4. Resources for Debian Members
In this chapter you will find a very brief roadmap of the Debian mailing lists, the Debian machines which may be available to you as a member, and all the other resources that are available to help you in your work.
4.1. Mailing lists
Much of the conversation between Debian developers (and users) is
managed through a wide array of mailing lists we host at
lists.debian.org. To find out more on how to subscribe or
unsubscribe, how to post and how not to post, where to find old posts
and how to search them, how to contact the list maintainers and see
various other information about the mailing lists, please read
https://iwawocd.cewmufwd.tk/MailingLists/. This section will only
cover aspects of mailing lists that are of particular interest to
developers.
4.1.1. Basic rules for use
When replying to messages on the mailing list, please do not send a
carbon copy (CC) to the original poster unless they explicitly
request to be copied. Anyone who posts to a mailing list should read it
to see the responses.
Cross-posting (sending the same message to multiple lists) is discouraged. As ever on the net, please trim down the quoting of articles you're replying to. In general, please adhere to the usual conventions for posting messages.
Please read the code of conduct for more information. The Debian Community Guidelines are also worth reading.
4.1.2. Core development mailing lists
The core Debian mailing lists that developers should use are:
debian-devel-announce@lists.debian.org, used to announce important things to developers. All developers are expected to be subscribed to this list.debian-devel@lists.debian.org, used to discuss various development related technical issues.debian-policy@lists.debian.org, where the Debian Policy is discussed and voted on.debian-project@lists.debian.org, used to discuss various non-technical issues related to the project.
There are other mailing lists available for a variety of special topics; see https://lists.debian.org/ for a list.
4.1.3. Special lists
debian-private@lists.debian.org is a special mailing list for
private discussions amongst Debian developers. It is meant to be used
for posts which for whatever reason should not be published publicly. As
such, it is a low volume list, and users are urged not to use
debian-private@lists.debian.org unless it is really necessary.
Moreover, do not forward email from that list to anyone. Archives of
this list are not available on the web for obvious reasons, but you can
see them using your shell account on master.debian.org and looking
in the ~debian/archive/debian-private/ directory.
debian-email@lists.debian.org is a special mailing list used as a
grab-bag for Debian related correspondence such as contacting upstream
authors about licenses, bugs, etc. or discussing the project with others
where it might be useful to have the discussion archived somewhere.
4.2. IRC channels
Several IRC channels are dedicated to Debian's development. They are
mainly hosted on the Open and free technology community
(OFTC) network. The irc.debian.org DNS
entry is an alias to irc.oftc.net.
The main channel for Debian in general is #debian. This is a large,
general-purpose channel where users can find recent news in the topic
and served by bots. #debian is for English speakers; there are also
#debian.de, #debian-fr, #debian-br and other similarly named
channels for speakers of other languages.
The main channel for Debian development is #debian-devel. It is a
very active channel; it will typically have a minimum of 150 people at
any time of day. It's a channel for people who work on Debian, it's not
a support channel (there's #debian for that). It is however open to
anyone who wants to lurk (and learn). Its topic is commonly full of
interesting information for developers.
Since #debian-devel is an open channel, you should not speak there
of issues that are discussed in debian-private@lists.debian.org.
There's another channel for this purpose, it's called
#debian-private and it's protected by a key. This key is available
at master.debian.org:~debian/misc/irc-password.
There are other additional channels dedicated to specific subjects.
#debian-bugs is used for coordinating bug squashing parties.
#debian-boot is used to coordinate the work on the debian-installer.
#debian-doc is occasionally used to talk about documentation, like
the document you are reading. Other channels are dedicated to an
architecture or a set of packages: #debian-kde, #debian-dpkg,
#debian-perl, #debian-python...
Some non-English developers' channels exist as well, for example
#debian-devel-fr for French speaking people interested in Debian's
development.
Channels dedicated to Debian also exist on other IRC networks.
4.3. Documentation
This document contains a lot of information which is useful to Debian developers, but it cannot contain everything. Most of the other interesting documents are linked from The Developers' Corner. Take the time to browse all the links; you will learn many more things.
4.4. Debian machines
Debian has several computers working as servers, most of which serve critical functions in the Debian project. Most of the machines are used for porting activities, and they all have a permanent connection to the Internet.
