Jobs @ Debian
This list intends to list some vacant jobs within the Debian project or jobs that need help from others. This list is maintained by Martin Schulze (Joey) who is biased (Caution!), of course. Since it was originally intended for German speaking people, several topics are held in German.
Einige von euch haben vielleicht Interesse daran, ein klein wenig im Debian-Projekt mitzuarbeiten. Dafür gibt es natürlich vielfältige Möglichkeiten. Hier sind ein paar Jobs, für die ich ein paar Aktive brauche.
- Generelle Dokumentation
Es ist erforderlich, daß eine Manpage für jedes Programm mitgeliefert wird, das in /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin oder /usr/X11R6/bin installiert wird. Viele dieser Seiten sind jedoch ein Link auf undocumented.7. Hier ist einiges an Arbeit erforderlich.
Infos: QA
- Multilinguale Paket-Datenbanken
Die Beschreibungen der Pakete können inzwischen auch übersetzt werden. Bei mehr als 3900 Paketen sollte die Übersetzungslast natürlich auf so viele Schultern wie möglich verteilt werden.
Infos: DDTP
- Editor Linux-Community
Aus München haben mich mehrfach Anfragen erreicht, ob wir, das Debian-Projekt, nicht Artikel und Geschichten rund um Debian in dem System pflegen möchten. Ich kann das aus Zeitgründen nicht selbst übernehmen, bisher hat sich aber auch niemand anderes gefunden.
Von mehreren Zeitschriften habe ich ähnliche Anfragen erhalten, da würde bei Artikeln sogar Honorar gezahlt werden.
Infos: Linux-Community
- Debconf Templates
Internationalisierung von debconf-Fragen. Mit debconf sind wir erstmals in der Lage, Fragen zur Konfiguration auch in beliebigen Sprachen zu stellen. Hier ist noch einiges an Übersetzungsarbeit zu tun.
Infos: Übersetzung
Koordination: Michael Bramer <grisu@debian.org>
- Debian Documentation Project (DDP)
During work on our website I noticed that a lot of DDP manuals are dead. Some of them are not maintained anymore, never finished, never started etc. When not dropping the whole thing it would be a good idea to work on these manuals since they have the power to help people working with our wonderful software distribution.
Infos: DDP
- Debian Work Needing and Prospective Packages (WNPP)
Several packages have been orphaned by their maintainers. They need a new guy who will look after them. There's also a list of packages that were requested by users that also need a maintainer.
Infos: www.debian.org and bugs.debian.org
- Graphical Installer
Debian still lacks a graphical installer. The new installer, though, uses debconf and hence a graphical installer is much easier than before. Unfortunately this sub-project came to a stall. Even though, Colin Watson is working on it, a lot has to be done.
Infos: www.debian.org and svn.debian.org
- Debian-Website
The website is maintained by a few people basically. For such a large project (entire source: > 128 MB, plus documentation) this is not enough normally. The website could be improved in several ways, some of them are written down in our todo list, some are not.
It would be a good idea if somebody would see how the entire website could be turned into a single layout instead of three or more different layouts. Reviewing, updating and creating of new documentation would also be helpful.
Infos: Todo
- Debian Weekly News
Debian Weekly News is in need of competent writers in order to be able to keep the quality of the issues high and to keep up with what is going on in the Debian community.
Infos: contributing
- debian-testing
This refers to doing test installations of the entire Debian system as well as individual packages and upgrade testing, and filing bugs and such well in advance of release to make sure both are smooth. This is a never-ending task.
- Debian Quality Assurance
Dealing with wnpp bugs, dealing with orphaned packages, keeping the quality of Debian and its packages high, developing patches for serious/important/critical bugs in various packages, investigating bug reports the maintainer can't handle.
- Manpages
We need more competent people who are able to work on the manpages package. This requires good knowledge of Unix, Linux and the kernel as well as knowledge of SUSv2, SUSv3 and POSIX. Bug reports against manpages/manpages-dev need to be investigated first, to find out if it's a documentation bug or an implementation bug.
- Fixing Release Critical Bugs
The list of RC bugs is growing most of the time and requires skilled people to work on these bugs. Not all bugs can be fixed by the package maintainer on its own.
- Documenting FTP-master
Every once in a while, people start complaining what a lousy job the ftp people are doing, that they don't work on new packages etc. pp. That's bullshit. There are 10-50 new packages processed every week, DWN has an excerpt. In order to make the process a little bit more transparent, documentation for all the tools available could help.
Infos: CVS.
- Documenting the buildd Network
The Debian project depends heavily on the network of buildd machines and maintainers. For many people it is a mysterium how it works. There are also complaints every once in a while. Even though <arch>@buildd.debian.net is said to work partially, it's not documented, as isn't the network.
Infos: wanna-build states and setting up.
Infos: CVS for buildd/wanna-build/andrea unavailable
- Security Work/Audit
The Security Team of Debian deals with security problems in a reasonable fashion normally. However, many security problems are undiscovered and some are too difficult to deal with easily. Hence, patches need to be developed or backported.
Infos: www.debian.org.
Please only contact Joey if you are seriously pondering to work on one job or another. Otherwise you would only bother Joey and keep him from probably more important stuff than explaining stuff to you when you won't take over some work anyway. Feel free to send him additions and corrections though. Also feel free to discuss this list in public areas. Thanks.
More todo or wishlists are here: