News for Debian developers

This wiki page collects small news that all developers should know but that are not worth a dedicated mail to debian-devel-announce. Then when we have collected 5 items, we'll send the content of this wiki page to debian-devel-announce.

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PTS web interface news

additions to the [http://packages.qa.debian.org PTS web interface]:

Different compression algorithms for debs

The ability to compress binary packages with something else then gzip (for example bzip2) [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=34727 has been in dpkg-dev and dpkg for a long time], since 1.11.

The way to add it to a package is to use the "-Z" switch of dpkg-deb. Or "dh_builddeb -- -Z bzip2" from within debian/rules.

Unfortunately, both [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=447257 lintian] and [http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=452329 linda] incorrectly report that this should not be used.

Advanced package search prototype in experimental

Enrico Zini created [http://packages.debian.org/experimental/apt-xapian-index apt-xapian-index], a prototype indexer for a system-wide [http://www.xapian.org Xapian]-based index of packages.

The index allows to perform very fast queries on package descriptions and tags, and any package can install plugins to add extra information to the index.

Also available is an extensive [http://www.enricozini.org/2007/debtags/apt-xapian-index.html tutorial] on how to use the index.

[http://packages.debian.org/experimental/apt-xapian-index apt-xapian-index], currently in experimental, will be uploaded to unstable as soon as some technical feedback is received, especially with regards to the index structure and the plugin interface.

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