My experience at MiniDebConf Campinas 2026

Last week, I spent the entire week in Campinas attending MiniDebConf and MiniDebCamp. The Debian Brazil community organizes this event every year, and this year's edition was the biggest so far.

During MiniDebCamp, I sponsored a few uploads and spent two days teaching packaging to two participants. I usually teach packaging online, so it was refreshing to do it in person. I believe the experience was much better than teaching online.

One of my mentees introduced me to the DDTSS (Debian Distributed Translation Server Satellite). Even though there are many i18n contributors in Brazil, this was my first time learning about this system. I plan to contribute to translations over the next few weeks using DDTSS.

My Activities

NOTE: I translated every talk title; the original titles are in PT-BR, so some details may have been lost in translation.

I presented three talks and led one BoF session. The talks are all available on Debian's Peertube:

• Get to know dh-make-vim
• Zero-Code Instrumentation of an application using eBPF
• DD non-uploading can upload

You can also find my slides at people.d.o.

My first talk was a showcase of dh-make-vim, a tool I created and have been using for a few months. Some people tested it and found bugs, which was really nice to see.

My second talk was essentially a live version of my blog post Zero-Code Instrumentation of an Envoy TCP Proxy using eBPF.

I also gave a lightning talk about something many people are not aware of: non-uploading DDs can also sponsor uploads.

If you're interested, this bug report provides more context: tracker.debian.org: Signed by field is missing when sponsoring as DD non-uploading

Finally, I led the BoF session "Experiences, lessons learned, and next steps from the mentoring sessions". This was my favorite session, we had many participants with different perspectives and ideas, which led to a very engaging discussion. I'm still working on the action plans and I plan to release them soon.

Here are some photos of these activities:

My favorite activities

This is a list, in no particular order, of some of the sessions I enjoyed the most:

• Salsa CI, showing features that almost nobody knows

  I wrote a blog post about one of the things I learned in this talk, and there is still a lot more to explore. Aquila Macedo is developing many cool features in Salsa CI.

• Free Software: Freedom, Autonomy, Sovereignty

  I had been really looking forward to this one. Alexandre Oliva is a very important figure in the Free Software movement, especially in South America. I'll need to rewatch it, my futures talks about Free Software will likely be inspired by this one.

• What I've lived/seen in 33 Years of Debian & Free Software in general

  Eduardo Maçan was the first Debian Developer in Brazil, so it's always valuable to hear the story from someone who was part of it.

• Symbolism - an introduction

  Despite the title, this talk was not about astrology! I'll probably rewatch it as well, as there is a lot of information to take in. I really like the passion Sérgio Durigan has for C. He is also a great speaker and knows how to guide the audience through the topic.

• Debate: Contemporary controversies in Debian

  The debate itself was great, but the conversations we had afterward were even better. I changed some of my opinions after hearing different perspectives. I don't think this format would work at DebConf, but I would definitely like to attend another one like this.

• Why LTS on Debian?

  I had a few questions about LTS, and Kanashiro and Santiago answered them both during the talk and in the Q&A session. They also shared some challenges and how to avoid them, it was a great learning experience.

• From my first contribution to the Debian Maintainer

  Polkorny was a bit shy but did a great job! I really enjoy this kind of talk. It is always nice to see the different paths people take.

Unfortunatly, I couldn't attend everything I was interested in, as always.

DayTrip - The Brazilian Particle Accelerator

Sirius is the largest and most complex scientific infrastructure ever built in Brazil and one of the most advanced synchrotron light sources in the world. My jaw dropped the entire time; it's hard to describe how incredible this is.

My favorite detail: they're running Debian :)

Wrap up

I believe this was the best MiniDebConf Brazil so far. There were many other things I chose not to include here, as this post is already quite long. Still, here are a few more highlights:

• A Bug Squashing Party
• Driving Samuel Henrique's drones
• Lots of capybaras
• A small birthday party
• A visit to two data centers

30 Apr 2026 7:14pm GMT

Charles Stross wrote an interesting blog post about the apparent desire of super rich people to kill the poor, it seems that the people in power want to make all the conspiracy theories come true [1].

Wouter wrote an insightful blog post about the need for free firmware [2].

Matthew Garrett wrote an interesting blog post about the potential security issues raised by non-free firmware and firmware updates [3]. Which goes well with Wouter's post.

Interesting article about fake job adverts with a code sample for the applicant to show their skils which depends on hostile libraries that install a RAT [4]. Do we need Qubes for software development nowadays?

Bruce Schneier wrote an insightful and informative article about the two-tiered Internet access scheme in Iran and how it is bad for society [5].

Caleb Hearth gave an interesting talk Don't Get Distracted about the often ignored unethical uses of software [6].

Techdirt has an insightful article from 2025 Fascism For First Time Founders about why it's a bad idea for tech companies to support fascism, this aged very well [7].

Dr. Bret C. Devereaux wrote an informative blog post about why fascists always fail at war, and also authoritarians in general [8].

Bruce Schneier and Nathan Sanders wrote an interesting blog post about the new Japanese political party Team Mirai, we need this sort of party in every country to save democracy [9].

Sam Varghese wrote an insightful article about the current situation in Israel and Iran and the poor performance of Australian journalists in covering the issues [10].

Louis Rossman made a video about the Norwegian Consumer Council's advertising campaign about Enshittification, he includes an excellent advert that the Norwegians produced [11].

Marga Manterola gave a really good talk at Fosdem 2026 "Free as in Burned Out: Who Really Pays for Open Source?" [12].

• [1] https://tinyurl.com/2xqrrxkf
• [2] https://tinyurl.com/yvahow2x
• [3] https://tinyurl.com/27m7qusr
• [4] https://tinyurl.com/2adpd7gf
• [5] https://tinyurl.com/2bn627x2
• [6] https://calebhearth.com/dont-get-distracted
• [7] https://tinyurl.com/2b7m8pwa
• [8] https://tinyurl.com/2c9m6v4v
• [9] https://tinyurl.com/2ybcjpa5
• [10] https://sams-blog.com/?p=5730
• [11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii-D9LaitUw
• [12] https://tinyurl.com/26j5a8gj

30 Apr 2026 1:09pm GMT

How to build reverse dependencies using Salsa CI

Last week, I attended MiniDebConf Campinas, and one of my favorites talks was "Salsa CI, showing features that almost nobody knows" by Aquila Macedo.

One of the things I learned is that we can easily build reverse dependencies using:

$ git push -o ci.variable="SALSA_CI_DISABLE_BUILD_REVERSE_DEPENDENCIES=0"

I tried this option before uploading typer version 0.20.0-1:

This is an amazing feature. Thanks to everyone involved in making it happen!

30 Apr 2026 2:27am GMT