News on makedeb

Scheduled Downtime Today on the MPR, Prebuilt-MPR, and makedeb APT repositories

Sun, 05 May 2024 17:42:30 -0500

If you see this page when navigating to the MPR or ProGet instance, read below for more information. You’ll no longer be redirected to this page once the downtime has passed.

The servers running the makedeb Package Repository, Prebuilt-MPR, and makedeb APT repositories will be experiencing downtime today from 7:00 PM CDT to 12:00 AM CDT (5 hours).

Today will involve returning home after finishing my spring semester of college, and servers are being migrated from my school back to my home as part of that process.

Announcing Extension Support in makedeb

Sun, 19 Feb 2023 23:22:42 -0600

makedeb now has support for extensions, which replaces the old options=() argument in PKGBUILDs.

This is a new feature with more functionality to be added, and is still in active development. See the makedeb-extension(5) man page for more information on using makedeb extensions.

Security Incident on the MPR

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 23:25:07 -0600

It’s been discovered that a database leak has occurred on the MPR during some period over the past two days. I have enforced a mandatory password reset for all users before they can log in again, and all API keys have been revoked. In addition, all package maintainers will be required to re-add their SSH public key to their account before they can continue publishing packages.

What got exposed

Everything that was in the MPR database has been potentially leaked. This data includes:

Vulnerability With Email Address Visibility on the MPR

Mon, 25 Jul 2022 01:43:43 -0500

It has been discovered that email addresses were not hidden on the MPR, even if a user had the Hide Email Address checkbox clicked during signup or at a later time via their account page.

This could lead to an account’s email being leaked, which may be problematic if your email needs to remain private for any reason.

Users hosting their own mprweb instance will need to upgrade to commit d13e3f2 to obtain the fix. Users on the official instance will already have this issue fixed.

Announcing the New makedeb Logo

Mon, 04 Jul 2022 04:21:58 -0500

The makedeb project now has a new logo! This is the result of a long decision which ended in the thought that the old logo felt out of place and not modern in general, and that a new one needed to take its place.

You can find the new logo on all of makedeb’s websites. Updated branding assets can be found in the branding repository on GitHub.

Ubuntu 22.04 Support Added to the Prebuilt-MPR

Tue, 28 Jun 2022 12:53:03 -0500

Ubuntu 22.04 support has been added to the Prebuilt-MPR. This enables users to use the Prebuilt-MPR without needing to stay on Ubuntu 20.04, which was previously needed by certain packages.

To set up the Prebuilt-MPR on your system, follow the Getting Started guide.

If you already have the Prebuilt-MPR on your system and are upgrading from Ubuntu 20.04 to 22.04, just replace the focal keyword with jammy in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/prebuilt-mpr.list on your system. Alternatively, you may also run the following:

Ubuntu 22.10 Support Added to the Prebuilt-MPR

Tue, 28 Jun 2022 12:53:03 -0500

Ubuntu 22.10 support has been added to the Prebuilt-MPR, increasing the amount of users who can have access to the Prebuilt-MPR’s quick and easy-to-setup APT repository.

To set up the Prebuilt-MPR on your system, follow the Getting Started guide.

If you already have the Prebuilt-MPR on your system and are upgrading from Ubuntu 22.04 to 22.10, just replace the jammy keyword with kinetic in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/prebuilt-mpr.list on your system. Alternatively, you may also run the following:

Information About the Outage on June 23

Thu, 23 Jun 2022 17:46:04 -0500

The MPR had an outage earlier this morning, lasting until approximately 6 PM CDT. The outage is believed to have started around 3 AM CDT during nightly backups, which is the current guess at what started triggering everything to stop working.

The cause of the outage

The MPR recently ran out of server space, which is believed to have started causing errors when MPR backend services went down, as they didn’t have the needed resources to come back up. The server instance has since been upgraded to a bigger size to accomodate for this change.

Announcing Translation Support for makedeb

Mon, 25 Apr 2022 19:33:56 -0500

After some setup has been completed, users are now able to start contributing translations to makedeb! 🎉

Translation support is being powered by the new Weblate instance for makedeb. This will now serve as the website for all translations across the makedeb ecosystem, including the MPR and documentation.

