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There's a LDAP database containing information about Debian developers at
https://db.debian.org/. You
should enter your information there and update it as it changes. Most notably,
make sure that the address where your debian.org email gets forwarded to is
always up to date, as well as the address where you get your debian-private
subscription if you choose to subscribe there.
For more information about the database, please see The Developers Database, Section 4.5.
Be very careful with your private keys. Do not place them on any public
servers or multiuser machines, such as the Debian servers (see Debian machines, Section
4.4). Back your keys up; keep a copy offline. Read the documentation that
comes with your software; read the PGP FAQ.
You need to ensure not only that your key is secure against being stolen, but also that it is secure against being lost. Generate and make a copy (best also in paper form) of your revocation certificate; this is needed if your key is lost.
If you add signatures to your public key, or add user identities, you can update the Debian key ring by sending your key to the key server at keyring.debian.org.
If you need to add a completely new key or remove an old key, you need to get
the new key signed by another developer. If the old key is compromised or
invalid, you also have to add the revocation certificate. If there is no real
reason for a new key, the Keyring Maintainers might reject the new key.
Details can be found at http://keyring.debian.org/replacing_keys.html.
The same key extraction routines discussed in Registering as a Debian developer, Section 2.3 apply.
You can find a more in-depth discussion of Debian key maintenance in the
documentation of the debian-keyring package.
Even though Debian isn't really a democracy, we use a democratic process to
elect our leaders and to approve general resolutions. These procedures are
defined by the Debian
Constitution.
Other than the yearly leader election, votes are not routinely held, and they
are not undertaken lightly. Each proposal is first discussed on the [email protected]
mailing list and it requires several endorsements before the project secretary
starts the voting procedure.
You don't have to track the pre-vote discussions, as the secretary will issue
several calls for votes on [email protected]
(and all developers are expected to be subscribed to that list). Democracy
doesn't work well if people don't take part in the vote, which is why we
encourage all developers to vote. Voting is conducted via GPG-signed/encrypted
email messages.
The list of all proposals (past and current) is available on the Debian Voting Information page,
along with information on how to make, second and vote on proposals.
It is common for developers to have periods of absence, whether those are planned vacations or simply being buried in other work. The important thing to notice is that other developers need to know that you're on vacation so that they can do whatever is needed if a problem occurs with your packages or other duties in the project.
Usually this means that other developers are allowed to NMU (see Non-Maintainer Uploads (NMUs), Section 5.11) your package if a big problem (release critical bug, security update, etc.) occurs while you're on vacation. Sometimes it's nothing as critical as that, but it's still appropriate to let others know that you're unavailable.
In order to inform the other developers, there are two things that you should
do. First send a mail to [email protected]
with "[VAC] " prepended to the subject of your message[2] and state the period of time when
you will be on vacation. You can also give some special instructions on what
to do if a problem occurs.
The other thing to do is to mark yourself as "on vacation" in the Debian developers' LDAP database (this information is only accessible to Debian developers). Don't forget to remove the "on vacation" flag when you come back!
Ideally, you should sign up at the GPG coordination site when
booking a holiday and check if anyone there is looking for signing. This is
especially important when people go to exotic places where we don't have any
developers yet but where there are people who are interested in applying.
A big part of your job as Debian maintainer will be to stay in contact with the upstream developers. Debian users will sometimes report bugs that are not specific to Debian to our bug tracking system. You have to forward these bug reports to the upstream developers so that they can be fixed in a future upstream release.
While it's not your job to fix non-Debian specific bugs, you may freely do so if you're able. When you make such fixes, be sure to pass them on to the upstream maintainers as well. Debian users and developers will sometimes submit patches to fix upstream bugs — you should evaluate and forward these patches upstream.
If you need to modify the upstream sources in order to build a policy compliant package, then you should propose a nice fix to the upstream developers which can be included there, so that you won't have to modify the sources of the next upstream version. Whatever changes you need, always try not to fork from the upstream sources.
Generally you should deal with bug reports on your packages as described in Handling bugs, Section 5.8. However, there's a special category of bugs that you need to take care of — the so-called release-critical bugs (RC bugs). All bug reports that have severity critical, grave or serious are considered to have an impact on whether the package can be released in the next stable release of Debian. These bugs can delay the Debian release and/or can justify the removal of a package at freeze time. That's why these bugs need to be corrected as quickly as possible.
Developers who are part of the Quality
Assurance group are following all such bugs, and trying to help
whenever possible. If, for any reason, you aren't able fix an RC bug in a
package of yours within 2 weeks, you should either ask for help by sending a
mail to the Quality Assurance (QA) group [email protected],
or explain your difficulties and present a plan to fix them by sending a mail
to the bug report. Otherwise, people from the QA group may want to do a
Non-Maintainer Upload (see Non-Maintainer
Uploads (NMUs), Section 5.11) after trying to contact you (they might not
wait as long as usual before they do their NMU if they have seen no recent
activity from you in the BTS).
If you choose to leave the Debian project, you should make sure you do the following steps:
Orphan all your packages, as described in Orphaning a package, Section 5.9.4.
Send an gpg-signed email about why you are leaving the project to [email protected].
Notify the Debian key ring maintainers that you are leaving by opening a ticket in Debian RT by sending a mail to [email protected] with the words 'Debian RT' somewhere in the subject line (case doesn't matter).
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Debian Developer's Reference
[email protected]