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Debian Developers' Corner

General Information

A list of current developers and maintainers, how to join the project, and links to the developers' database, the constitution, the voting process, releases, and architectures.

Debian Organization
Over one thousand volunteers are part of the Debian project. This page explains Debian's organizational structure, lists teams and their members as well as contact addresses.
People behind Debian
Debian Developers (DD) (full members of the Debian project) and Debian Maintainers (DM), contribute to the project. Please have a look at the list of Debian Developers and the list of Debian Maintainers to find out more about the people involved. We also have a world map of Debian developers.
How to join Debian
Would you like to contribute and join the project? We're always looking for new developers or free software enthusiasts with technical and non-technical skills. For more information, please visit this page.
Developer Database
Some information in this database is accessible to everybody, some information only to developers who have logged in. The database contains information such as project machines and developers' OpenPGP keys. To extract a developer's key click on the “PGP/GPG fingerprint” link(s) once you have found them. Developers can change their password and set up mail forwarding for their Debian account. If you're planning to use one of the Debian machines, please make sure to read the Debian Machine Usage Policies.
The Constitution
This document describes the organizational structure for formal decision-making in the project.
Voting Information
How we elect our leaders, choose our logos and how we vote in general.
Releases
This page lists current releases (stable, testing, and unstable) and contains an index of old releases and their codenames.
Different Architectures
Debian runs on many different architectures. This page collects information about various Debian ports, some based on the Linux kernel, others based on the FreeBSD, NetBSD and Hurd kernels.

Packaging

Links to our policy manual and other documents related to the Debian policy, procedures and other resources for Debian developers, and the new maintainers' guide.

Debian Policy Manual
This manual describes the policy requirements for the Debian distribution. This includes the structure and contents of the Debian archive, several design issues of the operating system as well as technical requirements which each package must satisfy to be included in the distribution.

In short, you need to read it.

See also the proposed amendments to the policy.

There are several other documents related to the policy that you might be interested in:

Several programming languages have their own specificic packaging policies:

Several programs or frameworks also have their own specific packaging policies:

Developers' Reference
Overview of the recommended procedures and the available resources for Debian developers -- another must-read.
Guide for Debian Maintainers
How to build a Debian package (in common language), including lots of examples. If you're planning to become a Debian developer or maintainer, this is a good starting point.

Work in Progress: Links for active Debian developers and maintainers

Debian ‘Testing’
Automatically generated from the ‘unstable’ distribution: this is where you need to get your packages in order for them to be considered for the next Debian release.
Release Critical Bugs
A list of bugs which may cause a package to be removed from the ‘testing’ distribution or may cause a delay for the next release. Bug reports with a severity higher than or equal to ‘serious’ qualify for the list, so please make sure to fix those bugs against your packages as soon as you can.
Debian Bug Tracking System (BTS)
For reporting, discussing, and fixing bugs. The BTS is useful for both users and developers.
Information about Debian Packages
The package information and package tracker web pages provide collections of valuable information to maintainers. Developers who want to keep track of other packages, can subscribe (through email) to a service which sends out copies of BTS mails and notifications for uploads and installations. Please see the package tracker manual for further information.
Packages that need Help
Work-Needing and Prospective Packages, WNPP for short, is a list of Debian packages in need of new maintainers and packages that have yet to be included in Debian.
Incoming System
Internal archive servers: this is where new packages are uploaded to. Accepted packages are almost immediately available via a web browser and propagated to mirrors four times a day.
Note: Due to the nature of ‘incoming’, we do not recommend mirroring it.
Lintian Reports
Lintian is a program which checks whether a package conforms to the policy. Developers should use it before every upload.
Debian ‘Experimental’
The ‘experimental’ distribution is used as a temporary staging area for highly experimental software. Please install the experimental packages only if you already know how to use ‘unstable’.
Debian Wiki
The Debian Wiki with advice for developers and other contributors.

Projects: Internal Groups and Projects

Miscellaneous Links