On 2016-09-07 at 17:18:57 +0200, H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
If there are newer versions available, try to get those fixed in debian sid/unstable so that they migrate to stretch/testing, and then you could possibly get them into jessie-backports.
Well, I am only the messenger who tells that there might be a solution for what potential Pyra users ask for. If it is buggy it is of course something someone should take care of.
from a quick glance at https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=773586 it doesn't seem as much "buggy" as "does not work at all"
One thing about Debian developement that maybe not everybody knows: since a few years there is a set of scripts that automatically removes from testing most packages that have had an open Release Critical (RC) bug for more than a few days [1]_ with no activity. This happens quite often, and in most cases packages get fixed and re-enter the testing archive a few days later. Sometimes this autoremoval happens close to the freeze of the next release, so the package won't be availble in stable.
This package, however, has been removed from testing on 2015-02-03, during the jessie (current stable) freeze and hasn't been brought back into stretch (current testing) even after a year and a half. This is usually a very bad sign of a package that has been abandoned either by its maintainer or by its upstream (or both).
In case you are interested to do the same in some other cases, the way I found out about it is by looking at the Debian Package Tracker: https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/phoneui-apps https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/phoneuid (there are also links from the BTS, at the top of the page for each package)
Going on from that page, I've noticed that there was an action needed "Problems while searching for a new upstream version" but it ended up being a red herring: I followed the link to the VCS in the left panel (which points to the VCS used for *debian package* developement, not upstream) and checked the file ``debian/watch``. In there, I expected to find the location of upstream releases in a format that allows for automatical checks for new versions, but it was empty with a note that upstream only uses git, with no releases.
Since I was already browsing the debian source, I opened the file ``debian/copyright`` which has the copyright informations, but also a pointer to where the source has been taken from, and that pointed to http://git.shr-project.org/git/?p=phoneui-apps.git http://git.shr-project.org/git/?p=phoneuid.git
Sadly, it seems that the project has been abandoned upstream, with no non-trivial commits since 2013. (And I'm not surprised at all, since the project comes from the OpenMoko community, which doesn't really have plenty of working hardware, right now.)
Maybe the Pyra project can give the developers some new motivation to fix issues.
Well, I wouldn't assume that this could happen automagically: upstream may not know about the Pyra (or they may do, since the open hardware world isn't that big, but that doesn't mean they are interested into it)
Maybe just telling the upstream authors about Pyra may help, but they may just not be interested in buying an expensive device just to continue developement of something they have lost interest into: in this case it will have to be somebody in Pyra's community who either revives this project or starts a new one to develop a suite of phone software.
.. [1] The original announce was at https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/09/msg00006.html some details may have been changed in the meanwhile, but the procedure is still active.