Why is wicd NEW? Simple, I managed to split the files into separate packages.

As soon as it clears NEW, those who are using experimental will be able to install a cli-only wicd, i.e. no more unnecessary throwing in of GTK+ and X

I will make a call for testing as soon as this package clears the queue. Hope I didn't make too much mistakes

For those of you who don't use experimental, the 1.6.x branch of wicd has been sitting there for some time. It had some bugreports, and I closely cooperated with upstream to get patches merged.

Here we come then, wicd 1.6.1 has been uploaded to unstable. Upstream merged all the patches I provided them (yay!), and it has lots of improvements from 1.5.9.

On the packaging side, it now provides a nice Debconf script to add/remove users to/from the netdev group (already translated into 9 languages, thanks d-i18n people!).

Upstream side:

• it gracefully handles daemon restarts. That was a major issue before, because every package upgrade caused the GUI not to work anymore;
• udhcpc support has been added, this is rather useful to FSO people (thanks gismo for the initial patch!);
• a message box shows up when DBus blocks access to the daemon (just make sure you add yourself to the netdev group, and reload DBus);
• I added support for pre/post-down connection scripts, which upstream kindly merged;
• other smaller things

I am expecting more bugs yet to come, since experimental doesn't have the same userbase as unstable, but, hey, that's how it works.

Also, I'm going to requestsync it to Ubuntu Karmic Koala as soon as possible, hope to get it there before the Debian Import Freeze, planned on Jun 25.

Enjoy it!

Finally, monodoc 2.0 is available in pkg-mono's repository.

Here's a screenshot:

This release includes a patch backported from 2.2 (not yet available in Debian), made by Jonathan Pryor:

> This version supports the following non-Library top-level nodes:
> 
>   - File Formats
>     - [ Mono File Formats - mdoc.5, mono-config.5 ]
>   - Languages
>     - [ C#, etc. ]
>   - Tools
>     - [ Mono Development Tools, etc. ]
>   - Various
>     - [ Anything that has an invalid //source/@path value
> 
> Library nodes ("Base Class Library", "Mono Libraries", etc.) are also
> top-level nodes, and all top-level nodes are sorted by name.

(here's the full thread)

This will ensure easier handling of monodoc manuals for downstream packagers. No more monodoc.xml handling hacks! Yay!

I've finally added my dh_bash-completion script to bash-completion, and fixed the RELEASE number. Hopefully it will soon be released (tomorrow?) -- it actually fixes 23 bugs filed in the Debian BTS. Wow!

Bash-Completion would eventually need to be totally re-written: we are planning to make it modular in some way, mainly to reduce the loading time on login.

Lucas did a very good job: he successfully integrated part of Ubuntu package management with Debian's. As explained in his blog, he took all the data from Launchpad and made a SQLite database with the fetched data. Now we have a "Ubuntu" column in the Debian Developer Packages Overview pages, and also a nice "Ubuntu box" in the PTS pages (see example).

This is really useful: in fact, I've just integrated two patches for john, which were filed in Ubuntu's Launchpad -- and we would probably never have had them in Debian.

Lucas' work will surely improve the collaboration between Ubuntu and Debian maintainers, and this will give end-users improved software... enjoy FOSS advantages!

Today I've been triaging bugs for bash-completion... what a mess! I've been tagging, closing bugs, applying patches, trying to do my best... and it seems like I've lowered the bugs count a bit. Enjoy a cleaner bash-completion! (well, when it'll be released, that is )

Today a new version of *john *(a.k.a. John The Ripper) has landed on Debian. Enjoy!

Finally, today gthumb 2.11.0 (3:2.11.0~svn2319-1) first appeared on Debian systems. It's a SVN snapshot from svn.gnome.org, so don't expect much stability, even though it is not that unstable as one may think, but upstream hasn't released it yet, so I preferred putting it into experimental. It'll start being very unstable when the port to gio begins.

gthumb 2.11.0 has much many new features with regard to gthumb 2.10.x series. First of all, it uses libexiv2 instead of libexif, thus allowing for much more image-metadata (EXIF) manipulation than now. Please, please, please. Test the new package. To do so, and you haven't ever installed anything from experimental, here are some instructions:

1. add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list: deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian experimental main
2. update your packages list: # apt-get update
3. install gthumb from experimental: # apt-get -t experimental install gthumb