Some of the machines are available for individual developers to use, as long as the developers follow the rules set forth in the Debian Machine Usage Policies.
Generally speaking, you can use these machines for Debian-related purposes as you see fit. Please be kind to system administrators, and do not use up tons and tons of disk space, network bandwidth, or CPU without first getting the approval of the system administrators. Usually these machines are run by volunteers.
Please take care to protect your Debian passwords and SSH keys installed on Debian machines. Avoid login or upload methods which send passwords over the Internet in the clear, such as Telnet, FTP, POP etc.
Please do not put any material that doesn't relate to Debian on the Debian servers, unless you have prior permission.
The current list of Debian machines is available at https://db.debian.org/machines.cgi. That web page contains machine names, contact information, information about who can log in, SSH keys etc.
If you have a problem with the operation of a Debian server, and you
think that the system operators need to be notified of this problem, you
can check the list of open issues in the DSA (Debian System
Administration) Team's queue of our request tracker at
https://rt.debian.org/ (you can login with user "debian", its
password is available at
master.debian.org:~debian/misc/rt-password). To report a new problem
in the request tracker, simply send a mail to admin@rt.debian.org
and make sure to put the string "Debian RT" somewhere in the subject. To
contact the DSA team by email, use dsa@debian.org for anything that
contains private or privileged information and should not be made
public, and debian-admin@lists.debian.org otherwise. The DSA team is
also present on the #debian-admin IRC channel on OFTC.
If you have a problem with a certain service, not related to the system administration (such as packages to be removed from the archive, suggestions for the web site, etc.), generally you'll report a bug against a pseudo-package. See Bug reporting for information on how to submit bugs.
Some of the core servers are restricted, but the information from there is mirrored to another server.
4.4.1. The bugs server
bugs.debian.org is the canonical location for the Bug Tracking
System (BTS).
If you plan on doing some statistical analysis or processing of Debian
bugs, this would be the place to do it. Please describe your plans on
debian-devel@lists.debian.org before implementing anything, however,
to reduce unnecessary duplication of effort or wasted processing time.
4.4.2. The ftp-master server
The ftp-master.debian.org server holds the canonical copy of the
Debian archive. Generally, packages uploaded to ftp.upload.debian.org
end up on this server; see Uploading a package.
It is restricted; a mirror is available on
mirror.ftp-master.debian.org.
Problems with the Debian FTP archive generally need to be reported as
bugs against the ftp.debian.org pseudo-package or an email to
ftpmaster@debian.org, but also see the procedures in
Moving, removing, renaming, orphaning, adopting, and reintroducing packages.
4.4.3. The www-master server
The main web server is www-master.debian.org. It holds the official
web pages, the face of Debian for most newbies.
If you find a problem with the Debian web server, you should generally
submit a bug against the pseudo-package iwawocd.cewmufwd.tk. Remember to
check whether or not someone else has already reported the problem to
the Bug Tracking System.
4.4.4. The people web server
people.debian.org is the server used for developers' own web pages
about anything related to Debian.
If you have some Debian-specific information which you want to serve on
the web, you can do this by putting material in the public_html
directory under your home directory on people.debian.org. This will
be accessible at the URL
https://people.debian.org/~your-user-id/.
You should only use this particular location because it will be backed up, whereas on other hosts it won't.
Usually the only reason to use a different host is when you need to publish materials subject to the U.S. export restrictions, in which case you can use one of the other servers located outside the United States.
Send mail to debian-devel@lists.debian.org if you have any
questions.
4.4.5. salsa.debian.org: Git repositories and collaborative development platform
If you want to use a git repository for any of your Debian work, you can use Debian's GitLab instance called Salsa for that purpose. Gitlab provides also the possibility to have merge requests, wiki pages, bug trackers among many other services as well as a fine-grained tuning of access permission, to help working on projects collaboratively.
For more information, please see the documentation at https://wiki.debian.org/Salsa/Doc.
Any Debian package hosted on Salsa has also access to the Salsa CI . The Salsa CI pipeline mimics the tests that are run after each upload to Debian, but instead of having to wait for results or risk the health of the Debian repositories, Salsa CI provides you with instant feedback about any problems the changes you made may have created or solved.
