{"id":291,"date":"2008-01-06T13:07:51","date_gmt":"2008-01-06T18:07:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crschmidt.net\/blog\/?p=291"},"modified":"2008-01-06T13:07:51","modified_gmt":"2008-01-06T18:07:51","slug":"tilecache-in-debian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crschmidt.net\/blog\/archives\/291\/tilecache-in-debian\/","title":{"rendered":"TileCache in Debian"},"content":{"rendered":"

I took the last week of the year off from work, and I spent most of the time doing a push to get some of the software that I help develop into Debian.<\/p>\n

Debian is a Linux distribution that is built and maintained almost entirely by volunteers: it is the basis of the very popular Ubuntu operating system used on desktops, and is also used heavily for both desktops and servers at MetaCarta. Getting a package into Debian’s main repository is an indication that it meets the projects (relatively stringent) guidelines for inclusion into the repository.<\/p>\n

The first package that I did this for was TileCache. TileCache is a relatively simple to install utility, but it has significant benefits from being installed directly on the system — such as the ability to place the configuration file into the main configuration files locations, etc. In addition, TileCache is a relatively widely used piece of software — meaning it could have benefits for a number of users. <\/p>\n

New packages are typically packaged by a user, then a ‘sponsor’ is searched for. A sponsor is a Debian Developer — someone with the rights to upload packages to Debian — who will take on the review of the packaging materials to ensure that the meet Debian’s guidelines.<\/p>\n

Thanks to a thorough and patient review by Paul Wise, from the DebianGIS list, TileCache was able to be put into Debian in less than a week’s time, and is now available to users of Debian “Sid”\/unstable. Barring any problems with TileCache showing up, in 10 days, TileCache will be migrated to “Lenny”\/testing. Additionally, I believe that this means that TileCache may be included in the next Ubuntu release. (I’m not sure on that — I don’t know the exact way that Ubuntu pulls its packages in.) You can see information on the TileCache package on the TileCache Debian package info<\/a> page.<\/p>\n

As a result of this, I’ve also packed the python-memcache<\/a> library, maintained by tummy.com, ltd, which will make it easier for TileCache users to use the Memcached cache class. <\/p>\n

All in all, my initial experiences with Debian have been very positive, and I’m looking forward to continuing to work on building more of the software I build into Debian packages for wider distribution. Indeed, cleaning up things for Debian has resulted in a lot of other improvements to the code as well: meeting guidelines for documentation, packaging, etc. has resulted in adding documentation that didn’t otherwise exist, and cleaning up what did exist.<\/p>\n

You can track some of what I’m now maintaining or working to get into Debian via my maintainer page<\/a>, as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I took the last week of the year off from work, and I spent most of the time doing a push to get some of the software that I help develop into Debian. Debian is a Linux distribution that is built and maintained almost entirely by volunteers: it is the basis of the very popular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,44,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-debian","category-locality-and-space","category-tilecache"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crschmidt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crschmidt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crschmidt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crschmidt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crschmidt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crschmidt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crschmidt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crschmidt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crschmidt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}