Traditionally at DebConf there's a Technical Committee BOF where we discuss what the TC is, who the current members are, and what we did during the last year. This year, we want to spend our 45 minutes discussing how the TC can be of more value to Debian, so we decided to send the yearly recap as a "Bits" email instead.

I won't cover what the TC is here. It's defined in quite some detail in our constitution: https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution#item-6

Members
=======

The TC membership has a term limit, which means that members of the committee rotate regularly. The algorithm for determining when those rotations happen is rather complicated (see Constitution item 6.2.7), so there's always a chance that we might get this wrong.

On December 31st, 2019, the terms of Didier Raboud and Tollef Fog Heen reached their limit. Thanks Didier and Tollef for your time in the committee!

On June 3rd, 2020, we welcomed two new team members: Sean Whitton and Elana Hashman. Thanks Sean and Elana for agreeing to be part of the committee :).

This is our current roster and expected term limits assuming nobody resigns:

* Philip Hands <philh> - Until Dec 2020
* Margarita Manterola <marga> (chair) - Until Dec 2021
* David Bremner <bremner> - Until Dec 2021
* Niko Tyni <ntyni> - Until Dec 2022
* Gunnar Wolf <gwolf> - Until Dec 2022
* Simon McVittie <smcv> - Until Dec 2023
* Sean Whitton <spwhitton> - Until Dec 2024
* Elana Hashman <ehashman> - Until Dec 2024

The chair of the committee is elected by the current members. There's a not constitutionally-mandated tradition of resigning and calling for votes on a new chair whenever the roster changes, to allow all current members to express their opinion on the matter.

Previous members of the TC are listed here: https://www.debian.org/devel/tech-ctte#retiredmembers

What we did since last year
===========================

The last 12 months were not particularly active with regards to requests for committee decisions. We didn't vote for any non-administrative matters, but we did give some advice.

Advice given
------------

* #932795 - How to handle FTBFS bugs in release architectures

This bug was about handling of bugs and priorities for FTBFS bugs that occur
under specific conditions (like how many CPUs the builder machine has). After
discussing the issue with the involved parties, we came to the conclusion that
the problem was not technical but rather social in nature. We gave some advice
on the matter, which is here:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=932795#171

* #934948 Dropping dependencies to avoid extra binary package when same source
package targets more than one environment

This bug was about a conflict that arose from trying to avoid dependencies
that might only be necessary under some specific condition (for example, a
javascript library could run on the browser and thus not need an
interpreter). There was a long discussion and in the end the committee
gave a rather lengthy piece of advice in the matter, which is captured
here: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=934948#54

* #963112 - Request for advice on katex rejected by ftp masters

This was another instance of a communication problem between a maintainer and
the ftp-team. Our advice on the matter was to keep communicating amicably
until an agreement could be found:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=963112#85

Declined to overrule
--------------------
* #947847 - please install systemd-sysusers using update-alternatives

We were asked to overrule the systemd maintainers in their decision not to use
the alternatives system for systemd-sysusers and systemd-tmpfiles. After a lot
of discussion, we came to the conclusion that we agreed with the systemd
maintainers that using the alternatives system was not the best technical
solution, and so we declined to overrule them.

We suggested other options that could be followed to get to the same desired
result, without the problems identified with using the alternative system.

Full decision here:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=947847#218

Administrative bugs
-------------------

Every decision taken by the TC happens through the BTS, including voting on new members and on who the chair of the committee should be. We had three such bugs this year.

* #961153 Call for votes on TC membership of Sean Whitton
(#961150 had an invalid ballot and got closed without a vote)
* #961156 Call for votes on TC membership of Elana Hashman
* #965080 Resignation + Call for votes for new Chair

How can the TC provide more value to Debian ===========================================

Tomorrow, we have a talk on this matter. This talk is a continuation from the talk given in 2019 on the matter, and we will discuss proposals 1 to 4 from this doc: https://salsa.debian.org/debian/tech-ctte/-/blob/master/talks/rethinking-the-tc.md

We welcome your feedback and questions before, during and after the talk.

Thanks,
Marga on behalf of the Technical Committee

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Hello everyone,

Traditionally at DebConf there's a Technical Committee BoF where we
discuss what the TC is, who the current members are, and what we did
during the last year. Last year we moved most of the contents of that
talk into a "Bits from the Technical Committee" mailing, and spent our
BoF discussing what we are now calling our "Reimagining the TC" project.
That was well received, DebConf is all-online again, and while our
thinking about the future of the TC has become more focused, it is still
a work-in-progress. So we would like to do the same this year.

