David Bremner

Like every year, during DebConf21 the Debian Technical Committee wishes to share with you what we are up to. First of all, of course, we will go over the issues that have been brought to us. But, following up from last year's presentation, we will continue presenting our ideas in how to reshape or reimagine the Technical Committee in a way it works better and is more useful for the project.

Other people: Sean Whitton Elana Hashman Gunnar Wolf Christoph Berg Niko Tyni Margarita Manterola Simon McVittie

What does the Technical Committee do? How can it work better for Debian? This year, we will do a short recap of our activities last year, but the main focus we want to give to this BoF is how to best move forward and reshape the Technical Committee in a way that works better, and thus is more useful for Debian.

Other people: Sean Whitton Elana Hashman Gunnar Wolf Simon McVittie Margarita Manterola Philip Hands Niko Tyni

An opportunity to meet the members of the Debian Technical Committee who are in attendance at Debconf, hear the status of open issues, understand the nature of the TC’s work, and discuss pending and future issues with the committee. URLs: https://www.debian.org/devel/tech-ctte

Other people: Gunnar Wolf Tollef Fog Heen Margarita Manterola

Many of us started work in Free Software from a position of indifference, if not outright hostility, to the challenges and rewards of "management", whatever that is. For better or worse this indifference doesn't usually last long, as any project involving more than one person soon discovers that it's not just about cranking out code, but about dealing with conflict, motivating volunteers, and balancing differing goals and priorities. This session will be for sharing best practices, lessons learned, and asking questions. Whether you are the Debian project leader, or coordinating with one other developer on a project with 3 users, this BoF welcomes your ideas and your questions. Notes: infinote://gobby.debian.org/debconf19/bof/you-are-manager

Other people: Jonathan Carter Sam Hartman Stefano Rivera

This BoF will include discussion of the DebConf Bursaries process this year, and how it might be improved in the future.

Other people: Jonathan Carter

This is a follow up from the last DebConfs "If you love a package let it go" [1]. With the input from this BoF and after talking about package salvaging with several people we'd like to come forward with the proposal to establish a package salvaging process. In this BoF we'd like to discuss the proposal and hear your thoughts and points of view about it and where you think it should be tweaked. It would be great if the result would lead to something concrete enough to be able to kick off the process in the near future. Debian-devel thread: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2018/07/msg00453.html [1] https://debconf17.debconf.org/talks/233/

Other people: Tobias Frost

An opportunity to meet the members of the Debian Technical Committee who are in attendance at Debconf, hear the status of open issues, understand the nature of the TC's work, and discuss pending and future issues with the committee. URLs: [https://www.debian.org/devel/tech-ctte](https://www.debian.org/devel/tech-ctte "Technical Committee")

Other people: Gunnar Wolf Tollef Fog Heen Philip Hands

At this DebConf a few of us have been discussing the problem of packages that are not well maintained (or at least perceived that way), but whose maintainers are otherwise active in Debian. In this BoF we'd like to continue that discussion and hear about different people's points of view. A great outcome would be some kind of concensus on a process or criteria to change maintainers for such undermaintained packages.

An opportunity to meet the members of the Debian Technical Committee who are in attendance at Debconf, hear the status of open issues, and discuss pending and future issues with the committee. URLs: https://www.debian.org/devel/tech-ctte

Other people: Didier Raboud Philip Hands Margarita Manterola Tollef Fog Heen Sam Hartman Keith Packard

Techniques and tools for using git for Debian packaging continue to develop, though there remain many pain points. Since last year's DebConf, dgit, in particular, has seen a lot of development. The new possibilities for using this tool have not yet been fully explored. The starting point for this BoF will be a brief demo of some of elements of the pure dgit workflows that have only become possible in the past year: a merging workflow and a rebasing workflow (if `git debrebase` is not finished by DebConf, the design of this tool will be explained). A possible follow-up discussion would be figuring out what Debian package maintainers consider the highest priority pain points for maintaining Debian package in git: Should we be focusing on a new source package format? Is it documentation that is lacking? Is it our conventions regarding the BTS and NMUs that are blocking progress? Etc.

Other people: Sean Whitton

Discussion of the this year's bursaries allocation process, in particular what worked well, and what can be improved for next year. Both team members and "customers" are welcome.