4.4.6. GitHub.com: Submitting pull requests to upstream repositories
If some upstream repository is hosted on GitHub.com, you can use the Debian organization to create repository forks and submit changed branches with pull requests to upstream maintainers.
The organization is open to all Debian Members. To request membership, open an issue in the Debian/.github meta repository.
4.4.7. chroots to different distributions
On some machines, there are chroots to different distributions available. You can use them like this:
vore$ dchroot unstable
Executing shell in chroot: /org/vore.debian.org/chroots/user/unstable
In all chroots, the normal user home directories are available. You can find out which chroots are available via https://db.debian.org/machines.cgi.
4.5. The Developers Database
The Developers Database, at https://db.debian.org/, is an LDAP
directory for managing Debian developer attributes. You can use this
resource to search the list of Debian developers. Part of this
information is also available through the finger service on Debian
servers; try finger
yourlogin@db.debian.org to see what it reports.
Developers can log into the database to change various information about themselves, such as:
forwarding address for your debian.org email as well as spam handling. See https://db.debian.org/forward.html for a description of all the options.
subscription to debian-private
whether you are on vacation
personal information such as your address, country, the latitude and longitude of the place where you live for use in the world map of Debian developers, phone and fax numbers, IRC nickname and web page
password and preferred shell on Debian Project machines
Most of the information is not accessible to the public, naturally. For more information please read the online documentation that you can find at https://db.debian.org/doc-general.html.
Developers can also submit their SSH keys to be used for authorization on the official Debian machines, and even add new *.debian.net DNS entries. Those features are documented at https://db.debian.org/doc-mail.html.
4.6. The Debian archive
The Debian distribution consists of a lot of packages (currently around
30000 source packages) and a few additional files (such
as documentation and installation disk images).
Here is an example directory tree of a complete Debian archive:
dists/stable/main/
dists/stable/main/binary-amd64/
dists/stable/main/binary-armel/
dists/stable/main/binary-i386/
...
dists/stable/main/source/
...
dists/stable/main/disks-amd64/
dists/stable/main/disks-armel/
dists/stable/main/disks-i386/
...
dists/stable/contrib/
dists/stable/contrib/binary-amd64/
dists/stable/contrib/binary-armel/
dists/stable/contrib/binary-i386/
...
dists/stable/contrib/source/
dists/stable/non-free/
dists/stable/non-free/binary-amd64/
dists/stable/non-free/binary-armel/
dists/stable/non-free/binary-i386/
...
dists/stable/non-free/source/
dists/stable/non-free-firmware/
dists/stable/non-free-firmware/binary-amd64/
dists/stable/non-free-firmware/binary-armel/
dists/stable/non-free-firmware/binary-i386/
...
dists/stable/non-free-firmware/source/
dists/testing/
dists/testing/main/
...
dists/testing/contrib/
...
dists/testing/non-free/
...
dists/testing/non-free-firmware/
...
dists/unstable
dists/unstable/main/
...
dists/unstable/contrib/
...
dists/unstable/non-free/
...
dists/unstable/non-free-firmware/
...
pool/
pool/main/a/
pool/main/a/apt/
...
pool/main/b/
pool/main/b/bash/
...
pool/main/liba/
pool/main/liba/libalias-perl/
...
pool/main/m/
pool/main/m/mailx/
...
pool/non-free/d/
pool/non-free/d/doc-rfc/
...
pool/non-free-firmware/f/
pool/non-free-firmware/f/firmware-nonfree/
...
As you can see, the top-level directory contains two directories,
dists/ and pool/. The latter is a “pool” in which the packages
actually are, and which is handled by the archive maintenance database
and the accompanying programs. The former contains the distributions,
stable, testing and unstable. The Packages and
Sources files in the distribution subdirectories can reference files
in the pool/ directory. The directory tree below each of the
distributions is arranged in an identical manner. What we describe below
for stable is equally applicable to the unstable and testing
distributions.
dists/stable contains four directories, namely main,
contrib, non-free and non-free-firmware.
In each of the areas, there is a directory for the source packages
(source) and a directory for each supported architecture
(binary-i386, binary-amd64, etc.).
The main area contains additional directories which hold the disk
images and some essential pieces of documentation required for
installing the Debian distribution on a specific architecture
(disks-i386, disks-amd64, etc.).
