2023-04-17 15:54:12 +00:00
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date: 2019-04-30T00:00:00-05:00
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title: "Debian Bug Squashing Party, Toronto version"
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2023-04-18 16:16:48 +00:00
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tags: [en_us, english, debian, free-software]
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2023-04-17 15:54:12 +00:00
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---
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Heya!
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This past Saturday, April 27th,
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2019,
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[Samuel Vale](https://svale.eng.br/), [Alex Volkov](https://flamy.ca/)
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and I organized
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the
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[Toronto Bug Squashing Party](https://wiki.debian.org/BSP/2019/04/ca/Toronto) here
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in the city. I was very happy with the outcome, especially the fact
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that we had more than 10 people attending, including a bunch of folks
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that came from Montréal!
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The start
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---------
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It was a cold day in Toronto, and we met at the Mozilla Toronto office
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at 9 in the morning. Right there at the door I
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met [anarcat](https://anarc.at), who had just arrived from Montréal.
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Together with Alex, we waited for [Will](https://twitter.com/hawkinsw)
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to arrive and open the door for us. Then, some more folks started
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showing up, and we waited until 10:30h to start the first presentation
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of the day.
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Packaging 101
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-------------
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Anarcat kindly gave us his famous
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"[Packaging 101](https://anarc.at/software/debian-development/)"
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presentation, in which he explains the basics of Debian packaging.
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Here's a picture of the presentation:
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2023-05-16 03:42:35 +00:00
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2023-04-17 15:54:12 +00:00
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And another one:
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2023-05-16 03:42:35 +00:00
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2023-04-17 15:54:12 +00:00
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The presentation was great, and Alex recorded it! You can watch
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it [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O83rIRRJysA) (sorry, youtube
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link...).
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During the day, we've also taught a few tricks about
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the [BTS](https://bugs.debian.org), in order to help people file bugs,
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add/remove tags, comment on bugs, etc.
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Then, we moved on to the actual hacking.
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Bug fixing
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----------
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This part took most of the day, as was expected. We started by
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looking at the RC bugs currently filed against Buster, and deciding
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which ones would be interesting for us. I won't go into details here,
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but I think we made great progress, considering this was the first BSP
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for many of us there (myself included).
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You
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can
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[look at the bugs we worked on](https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/bts-usertags.cgi?user=debian-release%40lists.debian.org&tag=bsp-2019-04-ca-toronto),
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and you will see that we have actually fixed 6 of them! I even fixed
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a JavaScript bug, which is something totally out of my area of
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expertise ;-).
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I also noticed something interesting. The way we look at bugs can
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vary wildly between one DD and another. I mean, this is something I
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always knew, especially when I was more involved with the
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debian-mentors effort, but it's really amazing to feel this in person.
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I tend to be more picky when it comes to defining what to do when I
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start to work on a bug; I try really hard to reproduce it (and spend a
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lot of time doing so), and will really dive deep into the code trying
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to understand why some test is failing. Other developer may be less
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"pedantic", and choose to (e.g.) disable certain test that is failing.
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In the end, I think everything is a balance and I tried to learn from
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this experience.
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Anyway, given that we looked at 12 bugs and solved 6, I think we did
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great! And this also helped me to get my head "back in the Debian
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game"; I was too involved with GDB these past months (there's a post
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about one of the things I did which is coming soon, stay tunned).
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Look at us hacking:
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2023-05-16 03:42:35 +00:00
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2023-04-17 15:54:12 +00:00
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Wrap up
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-------
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At 19h (or 7p.m.), we had to wrap up and prepare to go. Because we
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had a sizeable number of Brazilians in the group (5!), the logical
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thing to do was to go to a pub and resume the conversation there :-).
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If I say it was one of the *first* times I went to a pub to drink with
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newly made friends in Toronto, you probably wouldn't believe, so I
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won't say anything...
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I know one thing for sure: we want to make this again, and soon! In
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fact, my idea is to do another one after Buster is released (and after
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the summer is gone, of course), so maybe October. We'll see.
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Acknowledgements
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----------------
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I would like to
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thank
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[Mozilla Toronto](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contact/spaces/toronto/) for
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hosting us; it was awesome to finally visit their office and enjoy
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their hospitality, personified
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by [Will Hawkins](https://twitter.com/hawkinsw). It is impossible not
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to thank [anarcat](https://anarc.at/), who came all the way from
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Montréal to give us his Debian Packaging 101 talk. Speaking of the
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French-Canadian (and Brazilian), it was super awesome
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meeting [Tiago Vaz](https://wiki.debian.org/Tiago%20Bortoletto%20Vaz)
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and [Tássia Camões](https://www.ime.usp.br/~tassia/index.html), and it
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was great seeing [Valessio Brito](http://valessiobrito.com.br/) again.
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Let me also thank the "locals" who attended the party; it was great
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seeing everybody there! Hope I can see everybody again when we make
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the second edition of our BSP :-).
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