GSoC 2024: Project DebMobCom

Introduction

Hi, my name is Nathan Doris and this is my report on contributing to the Debian Mobile Communication project for GSoC 2024 under the guidance of my mentor, Thorsten Alteholz.

Project MobCom

Debian’s Mobile Communication team takes care of updating and creating packages for the open-source mobile communication software suite known as Osmocom. The ongoing development of this software stack requires constant updating and creation of packages to support this progress.

The goal of GSoC 2024 DebMobCom is to update, recreate and add these Osmocom packages.

My Work

Over the few months that I contributed to Debian I successfully updated/recreated more than a dozen packages for DebMobCom. A list of my accomplishments can be found here as well as on the Debian QA page.

What I Learned

Before I began this journey I had very little experience with Debian packaging. By the end of GSoC not only had I learned about building packages but I also gained more knowledge regarding Linux, Debian, shell scripting, automake, C, GNU and gitlab/Salsa. As I reflect back on the past few months I am amazed at the amount and depth of information I have learned. Listed below are examples of items that I found especially important.

Debian Packaging Workflow
- Every package to be built relies upon the information inside the /debian folder. This is where I learned the importance of every templated file such as the control, changelog, rules, watch, *.symbols, *.install and many others. As I worked on these files I witnessed the relationship between them and the finished .deb package. From this workflow I can appreciate the amount of imagination and work that was put into this process.
Debian Tooling
- I learned many tools while building packages but sbuild accompanied by lintian is what I spent the most time with. Sbuild is an autobuilder that produces the final .deb packages. It also integrates with another tool, lintian, which checks each package and informs you of any errors such as policy violations, common mistakes and best practices. Thorsten’s words, ‘keep lintian happy’ still resonate with me after each package build.
- Another tool I frequently require use of is quilt. Quilt is a wonderful tool that manages patches for packages. I became quite well versed in updating patches, removing and also creating my own.
Copyright
- I hadn’t realised how important licensing was until I started contributing to Debian. I predominantly used licensecheck to extract copyright information from source code. This was a tedious task but obviously extremely important in keeping Debian packages free.

Challenges

What I found particularly challenging (and enjoyable) was the amount of troubleshooting required to complete tasks. Although I spent countless hours reading documentation such as the New Maintainers Guide, Policy Manual, Wiki and manual pages it was still extremely difficult. Complex packages are not quite covered in the docs so out-of-the-box thinking is required.

Conclusion

First of all I’d like to say a big thank you to my mentor Thorsten. His support was critical for my success.

Contributing to Debian and the overall GSoC experience was such a positive event in my life. I enjoyed all aspects of the experience. The skills I have acquired will propel me forward into further open-source activities and communities. As I continue to contribute to this project my goal of becoming a Debian Maintainer is becoming a reality.