4.6.1. Sections
The main section of the Debian archive is what makes up the
official Debian distribution. The main section is official
because it fully complies with all our guidelines. The other two
sections do not, to different degrees; as such, they are not
officially part of Debian.
Every package in the main section must fully comply with the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) and with all other policy requirements as described in the Debian Policy Manual. The DFSG is our definition of “free software.” Check out the Debian Policy Manual for details.
Packages in the contrib section have to comply with the DFSG, but
may fail other requirements. For instance, they may depend on non-free
packages.
Packages which do not conform to the DFSG are placed in the non-free
or non-free-firmware sections. These packages are not considered as
part of the Debian distribution, though we enable their use, and we
provide infrastructure (such as our bug-tracking system and mailing
lists) for these non-free software packages.
The Debian Policy Manual contains a more exact definition of the four sections. The above discussion is just an introduction.
The separation of the four sections at the top-level of the archive is
important for all people who want to distribute Debian, either via FTP
servers on the Internet or on CD-ROMs: by distributing only the main
and contrib sections, one can avoid any legal risks. Some packages
in the non-free section do not allow commercial distribution, for
example.
On the other hand, a CD-ROM vendor could easily check the individual
package licenses of the packages in non-free and include as many on
the CD-ROMs as it's allowed to. (Since this varies greatly from vendor
to vendor, this job can't be done by the Debian developers.)
Note that the term section is also used to refer to categories which
simplify the organization and browsing of available packages: admin,
net, utils, etc. Once upon a time, these sections (subsections,
rather) existed in the form of subdirectories within the Debian archive.
Nowadays, these exist only in the Section header fields of packages.
4.6.2. Architectures
In the first days, the Linux kernel was only available for Intel i386
(or greater) platforms, and so was Debian. But as Linux became more and
more popular, the kernel was ported to other architectures and Debian
started to support them. And as if supporting so much hardware was not
enough, Debian decided to build some ports based on other Unix kernels,
like hurd and kfreebsd.
Debian GNU/Linux 1.3 was only available as i386. Debian 2.0 shipped
for i386 and m68k architectures. Debian 2.1 shipped for the
i386, m68k, alpha, and sparc architectures. Since then
Debian has grown hugely. Debian 9 supports a total of ten Linux
architectures (amd64, arm64, armel, armhf, i386,
mips, mips64el, mipsel, ppc64el, and s390x) and two
kFreeBSD architectures (kfreebsd-i386 and kfreebsd-amd64).
Information for developers and users about the specific ports are available at the Debian Ports web pages.
4.6.3. Packages
There are two types of Debian packages, namely source and binary
packages.
Depending on the format of the source package, it will consist of one or
more files in addition to the mandatory .dsc file:
with format “1.0”, it has either a
.tar.gzfile or both an.orig.tar.gzand a.diff.gzfile;with format “3.0 (quilt)”, it has a mandatory
.orig.tar.{gz,bz2,xz}upstream tarball, multiple optional.orig-component.tar.{gz,bz2,xz}additional upstream tarballs and a mandatorydebian.tar.{gz,bz2,xz}debian tarball;with format “3.0 (native)”, it has only a single
.tar.{gz,bz2,xz}tarball.
If a package is developed specially for Debian and is not distributed
outside of Debian, there is just one .tar.{gz,bz2,xz} file, which
contains the sources of the program; it's called a “native” source
package. If a package is distributed elsewhere too, the
.orig.tar.{gz,bz2,xz} file stores the so-called
upstream source code, that is the source code that's distributed by
the upstream maintainer (often the author of the software). In this
case, the .diff.gz or the debian.tar.{gz,bz2,xz} contains the
changes made by the Debian maintainer.
The .dsc file lists all the files in the source package together
with checksums (md5sums, sha1sums, sha256sums) and some
additional info about the package (maintainer, version, etc.).
4.6.4. Distributions
The directory system described in the previous chapter is itself
contained within distribution directories. Each distribution is
actually contained in the pool directory in the top level of the
Debian archive itself.
To summarize, the Debian archive has a root directory within a mirror
site. For instance, at the mirror site ftp.us.debian.org the
Debian archive itself is contained in
/debian, which is a common location
(another is /pub/debian).
