Chapter 4. Software available in the Debian system

14

4.2 Who wrote all that software?

For

each

package

the

authors

of

the

program(s)

are

credited

in

the

file

/usr/doc/PACKAGE/copyright

, where PACKAGE is to be substituted with the pack 

age's name.

Maintainers who package this software for the Debian GNU/Linux system are listed in the

Debian control file (see `What is a Debian control file?' on page

27

) that comes with each

package.

4.3 How can I get a current list of programs that have been packaged

for Debian?

A complete list is available from any of the Debian mirrors (

http://www.debian.org/

distrib/ftplist

), in the file

indices/Maintainers

. That file includes the package

names and the names and e mails of their respective maintainers.

The WWW interface to the Debian packages (

http://packages.debian.org/

) conve 

niently summarizes the packages in each of about twenty  sections  of the Debian archive.

4.4 What is missing from Debian GNU/Linux?

A list of packages which are still needed to be packaged for Debian exists, the Work Needing

and Prospective Packages list (

http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/

).

For more details about adding the missing things, see `How can I become a Debian software

developer?' on page

65

.

4.5 Why do I get  ld: cannot find  lfoo  messages when compiling

programs? Why aren't there any libfoo.so files in Debian library

packages?

Debian Policy requires that such symbolic links (to libfoo.so.x.y.z or similar) are placed in sep 

arate, development packages. Those packages are usually named libfoo dev or libfooX dev

(presuming the library package is named libfooX, and X is a whole number).

4.6 (How) Does Debian support Java?

Since the official Java Development kit and Runtime Environment from Sun icrosystems is

non free software, even undistributeable by Debian, it cannot properly be included in Debian.

If you want those installed anyway, please refer to the

java package

package in contrib.