I request assistance with maintaining the cinnamon related packages (not only this specific one). I'm the only one left active in the Debian Cinnamon Team, plus Christoph Martin who helps me when DD uploads are required for new binaries (I'm only DM). I don't have enough time to keep all the packages constantly and optimally updated. I would also like to make further improvements and bring improvements to the upstream packaging, which is in many cases poor and/or obsolete, so as to reduce differences and conflicts. It would be helpful to have help even with just some areas, such as bugreports or some packages. For example, the Mint icons and themes packages, which I had started but then got stuck due to possible copyright and trademark issues with the icons, which could take a long time. Some users also request the packaging of additional nemo extensions. If someone can maintain them, we could consider adding more.
I'd like to help with this. I am a Bookworm w/Cinnamon user and have some experience supporting APIs/SDKs professionally. Currently, I'm "semi-retired" and doing well keeping myself occupied. I've never volunteered like this before, but have 15+ years of Linux and programming experience. I'd be happy to assist as best I could. Thanks, Cliff On Sat, 06 Sep 2025 13:28:12 +0200 Fabio Fantoni wrote: > Package: wnpp > Severity: normal > X-Debbugs-Cc: cinnamon@packages.debian.org, debian-devel@lists.debian.org, fantonifabio@tiscali.it > Control: affects -1 + src:cinnamon > > I request assistance with maintaining the cinnamon related packages (not only this specific one). > I'm the only one left active in the Debian Cinnamon Team, plus Christoph Martin who helps me when DD uploads are required for new binaries (I'm only DM). > I don't have enough time to keep all the packages constantly and optimally updated. > I would also like to make further improvements and bring improvements to the upstream packaging, which is in many cases poor and/or obsolete, so as to reduce differences and conflicts. > > It would be helpful to have help even with just some areas, such as bugreports or some packages. > For example, the Mint icons and themes packages, which I had started but then got stuck due to possible copyright and trademark issues with the icons, which could take a long time. > Some users also request the packaging of additional nemo extensions. If someone can maintain them, we could consider adding more. > >
Thanks Cliff for your reply. From what I see, you have no experience in Debian packaging (or at least I haven't found any contributions from you). I wrote a wiki page to explain a bit about the procedure used by the Cinnamon team, although it requires a minimum of experience in some things and I don't know if I would have time to teach. If you want to take a look: https://wiki.debian.org/Cinnamon/Packaging There is not only the packaging part, there could also be bug triage and testing, for example. Is there anything specific you'd like to help with? Or something you'd like to try and get started with?
Hi, Fabio. Yes, it's true... I haven't been involved with Debian, but
I'm trying to change that.
I have plenty of Debian/Linux experience (15+ years) and I am familiar
with git, but I have no direct experience with Debian packaging. I
certainly understand not wanting to bring on someone with no previous
experience.
It would probably be better for me to start with bug triage and testing.
The reason I decided to reply to your request for help was because of
this paragraph:
It would be helpful to have help even with just some areas, such as bugreports or some packages.
*For example, the Mint icons and themes packages, which I had
started but then got stuck due to possible copyright and trademark
issues with the icons, which could take a long time.*
Some users also request the packaging of additional nemo extensions. If someone can maintain them, we could consider adding more.
Helping with the icon issues sounds like somewhere I could start and
then we could move on from there.
Thanks,
Cliff
Il 28/09/2025 05:12, Cliff Hayes ha scritto: many users but I am not had time to complete them. Here an issue I opened upstream and result of my research: https://github.com/linuxmint/mint-x-icons/issues/198 I haven't found enough certainties and it also seems to me that the copyright and trademark problems of the icons are "ignored" or taken less into consideration by the distributions, perhaps also because unfortunately they continue to add huge quantities of icons that would make it too expensive and limiting (I suppose due to the increase in the use of snap and flatpak). mint-y-icons was added on Debian, mint-x-icons I started prepared it but I was blocked by copyright doubts: https://salsa.debian.org/cinnamon-team/mint-x-icons I can update the packaging if you plan to work on it to see if you can figure out how to get a complete and correct d/copyright file that is acceptable to ftp-master and if there are any icons that need to be removed
Thanks, Fabio. I took a look at this tonight and I'll do my best to help on this and will be in touch. It's been a busy week here, but I should have time to dig in over the next week.
