Main Inclusion Report for sourcepackage

Requirements

1. Availability: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/g/gpsd; available for all supported architectures

2. Rationale:

   • Build dependency of kdebase-workspace, kdeedu

3. Security:

   • CVE entries: none

   • Secunia history: ...

   • gpsd does not run as root by default, it can be configured to do so for built in GPSs (comment from the Debian maintainer: gpsd should not run as root, instead configure udev to change the device permissions properly. Also my plan is to run gpsd as user gpsd instead of nobody in the future, which will make it more easy and secure to give it such permissions --bzed)
   • No network activity. Listens on localhost by default, but it is possible to configure it to listen on external interfaces.
   • Does receive and processes incoming data

   • Code checked via http://www.scan.coverity.com/rungAll.html, upstream uses splint and valgrind to audit the code regulary.

4. Quality assurance:

   • Needs configuration for bluetooth GPSs (usually -b as option; usually because bluetooth devices use cheap, new consumer chipsets)
   • Does not ask any debconf questions higher than priority 'low'

   • Debian bugs: nothing much. Debian maintainer takes care of those Ubuntu bugs which are fixable in Debian.

   • Maintenance in Debian is vigorous

   • Upstream is calm, also easy to contact via irc.

   • Upstream bug tracker

   • Hardware: Does deal with hardware, GPS devices
   • Includes a large regression test suite in upstream's svn. Unfortunately this can't be run at build time as it needs pseudo-ptys to work, which is not possible within a buildd chroot. Otherwise I would ship it in the source --bzed.

5. UI standards:

   • Example UIs in the gpsd-clients package, using xaw/ncurses. Rarely used by the normal user.

6. Standards compliance:

   • FHS, Debian Policy compliant

   • Packaging system debhelper, quilt

7. Dependencies:

   • glib, dbus, makedev
   • all in main

8. Maintenance:

   • Minimal mainenance needed
   • Debian responsible for quality
   • Bugs may become critical as gpsd is often used as time source for ntpd

9. Background information:

   • The general purpose and context of the package is clear
   • Upstream call it gpsd

Reviewers

MIR bug: https://launchpad.net/bugs/409796

The author of this report should put their name here; reviewers will add comments etc. too

JonathanRiddell

Several comments from Bernd Zeimetz aka bzed@debian.org - Debian package maintainer