A distribution comprises Debian source and binary packages, and the
respective Sources and Packages index files, containing the
header information from all those packages. The former are kept in the
pool/ directory, while the latter are kept in the dists/
directory of the archive (for backwards compatibility).
4.6.4.1. Stable, testing, and unstable
There are always distributions called stable (residing in
dists/stable), testing (residing in dists/testing), and
unstable (residing in dists/unstable). This reflects the
development process of the Debian project.
Active development is done in the unstable distribution (that's why
this distribution is sometimes called the development
distribution). Every Debian developer can update their packages in
this distribution at any time. Thus, the contents of this distribution
change from day to day. Since no special effort is made to make sure
everything in this distribution is working properly, it is sometimes
literally unstable.
The testing distribution is generated automatically by
taking packages from unstable if they satisfy certain criteria.
Those criteria should ensure a good quality for packages within
testing. The update to testing is launched twice each day, right
after the new packages have been installed. See The testing distribution.
After a period of development, once the release manager deems fit, the
testing distribution is frozen, meaning that the policies which
control how packages move from unstable to testing are
tightened. Packages which are too buggy are removed. No changes are
allowed into testing except for bug fixes. After some time has
elapsed, depending on progress, the testing distribution is frozen
even further. Details of the handling of the testing distribution are
published by the Release Team on debian-devel-announce. After the open
issues are solved to the satisfaction of the Release Team, the
distribution is released. Releasing means that testing is renamed to
stable, and a new copy is created for the new testing, and the
previous stable is renamed to oldstable and stays there until it
is finally archived. On archiving, the contents are moved to
archive.debian.org.
This development cycle is based on the assumption that the unstable
distribution becomes stable after passing a period of being in
testing. Even once a distribution is considered stable, a few bugs
inevitably remain — that's why the stable distribution is updated every
now and then. However, these updates are tested very carefully and have
to be introduced into the archive individually to reduce the risk of
introducing new bugs. You can find proposed additions to stable in
the proposed-updates directory. Those packages in
proposed-updates that pass muster are periodically moved as a batch
into the stable distribution and the revision level of the stable
distribution is incremented (e.g., ‘6.0’ becomes ‘6.0.1’, ‘5.0.7’
becomes ‘5.0.8’, and so forth). Please refer to Special case: uploads to the stable and oldstable distributions for details.
Note that development in unstable during the freeze should not be
continued as usual, as packages are still build in unstable, before they
migrate to testing, thus unstable should only contain packages
meant for testing. Thus only upload to unstable during freezes, if
you are planning to request an unblock (or if the package is not in
testing).
If you want to develop new stuff for after the freeze, upload to
experimental instead.
4.6.4.2. More information about the testing distribution
Packages are usually installed into the testing distribution after
they have undergone some degree of testing in unstable.
For more details, please see the The testing distribution.
4.6.4.3. Experimental
The experimental distribution is a special distribution. It is not a
full distribution in the same sense as stable, testing and
unstable are. Instead, it is meant to be a temporary staging area
for highly experimental software where there's a good chance that the
software could break your system, or software that's just too unstable
even for the unstable distribution (but there is a reason to package
it nevertheless). Users who download and install packages from
experimental are expected to have been duly warned. In short, all
bets are off for the experimental distribution.
These are the sources.list 5 lines for experimental:
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ experimental main
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ experimental main
If there is a chance that the software could do grave damage to a
system, it is likely to be better to put it into experimental. For
instance, an experimental compressed file system should probably go into
experimental.
Whenever there is a new upstream version of a package that introduces
new features but breaks a lot of old ones, it should either not be
uploaded, or be uploaded to experimental. A new, beta, version of
some software which uses a completely different configuration can go
into experimental, at the maintainer's discretion. If you are
working on an incompatible or complex upgrade situation, you can also
use experimental as a staging area, so that testers can get early
access.
Some experimental software can still go into unstable, with a few
warnings in the description, but that isn't recommended because packages
from unstable are expected to propagate to testing and thus to
stable. You should not be afraid to use experimental since it
does not cause any pain to the ftpmasters, the experimental packages are
periodically removed once you upload the package in unstable with a
higher version number.
New software which isn't likely to damage your system can go directly
into unstable.
An alternative to experimental is to use your personal web space on
people.debian.org.
