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Monthly Archives: March 2007

guilt: my first Debian package

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Debian LogoFor the last few weeks I have been working on a Debian package for guilt, a quilt like tool that works on top of a git repository.

Getting the initial package together was easy thanks to dh_make. This created the debian/ directory and basic control files that were needed to Debianize the source. After customizing all of the control files I built the package with dpkg-buildpackage and it seemed to work!

But, I quickly hit a bump in the road, lintian, the Debian package checker complained that there were no man pages.

$ lintian -c guilt_0.20-1_i386.deb
W: guilt: binary-without-manpage guilt
W: guilt: binary-without-manpage guilt-add
...
W: guilt: binary-without-manpage guilt-top
W: guilt: binary-without-manpage guilt-unapplied

Knowing the package would never get sponsored without docs I worked with Josef Sipek, guilt author, to get an asciidoc documentation system built for guilt. In a few days we had built a man page for every command in the system and the lintian warnings were gone, w00t.

With the package in good shape Debian developer Pierre Habouzit kindly sponsored my package. And today I got notification that the package has been uploaded Debian!

Next step: Become a Debian developer.

P.S. If any Debian developers from around Oregon are reading I need my GPG key signed :)

In high school I built robots

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While digging through a pile of old CDs I found a video documentary of my first high school robotics project, Bob version 1.0. So, I posted the video up on Google Video. The project was a joint venture between Sherwood and Newberg high schools and I was a lead developer.

The year after this project we created a more robust version of the robot that we aptly named Bob version 2.0. Enjoy the film!