Currently, only translations for makedeb itself are set up. You can start contributing translations for it at https://weblate.makedeb.org/projects/makedeb/makedeb.

Announcing Extended Variable Support in the MPR Archives

Tue, 12 Apr 2022 17:22:20 -0500

Starting today, extended variables for things such as dependencies are now supported in the MPR Archives.

The new archive can be accessed at /packages-meta-ext-v2.json.gz. This new archive also deprecates the old /packages-meta-ext-v1.json.gz archives, and users of the MPR archives should move over to the new archives as possible (the old version will be updated for the indefinitely future, though it will be dropped eventually).

If you have any questions about the changes made here or anything in general, feel free to send a message in the MPR support room.

Announcing the Finish of the UI Port for makedeb's Websites

Wed, 06 Apr 2022 21:58:50 -0500

After two months of hard word, all of makedeb’s websites are now using the same styling! This is the result of over two months of work, but has resulted in a very polished experience for end users, and allows the entire ecosystem of makedeb to feel more cohesive than it ever has before.

Where we started

makedeb’s websites started out as a bit of a jumbled mess. We didn’t have the four sections that you can now see in the footer (the homepage, documentation, MPR, and news page), but it still felt clunkly nonetheless.

Automatic Out of Date Notifications for MPR Package Maintainers

Tue, 08 Mar 2022 18:19:29 -0600

Package maintainers on the MPR can now get automatic updates for when their packages go out of date.

The new service is powered by Repology, which is used in the backend to check the status of any given MPR package being out of date.

This should help maintainers always ensure that their packages are up to date, such as if they maintain a lot of packages or have other projects that make them unable to always focus on packaging.

Dropping of Support for Version Control Systems Other Than Git

Sun, 06 Mar 2022 18:25:13 -0600

makedeb plans to drop support for version control systems other than Git on April 6, 2022.

This is due to the lack of any seen usage of version control systems outside of Git.

Support for anything other than Git hasn’t ever been officially recognized by makedeb in the first place, but the lack of observation in anyone using it has continued to lead to this decision.

Users who object to this decision can make a comment on the related GitHub issue. If no remarking concerns are made by April 6, support will be officially dropped.

New UI Overhaul for the MPR

Sun, 06 Mar 2022 15:05:38 -0600

After a month and a half of work, I’m very pleased to announce the new UI overhaul for the makedeb Package Repository is finally complete!

This change comes as part of a bigger plan to make all of makedeb’s websites feel more in line with each other. The end goal is to make the end-user experience across makedeb’s websites more cohesive, instead of it just being a jumbled mess of UI styles.

Fading Out of Arch Linux Support

Sun, 27 Feb 2022 16:24:54 -0600

After some discussion among makedeb’s core team and TUs, we have come to the conclusion that we would like to drop support for makedeb on Arch Linux based distributions. Mentions of Arch Linux in makedeb’s repositories and websites is already being done, and full support will be dropped on March 12, CDT.

This is due to some factors that make it harder to proceed with Debian integration if we continue with Arch support:

Information About the Outage on February 24th

Thu, 24 Feb 2022 15:59:30 -0600

On February 24, 2022, the makedeb Package Repository experienced an outage that brought the platform offline for about 12 hours. The backend server that was serving the MPR interface experienced some storage issues, and due to some factors on my part the issue wasn’t able to be fixed until around 4:00 PM CDT.

The MPR is already being used by a wide variety of people and groups to publish their packages, with some being the primary source for their Debian packages. As the lead of the makedeb project, I’d like to apologize for the disturbance this may have caused for users of your software, as well as for users of the MPR as a whole.

Introducing the New makedeb Homepage

Mon, 14 Feb 2022 19:02:25 -0600

Welcome! This website, makedeb.org, is the new homepage for the makedeb project, and is only the beginning of a new series of changes to the web-faced world of the makedeb ecosystem.

There’s still a lot to be done, but this article goes over all of that, as well as everything that’s going to be changing in the near future for end users of the MPR and other makedeb projects.

History - What we had before

Before now, the homepage for the makedeb project was what is now the documentation website. In all reality, the website worked quite fine as a landing page for the makedeb project, but it had a few issues.