Didn’t I mention Day 1 was fantabulous???!!!!!!  Day 2 was something much much bigger. It was beyond our expectations. It had more people, more relevant questions and a very high energy level throughout the session.

July 13th, 2008 was Day 2 (I know I am late in posting this entry. But still not too late) of the Bug Jam preparatory sessions which was being organised.  A day which focussed more on the basics of Debian packaging. Onkar did a great job of guiding people through the session. He started with what packaging is all about, then went on to explain the various important files needed to package and the roles they play, gave a few tips on good packaging habits and mentioning some (read as important) of Debian packaging policies.

After the basic lecturing, it was time for the folks to try something hands-on. He (as would most of the packagers) started off with the “hello world” tar ball. All the needed files for packaging were manually created with the idea of introducing the debhelper scripts at a much later stage. Everybody had great fun though only a couple of guys could come out with a successful .deb (rest had some minor issues which got resolved later). Throughout the session the level of motivation was high given that the session went almost after midnight.

The 2 day workshop came to a close and we were convinced of more Ubuntu bug squashers and packager in the future. The logs can be found here.

PS: I think, I was never able to be complete this blog post for a reason. Today, we got news that my good friend, co- GNUSim8085 developer and the tutor of Day 2, became an Ubuntu Universe Contributing developer. And this post would have been incomplete without the mention of the same. Congrats Onkar! Wish you more progress!