I have updated the packaging: https://salsa.debian.org/cinnamon-team/mint-x-icons I also tried to enable licenserecon in salsa-ci, it don't detect issues with actual d/copyright but probably don't detect correctly about images: https://salsa.debian.org/cinnamon-team/mint-x-icons/-/jobs/8392995
It's taken me some time to get on the same page with you, Fabio, and understand the scale of the challenges here and what we can do about them. It does feel like Clem with Mint should be able to clear this up as Cinnamon originates there and we can both see that many potentially trademarked logos are being included with Cinnamon (i.e. Facebook, Hulu, Google). What I've been able to put together so far is trademarked logos used by anybody need to be approved for use by the company who holds the trademark. It looks like there is another developer working with Clem on the Cinnamon repo - Michael Webster. I'll see if I can reach him: https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/tree/master I don't believe those trademarked logos/icons can be covered by a blanket GPL3 statement for Cinnamon. Someone needs to get express permission from the trademark holder to use those logos. While these companies would likely point you to icons/logos that would allow you to use, you have to ask and some won't let you do it as you saw here: https://github.com/linuxmint/mint-x-icons/issues/201 I'll keep looking into it, but here's what Meta/Facebook says about using their logos in software applications: https://www.meta.com/brand/resources/facebook/logo/ Cliff
Il 02/12/2025 21:31, Amir reza Riahi ha scritto: Thanks for your time. Perhaps it would have been better to reply publicly in the dedicated RFH (and cc also me). Unfortunately, I don't have enough time to properly train someone inexperienced (I didn't find your contribution to Debian from a fast search). Can you tell me what knowledge you have? Perhaps you can help by starting with small things, like I did at the beginning in 2014. Then, over time, I learned by watching what the two experienced DDs on the team at the time (Maxy and Marga) were doing and also by taking the advice they gave me. There's a lot of general documentation, while some things differ depending on the different teams. You can find some things that are partly specific to the Cinnamon team in a short guide I made: https://wiki.debian.org/Cinnamon/Packaging Besides packaging, there would also be bug management (on the debian bugtracker), testing, and maybe even trying to collaborate with upstream on some things if possible.
Hello Fabio and Amirreza, Sorry for the 2 months of silence from my side. I decided to go back to school full-time and that has eaten up nearly all my spare time. I completed my last final today, but will be back to a full load on January 5th. As such, I'm not going to be much help, but I'm not giving up completely here! I did write to Hulu about the Mint team using Hulu logos in their packages, but I received no response. My guess is they don't really care as it's primarily just free advertising for them and they aren't out to enforce their style guide... because, well... doing so would eat labor costs. In any event, I'll revisit the existing work and suggestions from Fabio, then send an update over the next couple of weeks. Cliff
Some examples of possible small contributions about the packaging, for anyone who wants to (before I'll prepare for the new versions), by preparing a merge request on the respective git repository: - remove using of gnome-pkg-tools: details in https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1122833 It's quick and easy and should list the other packages where is need to do this on. If I'm not mistaken, it's very likely unused and therefore shouldn't require advanced searches and checks. - cinnamon: please replace transitional python3-tz dependency with python3-pytz: details https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1121834 It should be checked in the sources to see if it is still actually used, if it is no longer used it should be removed, otherwise it should be replaced - directly Build-Depends on dbus (cinnamon and muffin): see for example https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1122680 for muffin, this requires reading the documentation and doing some checking and research in the source. - depends on non-multiarch-friendly libgirepository1.0-dev: see for example https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1118934 for xapp (there are similar bugs opened in other component), this requires reading the documentation and doing some checking and research in the source. I also started with similar things in 2014 when I was almost inexperienced in packaging.
Hello Fabio! I don’t use Cinnamon on a daily basis, but I’ve used it a few times and it has seemed good to me, which is why I’m interested in getting involved. I’ve subscribed to the mailing list and would like to start contributing. Is there any roadmap, or some guidance on where to start or what the current priorities are? or can we start with RC bugs? Regards
Il 22/01/2026 02:33, Daniel Echeverri ha scritto: Hi, thanks for your help. Some RC issues are related to obsolete software, but require upstream work (upcoming versions) or the new version. 6.6 is currently blocked by the addition of https://github.com/xapp-project/xapp-symbolic-icons. There are some licensing and copyright issues, most of which have been resolved in recent months. I have made a PR to try to improve it further, but a further review would be useful: https://github.com/xapp-project/xapp-symbolic-icons/pull/24 In particular, I wrote my remaining doubts in the comments on that PR and in this other message: https://github.com/xapp-project/xapp-symbolic-icons/pull/21#issuecomment-3760186348 Once clarified and sorted upstream, we can proceed with the upload in Debian (with the correct and complete d/copyright), which I didn't think should be uploaded immediately to NEW only to be rejected and waste the new dfsg team's time.
X-Mailer: aerc 0.20.0On Sat, 06 Sep 2025 13:28:12 +0200 Fabio Fantoni <fantonifabio@tiscali.it> wrote: Hi Fabio. I just pushed cinnamon-desktop 6.6.2, cinnamon-session 6.6.1, cinnamon- control-center 6.6.0 to the repos. The versions have a ~ if anything is needed before they get pushed. cinnamon-settings-daemon is having some weird behavior with dh_install and I can't seem to figure it out. It's somehow not able to find the files which do install? (it is getting installed to a different folder other than debian/tmp FWIW). I am flexible this week to help out.