blog/archive/2016/02/02.rss

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   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from February 2016</title>
   5                 <description>Entries from February 2016</description>
   6                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
   7
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   9         <item>
  10                 <title>Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</title>
  11                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Fri, 19 Feb 2016 15:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;Making packages for Debian require quite a lot of attention to
  15 details.  And one of the details is the content of the
  16 debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
  17 the code in the package in question, preferably in
  18 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/&quot;&gt;machine
  19 readable DEP5 format&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  20
  21 &lt;p&gt;For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
  22 and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
  23 package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters.  So getting it right
  24 the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
  25 both you and the ftpmasters some work..  Today, while trying to figure
  26 out what was wrong with
  27 &lt;a href=&quot;https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447&quot;&gt;the
  28 zfsonlinux copyright file&lt;/a&gt;, I decided to spend some time on
  29 figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
  30 semi-automatically.&lt;/p&gt;
  31
  32 &lt;p&gt;Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
  33 file based on the code in the source package,
  34 &lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake&quot;&gt;debmake&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;
  35 and &lt;tt&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme&quot;&gt;cme&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/tt&gt;.  I&#39;m
  36 not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
  37 create a sensible draft file.  As far as I can tell, none of them can
  38 be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
  39 polished a bit before the file is OK to upload.  I found the debmake
  40 option in
  41 &lt;a href=&quot;http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html&quot;&gt;a
  42 blog posts from 2014&lt;/a&gt;.
  43
  44 &lt;p&gt;To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
  45
  46 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  47 debmake -cc &gt; debian/copyright
  48 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  49
  50 &lt;p&gt;Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
  51 this might not be the best option.&lt;/p&gt;
  52
  53 &lt;p&gt;The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
  54 this approach in
  55 &lt;a href=&quot;https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/&quot;&gt;a
  56 blog post from 2015&lt;/a&gt;.  To generate using cme, use the &#39;update
  57 dpkg-copyright&#39; option:
  58
  59 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  60 cme update dpkg-copyright -quiet
  61 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  62
  63 &lt;p&gt;This will create or update debian/copyright.  The cme tool seem to
  64 handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.&lt;/p&gt;
  65
  66 &lt;p&gt;When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
  67 check if the file is correct.  For this I found two good options,
  68 &lt;tt&gt;debmake -k&lt;/tt&gt; and &lt;tt&gt;license-reconcile&lt;/tt&gt;.  The former seem
  69 to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
  70 ineffective blocks in the copyright file.  The latter reports missing
  71 copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
  72 names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0).  I suspect it is good to use both and
  73 fix all issues reported by them before uploading.  But I do not know
  74 if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
  75 copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.&lt;/p&gt;
  76
  77 &lt;p&gt;The devscripts tool &lt;tt&gt;licensecheck&lt;/tt&gt; deserve mentioning.  It
  78 will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
  79 It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
  80 can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.&lt;/p&gt;
  81
  82 &lt;p&gt;Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
  83 debian/copyright file.  Please let me know, or blog about it on
  84 planet.debian.org.&lt;/p&gt;
  85
  86 &lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  87 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  88 &lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
  89 </description>
  90         </item>
  91
  92         <item>
  93                 <title>Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support</title>
  94                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html</link>
  95                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html</guid>
  96                 <pubDate>Thu, 4 Feb 2016 16:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
  97                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11&quot;&gt;appstream system&lt;/a&gt;
  98 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
  99 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
 100 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
 101 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
 102 about. :)&lt;/p&gt;
 103
 104 &lt;p&gt;Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
 105 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
 106 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
 107 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
 108 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
 109 providing the example file, do like this:&lt;/p&gt;
 110
 111 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 112 % apt install appstream
 113 [...]
 114 % apt update
 115 [...]
 116 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
 117   awk &#39;/Package:/ {print $2}&#39;
 118 firmware-qlogic
 119 %
 120 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
 121
 122 &lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines&quot;&gt;the
 123 appstream wiki&lt;/a&gt; page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
 124 a way appstream can use.&lt;/p&gt;
 125
 126 &lt;p&gt;This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
 127 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
 128 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using &lt;tt&gt;file
 129 --mime-type&lt;/tt&gt;, and next look up the package providing support for
 130 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
 131 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:&lt;/p&gt;
 132
 133 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
 134 % apt install appstream
 135 [...]
 136 % apt update
 137 [...]
 138 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
 139   awk &#39;/Package:/ {print $2}&#39;
 140 bkchem
 141 phototonic
 142 inkscape
 143 shutter
 144 tetzle
 145 geeqie
 146 xia
 147 pinta
 148 gthumb
 149 karbon
 150 comix
 151 mirage
 152 viewnior
 153 postr
 154 ristretto
 155 kolourpaint4
 156 eog
 157 eom
 158 gimagereader
 159 midori
 160 %
 161 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
 162
 163 &lt;p&gt;I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
 164 packages providing appstream metadata.&lt;/p&gt;
 165 </description>
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