sgml-exposed-tags:nil
188
sgml-local-catalogs:nil
189
sgml-local-ecat-files:nil
added
removed
doc/en/08_websentinel.sgml
