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

I mentor several people in Debian, and have been repeatedly asked to offer an opportunity to ask questions on a live call. I have now started a recurring video call for exactly that, which I call Mentoring Mondays, and it is open for anyone aspiring to contribute to Debian, one of the oldest and most widely used Linux distributions.

Mentoring Mondays have already been happening for the past few Mondays, and this week we had a record 20 people on the call. During the calls so far we have had a demo of updating a package for a new upstream release using gbp, and of how to create a Merge Request on Salsa for a new upstream version. There is clearly a need for this, so I am announcing this now also on my blog, just as I have publicly announced that I offer mentoring for aspiring Debian contributors.

What is Mentoring Mondays?

Mentoring Mondays is a recurring video call that lasts roughly 45 minutes with the agenda:

• Weekly walk-through: demo of something in Debian packaging, explaining the what and why
• Discussion on pros and cons to help participants develop their judgment
• Questions & answers on Debian packaging, or open source contributing in general

This is ideal for you if you:

• Have built a .deb package at least once and want to do it better
• Are stuck on a specific Debian packaging bug and need guidance
• Want to understand how Debian Developers actually work day-to-day

The call is mainly intended for those who want to contribute to Debian (or Debian derivatives, with Ubuntu being the most popular), but anyone can join to learn about things related to contributing to a Linux distribution. Please note that video chat uses Debian Social Jitsi. Joining the call requires authentication using a Salsa account, which anyone contributing to Debian should have anyway.

Calls are not recorded, so participants can chat freely, and are also encouraged to be on-camera for an enhanced sense of community.

Next call: Monday May 4th, 2026

• Time: Monday May 4th, 2026 at 12:30 UTC
• Calendar event: Download 2026-05-04.ics
• Meeting URL: https://jitsi.debian.social/MentoringMondays

Make sure you are logged into Salsa first, before opening the call on Debian's Jitsi instance.

Matrix channel and future meeting time announcements

Please join the Matrix channel #mentoringmondays:matrix.debian.social if you plan to attend Mentoring Mondays. All future meeting times will be announced there. It is also the channel to post questions about Debian packaging to be answered during the call.

The current meeting time is friendly to people in Europe, Asia and Australian time zones, and will repeat at the same time slot on:

• May 11th, 2026 at 12:30 UTC
• May 18th, 2026 at 12:30 UTC
• May 25th, 2026 at 12:30 UTC
• June 1st, 2026 at 12:30 UTC
• June 8th, 2026 at 12:30 UTC

Starting in mid-June the meeting time will change to accommodate participation in different time zones.

Spread the word

Feel free to extend the invite to anyone you think might be interested in joining!

If you mention this on social media, please post using tag #mentoringmondays, or simply boost the existing posts on the social media of your preference: Mastodon, Lemmy, Reddit, Bluesky, LinkedIn, Farcaster, X.

Thanks

A big thanks to Jason Kregting for helping organize. I would also like to thank in advance all the Debian Developers who are able to join the call and be available to participate in discussions and help answer questions.

30 Apr 2026 12:00am GMT

If I had been patient, it would have saved me time. One such instance is following.

From my early blogs, you might know I am using mutt to do email. Just after I get along with mutt, I started using notmuch. Because limit search in mutt is always a pain when you have multiple folders. And what better tool out there than notmuch-mutt to bind both these.

notmuch-mutt provide three macros by default.

macro index <F8> \
"<enter-command>set my_old_pipe_decode=\$pipe_decode my_old_wait_key=\$wait_key nopipe_decode nowait_key<enter>\
<shell-escape>notmuch-mutt -r --prompt search<enter>\
<change-folder-readonly>`echo ${XDG_CACHE_HOME:-$HOME/.cache}/notmuch/mutt/results`<enter>\
<enter-command>set pipe_decode=\$my_old_pipe_decode wait_key=\$my_old_wait_key<enter>" \
      "notmuch: search mail"
macro index <F9> \
"<enter-command>set my_old_pipe_decode=\$pipe_decode my_old_wait_key=\$wait_key nopipe_decode nowait_key<enter>\
<pipe-message>notmuch-mutt -r thread<enter>\
<change-folder-readonly>`echo ${XDG_CACHE_HOME:-$HOME/.cache}/notmuch/mutt/results`<enter>\
<enter-command>set pipe_decode=\$my_old_pipe_decode wait_key=\$my_old_wait_key<enter>" \
      "notmuch: reconstruct thread"
macro index <F6> \
"<enter-command>set my_old_pipe_decode=\$pipe_decode my_old_wait_key=\$wait_key nopipe_decode nowait_key<enter>\
<pipe-message>notmuch-mutt tag -- -inbox<enter>\
<enter-command>set pipe_decode=\$my_old_pipe_decode wait_key=\$my_old_wait_key<enter>" \
      "notmuch: remove message from inbox"

One for search, one for reconstructing threads and one for manipulating tags, which I missed.

Now my impatient part. I have already mapped f6 for my folder movements and in my initial days of notmuch, I only use just search. So I never cared about the f6 macro provided by notmuch-mutt. As time goes by I got very comfortable with notmuch. I was stretching my notmuch legs. I started to live more on notmuch search results date:today tag:unread than more on the mutt index. To the problem, since notmuch-mutt dump all results to a temp maildir location, can't perform flag changes back to the original maildir which was annoying, because we need to distinguish what mail you read and what not when you subscribed to most of all debian mailing list.

I was under the impression that, the notmuch-mutt is not capable of doing so and I just went like that without checking docs. I started doing all crazy hack to sync these maildirs.

I even started reading notmuch-mutt codebase.

Later, I settled on notmuch-vim. Cause I can manipulate flags sync back from notmuch to maildir.

And while searching for something, I accidentally revisited the the the notmuch-mutt macro page and saw the tag manipulation. I was like :( .

If I read about the third macro patiently when added that to config, I could've saved time by not doing ugly hacks around it.

I think I learned my lesson.

28 Apr 2026 6:33am GMT