Here is my monthly update covering what I have been doing in the free software world in October 2017 (previous month):

• Wrote and released python-gfshare, a Python library that implements Shamir’s method for secret sharing, a cryptography technique to split a file into multiple parts. I blogged about it earlier in the month.
• Improved the new-style URL handling in the 2.x branch of the Django web framework to check for incorrectly migrated calls from the old system. [...]
• Added support for Python 3, Django 1.9 & Django 2.0 to django-auto-one-one-to-one, my library to cleanly manage related model instances.
• Proposed two small pull requests for Redisearch, a search engine module for the Redis key-value storage database:
  • Don't assume that not being Linux is OSX. [...]
  • Install the module into /usr/lib over /var/lib as the latter is for program state, not libraries or modules. [...]
• In Peter Bengtsson's new django-cache-memoize library, suggested an addition to the store_result documentation. [...]
• Made two pull requests for django-auditlog, a Django app that maintains an audit trail of changes in your application:
  • Add missing on_delete to the LogEntry initial migration to ensure compatibility with Django 2.x. [...]
  • Add missing python-dateutil to setup.py. [...]
• Yet more Lintian hacking (previously):
  • New features:
    • Warn when packages unnecessararily set dpkg-architecture(1) variables. (#793554)
    • Check for files that use content from the /etc/init.d/skeleton template. (#879152)
    • Warn about certain files under debian/* that contain trailing whitespace characters. (#748405)
    • Ignore embedded jQuery libraries for Doxygen. (#736360)
    • Warn about Django libraries that do not depend on Django itself. (#877292)
    • Check for Python modules with overly generic names such as tests or test. (#875964)
    • Warn if packages set CFLAGS if the value of DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS contains noopt. (#718640)
    • Ignore embedded jQuery libraries for Doxygen. (#736360)
    • Warn about empty fields in debian/control. (#744388)
    • Add bionic as known Ubuntu distribution. (#880115)
    • Warn if native systemd .service files only wrap the existing SysV/LSB init scripts. (#870704)
    • Emit new empty-section-field tag instead of uninitialized value warnings on an empty Section: field. (#878515)
    • Warn about debian/watch files using insecure URIs, similar to vcs-field-uses-insecure-uri. (#849515)
    • Include the offending URI in debian-watch-uses-insecure-uri output, not the line number.
    • Allow empty md5sums files. (#781372)
    • Move latest-debian-changelog-entry-without-new-date tag into a new check of type source. (#873612)
    • Add cwl-runner to the list of known interpreters. (#851126)
    • Also match packages named python2-* as relating to the Python 2.x migration.
  • Bug fixes:
    • Don't error out when AppStream metadata is invalid; emit appstream-metadata-invalid instead. (#879661)
    • Actually check for a dependency on sensible-utils before emitting script-needs-depends-on-sensible-utils. (#877439)
    • Avoid a false positives in debian-control-has-empty-field when the field is wrapped onto a new line. (#879977)
    • Drop README.source from files to check against file-contains-trailing-whitespace as it can include literal quotes from upstreams that would be ideally left intact.
    • Lower the severity of package-installs-java-bytecode from E: to W:. (#879862)
    • Do not trigger package-installs-java-bytecode if the path contains WEB-INF, demo, doc etc. (#879860)
    • Verify files triggering package-installs-java-bytecode files really are Java .class files. (#879861)
    • Check the Recommends field as well when testing scripts for script-needs-depends-on-sensible-utils. (#879953)
    • Ignore the "magic" http://sf.net/ redirector URI for the debian-watch-uses-insecure-uri tag. (#879206)
    • Revert addition of "none were" -> "none was" multiword spelling correction as it is "acceptable beyond serious criticism". (#878457)
    • Drop copyright-year-in-future; too error prone and time-consuming to maintain given the severity of the issues it can find. (#877766)
    • Exempt debian/copyright from the license-problem-non-free-RFC tag to avoid false-positives "meta" references. (#877999)
    • Ignore privacy breach violations within HTML/Javascript comments. (#877421)
    • Avoid warning for init.d-script-not-marked-as-conffile when the init.d script does not exist as we will already be alerted via the init.d-script-not-included-in-package tag.
    • Do not emit python-foo-but-no-python3-foo for packages ending with -common.
    • Add missing example-script-uses-deprecated-nodejs-location tag. (#877142)
    • Correct invalid link to upgrading-checklist in Standards-Version checks. (#878184)
  • Documentation:
    • Add a note to orig-tarball-missing-upstream-signature regarding support in pristine-tar and git-buildpackage.
    • Add example on how to remove trailing whitespace with sed.
  • Tests:
    • Split out checks for debconf-config-not-executable into a separate test protected by a Test-Requires now that dpkg ≥ 1.19.0 will bail out on that condition.
    • Correct Depends of python2.7 → python3 in a Python 3 test package.
    • Add test for ignoring python-foo-doc packages for the Python 3 migration and correct short descriptions of test packages.
• Finally, I was interviewed by HostingAdvice about my role as Debian Project Leader.

You can subscribe to new posts via email or RSS.