4.6.5. Release code names
Every released Debian distribution has a code name: Debian
10 is called buster;
Debian 11, bullseye; Debian
12, bookworm; the next release,
Debian 13, will be called trixie
and Debian 14 will be called
forky. There is also a pseudo-distribution,
called sid, which is the current unstable distribution; since
packages are moved from unstable to testing as they approach
stability, sid itself is never released. As well as the usual
contents of a Debian distribution, sid contains packages for
architectures which are not yet officially supported or released by
Debian. These architectures are planned to be integrated into the
mainstream distribution at some future date. The codenames and versions
for older releases are listed on
the website.
Since Debian has an open development model (i.e., everyone can
participate and follow the development) even the unstable and
testing distributions are distributed to the Internet through the
Debian FTP and HTTP server network. Thus, if we had called the directory
which contains the release candidate version testing, then we would
have to rename it to stable when the version is released, which
would cause all FTP mirrors to re-retrieve the whole distribution (which
is quite large).
On the other hand, if we called the distribution directories
Debian-x.y from the beginning, people would think that Debian
release x.y is available. (This happened in the past, where a CD-ROM
vendor built a Debian 1.0 CD-ROM based on a pre-1.0 development version.
That's the reason why the first official Debian release was 1.1, and not
1.0.)
Thus, the names of the distribution directories in the archive are
determined by their code names and not their release status (e.g.,
bookworm). These names stay the same during the
development period and after the release; symbolic links, which can be
changed easily, indicate the currently released stable distribution.
That's why the real distribution directories use the code names,
while symbolic links for stable, testing, and unstable point
to the appropriate release directories.
4.7. Debian mirrors
The various download archives and the web site have several mirrors available in order to relieve our canonical servers from heavy load. In fact, some of the canonical servers aren't public — a first tier of mirrors balances the load instead. That way, users always access the mirrors and get used to using them, which allows Debian to better spread its bandwidth requirements over several servers and networks, and basically makes users avoid hammering on one primary location. Note that the first tier of mirrors is as up-to-date as it can be since they update when triggered from the internal sites (we call this push mirroring).
All the information on Debian mirrors, including a list of the available public FTP/HTTP servers, can be found at https://iwawocd.cewmufwd.tk/mirror/. This useful page also includes information and tools which can be helpful if you are interested in setting up your own mirror, either for internal or public access.
Note that mirrors are generally run by third parties who are interested in helping Debian. As such, developers generally do not have accounts on these machines.
4.8. The Incoming system
The Incoming system is responsible for collecting updated packages and
installing them in the Debian archive. It consists of a set of
directories and scripts that are installed on ftp-master.debian.org.
Packages are uploaded by all the maintainers into a directory called
UploadQueue. This directory is scanned every few minutes by a daemon
called queued, *.command-files are executed, and remaining and
correctly signed *.changes-files are moved together with their
corresponding files to the unchecked directory. This directory is
not visible for most Developers, as ftp-master is restricted; it is
scanned every 15 minutes by the dak process-upload script, which
verifies the integrity of the uploaded packages and their cryptographic
signatures. If the package is considered ready to be installed, it is
moved into the done directory. If this is the first upload of the
package (or it has new binary packages), it is moved to the new
directory, where it waits for approval by the ftpmasters. If the package
contains files to be installed by hand it is moved to the byhand
directory, where it waits for manual installation by the ftpmasters.
Otherwise, if any error has been detected, the package is refused and is
moved to the reject directory.
Once the package is accepted, the system sends a confirmation mail to
the maintainer and closes all the bugs marked as fixed by the upload,
and the auto-builders may start recompiling it. The package is now
publicly accessible at https://incoming.debian.org/ until it is
really installed in the Debian archive. This happens four times a day
(and is also called the dinstall run for historical reasons); the
package is then removed from incoming and installed in the pool along
with all the other packages. Once all the other updates (generating new
Packages and Sources index files for example) have been made, a
special script is called to ask all the primary mirrors to update
themselves.
The archive maintenance software will also send the OpenPGP signed
.changes file that you uploaded to the appropriate mailing lists. If
a package is released with the Distribution set to stable, the
announcement is sent to debian-changes@lists.debian.org. If a
package is released with Distribution set to unstable or
experimental, the announcement will be posted to
debian-devel-changes@lists.debian.org or
debian-experimental-changes@lists.debian.org instead.
