My path of GNU/Linux development, Debian Packaging!
When I was in 10th standard I used to run windows on my machine and continued to use till my 1st year of undergraduate. I always search for different aspects of everything, like wise I got attracted towards Ubuntu! which i saw from a senior M.tech student (Srinivasan Raja Shekar- under advisor named Dr.Pratap). Thus, from that moment I started using Ubuntu and trying to explore why we don't want to use windows. I hardly used it for an year and completely shifted to Debian GNU/Linux OS, then the actual works started. Meanwhile I started volunteering for Swecha[0].
We as a team were supposed to do a website for Spoorthi (JntuhCeh-ECE annual fest[15]) based on Drupal [1], for this initiation my journey just started towards Swecha where we visited for Drupal module development training sessions and later on attended different Freedom Fests, workshops, bootcamp etc,. In this journey, I got more attracted towards GNU/Linux development and for this Debian is the key area to start.
In the beginning stages i used to work on package dependency issues in my own machine. Few days later started interacting with Bhuvan[16], Sunil Mohan Adapa, Kishan[17] about the Debian development(because they already working on packaging). As they suggested few ways to proceed with the flow, I started seeing few docs in the Debian wiki [2]-[8]pages and found some information. There is no direct procedure for the packaging just because we need to know the Debian flow of packages and how would be the structure, what can be the possibilities of copyright files both from upstream and also for Debian, and files that needs to be included in the package, some minimalistic handy things for fetching source files for packages, and generating a OpenPGP key [9] (its must) etc,. Finally finished setting up all the minimalistic things.
Now, I took the source for an existing package and started working on it. Moving on further, there are some dependency issues[14] in GNU-Social[10] package for getting into FreedomBox[11] that we need to package those dependencies into Debian. Sunil and Bhuvan introduced me to that project and started working on it. As i got help from them(including with official channels of Debian in IRC[12]), successfully the work is done and finally my first package named ' php-net-idna2 '[13] is in the Debian!.
Wonder how its done, its easy!. We just need to concentrate on few Debian wiki's relating to packaging, that's it. For any issues regarding GNU/Linux and packaging, you can drop me a mail at ' rajasekhar [at] swecha.net '
Resources :
[2]. https://wiki.debian.org/Packaging/Intro
[3]. https://wiki.debian.org/HowToPackageForDebian
[4]. https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/
[5]. https://www.debian.org/distrib/packages
[6]. https://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/
[7]. https://wiki.debian.org/PackagingWithGit
[8]. https://wiki.debian.org/Packaging
[9].https://wiki.debian.org/Icedove
[10]. https://www.gnu.org/software/social/
[11]. https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox
[12]. https://wiki.debian.org/IRC/ (i mostly use these rooms #debian-mentors, #packaging, #freedombox, #debian-in)
[13]. https://packages.debian.org/sid/php/php-net-idna2
[14]. https://code.swecha.org/gnu-social
[15]. http://www.ece.jntuhceh.ac.in/spoorthi2015