My First Contribution to Debian Packaging

I started using Debian GNU/Linux in fall 2020. Shortly after that, I began to think about if I could contribute to the Debian project. In a quite long time, I simply report bugs I found in sid (the Debian unstable branch) through reportbug. Some of such reports are useful, while others were found to be my own mistakes. Even though such kind of reports are helps, but I still have a willing to solve bugs at packaging level, not just reporting bugs.

At the end of Nov 2024, I found a bug related with Nautilus Debian package. It does not specify xdg-user-dirs-gtk as a dependency, which may cause Nautilus failed to create default directory bookmarks.

I found this problem at a fresh installed Debian sid system, and luckily, I figured out how to solve it after some searches.

At first glance, Debian/Ubuntu (deb) packaging might seem complicated (and to this day, I'm still learning), but at that time, I had already grasped some basics and was able to modify package dependencies. Originally, a similarly named package, xdg-user-dirs, was listed as a Suggested dependency. I simply removed xdg-user-dirs and added xdg-user-dirs-gtk as a new Suggested dependency in my merge request.

The friendly maintainer gave my submission a positive and encouraging response. He even went a step further: he moved xdg-user-dirs-gtk into the Depends section of Nautilus. He also added the necessary explanatory notes to the submission. Eventually, my merge request was accepted.

This contribution was full of coincidences. The issue itself was simple enough for a packaging beginner, and I just happened to have the relevant knowledge and knew how to make the necessary changes. I also felt incredibly lucky—long before this submission, I had already created my Salsa account, so I didn’t have to deal with registration and admin approval at that moment. All these coincidences made my first packaging contribution go surprisingly smoothly.

More importantly, this contribution was deeply meaningful to me. This contribution genuinely became a powerful source of encouragement for me, in the time ahead, I hope to continue making more contributions as well.

Lastly, I want to express my heartfelt thanks to the kind maintainer. His immense help made my first upstream Debian/Ubuntu packaging contribution possible. I will always remember this day: November 26, 2024.