fidzu : debian

Back in December, I was working to help organize multiple different conferences. One has already happened; the rest are still works in progress. That's when the thought struck me: why so many conferences, and why do I work for them?

I have been fairly active in the scene since 2020. For most conferences, I usually arrive late in the city on the previous day and usually leave the city on conference close day. Conferences for me are the place to meet friends and new folks and hear about them, their work, new developments, and what's happening in their interest zones. I feel naturally happy talking to folks. In this case, folks inspire me to work. Nothing can replace a passionate technical and social discussion, which stretches way into dinner parties and later.

For most conference discussions now, I just show up wherever needed without a set role (DebConf is probably an exception to it). It usually involves talking to folks, suggesting what needs to be done, doing a bit of it myself, and finishing some last-minute stuff during the actual thing.

Having more of these conferences and helping make them happen naturally gives everyone more places to come together, meet distant friends, talk, and work on something.

No doubt, one reason for all these conferences is evangelism for, let's say Free Software, OpenStreetMap, Debian etc. which is good and needed for the pipeline. But for me, the primary reason would always be meeting folks.

20 Jan 2026 2:27am GMT

A new (micro) maintenance release of our RApiDatetime package is now on CRAN, coming only a good week after the 0.0.10 release which itself had a two year gap to its predecessor release.

RApiDatetime provides a number of entry points for C-level functions of the R API for Date and Datetime calculations. The functions asPOSIXlt and asPOSIXct convert between long and compact datetime representation, formatPOSIXlt and Rstrptime convert to and from character strings, and POSIXlt2D and D2POSIXlt convert between Date and POSIXlt datetime. Lastly, asDatePOSIXct converts to a date type. All these functions are rather useful, but were not previously exported by R for C-level use by other packages. Which this package aims to change.

This release adds a single (and ) around one variable as the rchk container and service by Tomas now flagged this. Which is … somewhat peculiar, as this is old code also 'borrowed' from R itself but no point arguing so I just added this.

Details of the release follow based on the NEWS file.

Changes in RApiDatetime version 0.0.11 (2026-01-19)

• Add PROTECT (and UNPROTECT) to appease rchk

Courtesy of my CRANberries, there is also a diffstat report for this release.

This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can sponsor me at GitHub.

19 Jan 2026 11:21pm GMT

Halfway There

Hurray! I have officially reached the 6-week mark, the halfway point of my Outreachy internship. The time has flown by incredibly fast, yet it feels short because there is still so much exciting work to do.

I remember starting this journey feeling overwhelmed, trying to gain momentum. Today, I feel much more confident. I began with the apps_startstop task during the contribution period, writing manual test steps and creating preparation Perl scripts for the desktop environments. Since then, I've transitioned into full automation and taken a liking to reading openQA upstream documentation when I have issues or for reference.

In all of this, I've committed over 30 hours a week to the project. This dedicated time has allowed me to look in-depth into the Debian ecosystem and automated quality assurance.

The Original Roadmap vs. Reality

Reviewing my 12-week goal, which included extending automated tests for "live image testing," "installer testing," and "documentation," I am happy to report that I am right on track. My work on desktop apps tests has directly improved the quality of both the Live Images and the netinst (network installer) ISOs.

Accomplishments

I have successfully extended the apps_startstop tests for two Desktop Environments (DEs): Cinnamon and LXQt. These tests ensure that common and DE specific apps launch and close correctly across different environments.

• Merged Milestone: My Cinnamon tests have been officially merged into the upstream repository! [MR !84]
• LXQt & Adaptability: I am in the final stages of the LXQt tests. Interestingly, I had to update these tests mid-way through because of a version update in the DE. This required me to update the needles (image references) to match the new UI, a great lesson in software maintenance.

Solving for "Synergy"

One of my favorite challenges was suggested by my mentor, Roland: synergizing the tests to reduce redundancy. I observed that some applications (like Firefox and LibreOffice) behave identically across different desktops. Instead of duplicating Perl scripts/code for every single DE, I used symbolic links. This allows the use of the same Perl script and possibly the same needles, making the test suite lighter and much easier to maintain.

The Contributor Guide

During the contribution phase, I noticed how rigid the documentation and coding style requirements are. While this ensures high standards and uniformity, it can be intimidating for newcomers and time-consuming for reviewers.

To help, I created a contributor guide [MR !97]. This guide addresses the project's writing style. My goal is to reduce the back-and-forth during reviews, making the process more efficient for everyone and helping new contributors.

Looking Forward

For the second half of the internship, I plan to:

1. Assist others: Help new contributors extend apps start-stop tests to even more desktop environments.
2. Explore new coverage: Move beyond start-stop tests into deeper functional testing.

This journey has been an amazing experience of learning and connecting with the wider open-source community, especially Debian Women and the Linux QA team.

I am deeply grateful to my mentors, Tassia Camoes Araujo, Roland Clobus, and Philip Hands, for their constant guidance and for believing in my ability to take on this project.

Here's to the next 6 weeks

19 Jan 2026 9:15pm GMT