2.1. Getting started

So, you’ve read all the documentation, you’ve gone through the Debian New Maintainers’ Guide (or its successor, Guide for Debian Maintainers), understand what everything in the hello example package is for, and you’re about to Debianize your favorite piece of software. How do you actually become a Debian developer so that your work can be incorporated into the Project?

Firstly, subscribe to debian-devel@lists.debian.org if you haven’t already. Send the word subscribe in the Subject of an email to debian-devel-REQUEST@lists.debian.org. In case of problems, contact the list administrator at listmaster@lists.debian.org. More information on available mailing lists can be found in Mailing lists. debian-devel-announce@lists.debian.org is another list, which is mandatory for anyone who wishes to follow Debian’s development.

You should subscribe and lurk (that is, read without posting) for a bit before doing any coding, and you should post about your intentions to work on something to avoid duplicated effort.

Another good list to subscribe to is debian-mentors@lists.debian.org. See Debian mentors and sponsors for details. The IRC channel #debian can also be helpful; see IRC channels.

When you know how you want to contribute to Debian, you should get in contact with existing Debian maintainers who are working on similar tasks. That way, you can learn from experienced developers. For example, if you are interested in packaging existing software for Debian, you should try to get a sponsor. A sponsor will work together with you on your package and upload it to the Debian archive once they are happy with the packaging work you have done. You can find a sponsor by mailing the debian-mentors@lists.debian.org mailing list, describing your package and yourself and asking for a sponsor (see Sponsoring packages and https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMentorsFaq for more information on sponsoring). On the other hand, if you are interested in porting Debian to alternative architectures or kernels you can subscribe to port specific mailing lists and ask there how to get started. Finally, if you are interested in documentation or Quality Assurance (QA) work you can join maintainers already working on these tasks and submit patches and improvements.

One pitfall could be a too-generic local part in your mailadress: Terms like mail, admin, root, master should be avoided, please see https://www.debian.org/MailingLists/ for details.