[plug] Report from the recent Debian bug squashing party at UCC

[David P (Gmail)]

I am one of those people who missed the bug squashing party.

I haven't been able to get into coding on Linux yet, so I would be another
addition to the inexperienced people list.

I was hoping I would be able to get a good start to it at the party.

I would be keen to come along to a future BSP. Perhaps by then I will have
a working Debian VM inside Ubuntu.

I was planning to create an ARM Debian VM in the lead up to getting a
Raspberry Pi*. Would that be suitable / useful do you think?

I know I could install Debian directly on the hard drive but I don't really
feel like mucking around with partitions right now if I can put it off.

* I tried creating the VM earlier this week but it froze near the end of
the process.
On Mar 16, 2012 2:17 PM, "Paul Wise" <pabs at debian.org> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> We recently held a Debian bug squashing party (BSP) at UCC, UWA. Over
> the weekend we had about 10 or so people show up to participate, learn
> about fixing bugs in Debian and try to fix some. The BSP co-incided with
> a weekend heat wave with temperatures reaching 38°C and the venue lacked
> air conditioning. Most of the attendees were new to Debian development
> but were Debian users. Our focus was on release critical bugs
> highlighted by rc-alert and the UDD bugs list, but we also discussed
> IPv6 bugs in CUPS and some bugs that were affecting UCC infrastructure.
> The UCC president also worked on fixing their door-locking system,
> replacing the broken system based on an ancient modem with an Arduino
> board. We managed to fix, work on or investigate 12 or more bugs. I was
> hoping we would get through more, but the weather and the average
> experience level conspired against us. After we were done on Sunday a
> few of us went down to the local pub to have a meal, a beer and some
> geeky conversation. All in all we had a good time and got some bugs
> fixed.
>
> The UCC president seemed to be keen on doing another BSP, hopefully we
> can do another one before the freeze happens. There were a few people
> who missed the BSP so it would be good to give them a chance to work on
> some bugs.
>
> Thanks go to the UCC folks for the venue and to PLUG folks for helping
> with organisation and promotion of the event.
>
> For those of you who weren't able to make it, you can participate in
> squashing bugs at home, the links at the bottom of our BSP wiki page
> should help give you some ideas about squashing bugs, here is an intro:
>
> In general, to find some bugs you might care about, install the
> devscripts package and run rc-alert (optionally with options for sorting
> by local or global popcon or restricting the suites) and pick a bug. If
> you can't find any, then take a look at the UDD bugs list.
>
> To fix a bug you will want a Debian testing install with some deb-src
> lines for testing or unstable in your apt sources.list. You will want
> pbuilder, cowbuilder or sbuild installed so you can build packages in a
> clean chroot. Read the bug log to get an idea about what issue is about.
> If you need to do an upload, check the developers reference (devref) for
> procedures about non-maintainer uploads. You will also need a sponsor to
> do the upload for you, check the mentors site for information about
> that. If you have any questions about the process, folks on
> #debian-mentors on irc.oftc.net can help you out.
>
> If you encounter any confusing Debian-specific jargon, check the
> glossary page on the Debian wiki for information.
>
> PS: DebConf12 is in Nicaragua this year, everyone is welcome. We are
> also looking for sponsors to help meet the costs of the conference. If
> your work uses Debian you may want to help support the conference
> financially.
>
> http://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2012/03/au/Perth
> http://udd.debian.org/bugs.cgi
> http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/pkgs.html#nmu
> http://mentors.debian.net/
> http://wiki.debian.org/Glossary
> http://debconf12.debconf.org/
> http://debconf12.debconf.org/become-sponsor.xhtml
>
> --
> bye,
> pabs
>
> http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
>
> _______________________________________________
> PLUG discussion list: plug at plug.org.au
> http://lists.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug
> Committee e-mail: committee at plug.org.au
> PLUG Membership: http://www.plug.org.au/membership
>
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