I won't cover what the TC is here. It's defined in quite some detail in
our constitution and there is also a useful page on www.debian.org: <https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution#item-6> <https://www.debian.org/devel/tech-ctte>

Membership
==========

The TC membership has a term limit, which means that members of the
committee rotate regularly. The algorithm for determining when those
rotations happen is rather complicated (see Constitution item 6.2.7), so there's always a chance that we might get this wrong.

On 31st December 2020, the term of Philip Hands reached its limit. We
would like to wholeheartedly thank Phil for all his work on the
committee.

In March 2021, we welcomed a new team member: Christoph Berg. Thank you
very much, Christoph, for agreeing to be part of the committee.

This is our current roster and expected term limits assuming nobody
resigns:

* Sean Whitton <spwhitton> (chair) - until Dec 2024
* Margarita Manterola <marga> - until Dec 2021
* David Bremner <bremner> - until Dec 2021
* Niko Tyni <ntyni> - until Dec 2022
* Gunnar Wolf <gwolf> - until Dec 2022
* Simon McVittie <smcv> - until Dec 2023
* Elana Hashman <ehashman> - until Dec 2024
* Christoph Berg <myon> - until Dec 2025

The chair of the committee is elected by the current members. There's a tradition, not constitutionally-mandated, of resigning and calling for
votes on a new chair whenever the roster changes. This allows all
current members to express their opinion on the matter.

Previous members of the TC are listed here: <https://www.debian.org/devel/tech-ctte#retiredmembers>

What we've done since last year
===============================

We were asked to make several decisions this year. However, aside from administrative matters, we needed a formal vote for just one of our
decisions. In another case we did not need to make a decision because circumstances changed, but we played a part in keeping things moving.

Decision made
-------------

* #971515 excessive vendoring (private libraries)

This bug was a request to overrule the new maintainer of the
Kubernetes package, who had recently rewritten the packaging. The new
approach involved significantly more embedded code copies than did the
old one. We declined to overrule the maintainer and accepted the
level of vendoring in the package. Our reasons for this are here:
<https://bugs.debian.org/971515#172>
LWN wrote about the discussion: <https://lwn.net/Articles/835599/>

* #976462 Should dbgsym files be compressed via objcopy
--compress-debug-section or not?

This bug was a good example of how the TC is not just for arbitrating
disputes -- in this case, the debhelper maintainer took advantage of
the constitution's provision for maintainers to delegate decisions to
the TC that they would prefer not to take themselves, for whatever
reasons. We decided that debhelper should continue to use
--compress-debug-section, for reasons given here:
<https://bugs.debian.org/976462#103>

* #978636 move to merged-usr-only?

We were asked to decide whether or not Debian 'bookworm' should
continue to support systems which are not using the merged-usr
filesystem layout. We decided that support should not continue beyond
Debian 'bullseye'. The decision is captured here:
<https://bugs.debian.org/978636#178>

Declined to rule
----------------

* #975075 Should NetworkManager support elogind?

We were asked to overrule the maintainer of network-manager and
udisks, to restore sysvinit scripts recently removed from the
packages, and to adjust the package dependencies in order to support
usage with elogind. We were also asked to issue a more general ruling
to cover similar cases.

Together with several interested parties, we managed to achieve a
compromise solution to the dependencies issue in which some hard
dependencies were demoted to recommendations, such that elogind,
network-manager and udisks can be used together:
<https://bugs.debian.org/975075#388>

We declined to issue a more general ruling, and while we also declined
to rule on restoring the sysvinit scripts, said scripts are now
available in a separate package.

* #975381 libinih: drop Debian's custom vendorisation

We were asked to overrule the maintainer of libinih. However, it was
not clear to us that this was really a Debian matter rather than one
for our derivatives, and we didn't receive enough information from the
participants in the dispute to enable us to proceed, despite repeated
requests. So we closed the bug without any decision:
<https://bugs.debian.org/975381#27>

Administrative bugs
-------------------

Every decision taken by the TC happens through the BTS, including voting
on new members and on who the chair of the committee should be. We had
two such bugs this year.

* #982987 Call for votes for new CTTE member
* #985270 Resignation + Call for votes for new Chair

Reimagining the TC
==================

As mentioned, at DebConf we will have a talk to continue to discuss this matter. Of the original five proposals, we are currently focused on
proposals 1 and 2, and our plan is to discuss those at the BoF. We are currently in the process of writing up new notes on these two proposals,
which we intend to add to our git repository in advance of our talk.

You can view the original proposals on salsa, though please be aware
that there has been a lot of discussion since this text was written: <https://salsa.debian.org/debian/tech-ctte/-/blob/master/talks/rethinking-the-tc.md>

We welcome your feedback and questions before, during and after the
talk.