Though ftp-master is restricted, a copy of the installation is available
to all developers on mirror.ftp-master.debian.org.
4.9. Package information
4.9.1. On the web
Each package has several dedicated web pages.
https://packages.debian.org/package-name displays each version
of the package available in the various distributions. Each version
links to a page which provides information, including the package
description, the dependencies, and package download links.
The bug tracking system tracks bugs for each package. You can view the
bugs of a given package at the URL
https://bugs.debian.org/package-name.
4.9.2. The dak ls utility
dak ls is part of the dak suite of tools, listing available package
versions for all known distributions and architectures. The dak tool
is available on ftp-master.debian.org, and on the mirror on
mirror.ftp-master.debian.org. It uses a single argument
corresponding to a package name. An example will explain it better:
$ dak ls evince
evince | 3.22.1-3+deb11u2 | oldstable | source, amd64, arm64, armel, armhf, i386, mips, mips64el, mipsel, ppc64el, s390x
evince | 3.22.1-3+deb11u2 | oldstable-debug | source
evince | 3.30.2-3+deb12u1 | stable | source, amd64, arm64, armel, armhf, i386, mips, mips64el, mipsel, ppc64el, s390x
evince | 3.30.2-3+deb12u1 | stable-debug | source
evince | 3.38.2-1 | testing | source, amd64, arm64, armel, armhf, i386, mips64el, mipsel, ppc64el, s390x
evince | 3.38.2-1 | unstable | source, amd64, arm64, armel, armhf, i386, mips64el, mipsel, ppc64el, s390x
evince | 3.38.2-1 | unstable-debug | source
evince | 40.4-1 | buildd-experimental | source, amd64, arm64, armel, armhf, i386, mips64el, mipsel, ppc64el, s390x
evince | 40.4-1 | experimental | source, amd64, arm64, armel, armhf, i386, mips64el, mipsel, ppc64el, s390x
evince | 40.4-1 | experimental-debug | source
In this example, you can see that the version in unstable differs
from the version in testing and that there has been a binary-only
NMU of the package for all architectures. Each version of the package
has been recompiled on all architectures.
4.10. The Debian Package Tracker
The Debian Package Tracker is an email and web-based tool to track the activity of a source package. You can get the same emails that the package maintainer gets, simply by subscribing to the package in the Debian Package Tracker.
The package tracker has a web interface at https://tracker.debian.org/ that puts together a lot of information about each source package. It features many useful links (BTS, QA stats, contact information, DDTP translation status, buildd logs) and gathers much more information from various places (30 latest changelog entries, testing status, etc.). It's a very useful tool if you want to know what's going on with a specific source package. Furthermore, once authenticated, you can subscribe and unsubscribe from any package with a single click.
You can jump directly to the web page concerning a specific source
package with a URL like
https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/sourcepackage.
For more in-depth information, you should have a look at its documentation. Among other things, it explains you how to interact with it by email, how to filter the mails that it forwards, how to configure your VCS commit notifications, how to leverage its features for maintainer teams, etc.
4.11. Developer's packages overview
A QA (quality assurance) web portal is available at https://qa.debian.org/developer.php which displays a table listing all the packages of a single developer (including those where the party is listed as a co-maintainer). The table gives a good summary about the developer's packages: number of bugs by severity, list of available versions in each distribution, testing status and much more including links to any other useful information.
It is a good idea to look up your own data regularly so that you don't forget any open bugs, and so that you don't forget which packages are your responsibility.
4.12. Debian's FusionForge installation: Alioth
Until Alioth was deprecated and eventually turned off in June 2018, it was a Debian service based on a slightly modified version of the FusionForge software (which evolved from SourceForge and GForge). This software offered developers access to easy-to-use tools such as bug trackers, patch managers, project/task managers, file hosting services, mailing lists, VCS repositories, etc.
For many previously offered services replacements exist. This is important to know, as there are still many references to alioth which still need fixing. If you encounter such references please take the time to try fixing them, for example by filing bugs or when possible fixing the reference.
4.13. Goodies for Debian Members
Benefits available to Debian Members are documented on https://wiki.debian.org/MemberBenefits.