For the Technical Committee:
--
Sean Whitton

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While there's going to be a Technical Committee BOF at DebConf again this
year, we'd like to use that time for discussion. So here's a third yearly
recap as a "Bits" email, possibly establishing a tradition.

We won't cover what the TC is here. It's defined in quite some detail in
our constitution and there is also a useful page on www.debian.org: <https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution#item-6> <https://www.debian.org/devel/tech-ctte>

Membership
==========

TC membership has a term limit, which means that members of the
committee rotate regularly. The algorithm for determining when those
rotations happen is rather complicated (see Constitution item 6.2.7), so there's always a chance that we might get this wrong.

On 31st December 2021 the terms of Margarita Manterola and David Bremner reached their limits. We would like to wholeheartedly thank Marga and
David for all their work on the committee.

In January 2022 we welcomed two new team members: Matthew Vernon and
Helmut Grohne. Thank you both very much for agreeing to be part of
the committee.

This is our current roster and expected term limits assuming nobody
resigns:

* Sean Whitton <spwhitton> (chair) - until Dec 2024
* Niko Tyni <ntyni> - until Dec 2022
* Gunnar Wolf <gwolf> - until Dec 2022
* Simon McVittie <smcv> - until Dec 2023
* Elana Hashman <ehashman> - until Dec 2024
* Christoph Berg <myon> - until Dec 2025
* Matthew Vernon <matthew> - until Dec 2026
* Helmut Grohne <helmutg> - until Dec 2026

The chair of the committee is elected by the current members. There's a tradition, not constitutionally-mandated, of resigning and calling for
votes on a new chair whenever the roster changes. This allows all
current members to express their opinion on the matter.

Previous members of the TC are listed here: <https://www.debian.org/devel/tech-ctte#retiredmembers>

What we've done since last year
===============================

Decisions made
--------------

#994275 Reverting breaking changes in debianutils
https://bugs.debian.org/994275

This was about deprecating which(1) and tempfile(1) in the debianutils
package. The maintainer was handling their deprecation / transition
away from debianutils in a way that others considered too intrusive.
We overruled the maintainer for the most part, except for using
alternatives as a transition mechanism.

#994388 More specific advice regarding merged-/usr and implications of #978636
https://bugs.debian.org/994388

This was a follow-up on our earlier ruling about merged-usr, which said
that "Debian 'bookworm' should support only the merged-usr root filesystem layout, dropping support for the non-merged-usr layout". Prompted
by some maintainers dropping non-merged-usr support right after the
bullseye release, we issued advice about how keeping upgrade paths
working still requires non-merged-usr support during the full bookworm development cycle.

This spring, half a year later, we were notified that dpkg had started
issuing a warning during upgrades about merged-usr systems being
unsupported from their point of view. This created a fair amount of
confusion and escalated long-standing disagreements between developers
on the state of dpkg support for merged-usr and the need for improving
it. The warning was eventually removed, but it is still unclear if and
how the underlying issues will be resolved for the bookworm release.

#1003653 Revision of removal of rename.ul from package util-linux
https://bugs.debian.org/1003653

Here we were requested to reinstate the util-linux 'rename' program,
which is installed on some other Linux distributions as /usr/bin/rename
but on Debian and its derivatives as /usr/bin/rename.ul because of
a long-standing name conflict with another implementation that got
there first. The util-linux maintainer had dropped the binary before
the bullseye release. We overruled the maintainer as requested.

#1007717 Native source package format with non-native version
https://bugs.debian.org/1007717

A mass bug filing about moving away from 1.0 dpkg source formats triggered
this issue, where we were requested to offer advice about their continued usage. There seems to be some tension between "git-first" workflow requirements, and reducing complexity / improving uniformness of source packages in the Debian archive.

We recommended that the 3.0 (native) source format should accommodate
such requirements a bit better, and that the 1.0 source format with a
diff.gz should be phased out where its features not specifically required.

Administrative issues
---------------------

#1003737 Call for votes on TC membership of Helmut Grohne
https://bugs.debian.org/1003737

#1003738 Call for votes on TC membership of Matthew Vernon
https://bugs.debian.org/1003738

#1004611 Resignation & call for votes to elect the Chair
https://bugs.debian.org/1004611

General Resolution: Change the resolution process
https://www.debian.org/vote/2021/vote_003

While we didn't work on this GR as a committee, it's worth mentioning
here as it changed the voting process both for GRs and the Technical
Committee resolutions, particularly the rules about vote timing.

Miscellaneous
-------------

We recently realized that we have stopped sending announcements of TC
decisions to the debian-devel-announce mailing list a few years ago.
We are currently contemplating whether we should re-adopt this practice,
or some variant of it. We'd welcome input from developers on this matter.

Happy hacking,
--
Niko Tyni ntyni@debian.org (on behalf of the committee)

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