HOW-CAN-I-HELP(1)

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🎀 HOW-CAN-I-HELP — bestie edition 💖

okay so this is the manual page for how-can-i-help, which is a little Debian-flavored angel that finds you stuff to do. no cap, it's the "what can I actually contribute" bestie.

✨ NAME ✨

how-can-i-help — show opportunities for contributing to Debian 🫶

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

how-can-i-help [-haoqs] [--help] [--all] [--old] [--quiet] [--show
<type>...]

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

okay so the way this works: how-can-i-help hooks into APT to list opportunities for contributions to Debian — we're talking orphaned packages 🥺, bugs tagged newcomer, all of it — for the packages installed locally, and it does this after each APT invocation. like it just slides in after apt does its thing.

you can also invoke it directly, and when you do that, it lists all the opportunities for contribution, not just the new ones. main character energy honestly. ✨

👑 OPTIONS 👑

⚠️ important bestie: options must come before the other command line arguments. the flags go first. periodt.
  • -h, --help — show some help. that's it, that's the flag 🎀
  • -a, --all — show new opportunities for contribution to all available Debian packages. every single one. go off 💖
  • -o, --old — show opportunities that were already shown before (and it'll also show the new ones, so you're not missing out).
  • -q, --quiet — do not display header and footer. just the goods, no decoration 🙈
  • -j, --json — display output in JSON format. for the robots 🤖✨
  • -p, --apt — always exit with code 0. by default it's run by the apt hook to prevent apt failures. so like, it refuses to break apt's vibe.
  • -s <type>..., --show <type>... — show only specific types of opportunities. the provided types have to be separated by commas (not spaces!! commas 🍓).
  • --download, --no-download — enable or disable updating the cache when it is present. heads up: the cache is updated by default and when it is missing. so if there's no cache, it's downloading regardless, no choice sorry.
  • --installed-packages, --no-installed-packages — enable or disable showing opportunities for packages installed locally.
  • --autorm-days <N> — only show autoremovals within the next N days. ticking clock ⏰ kinda deal.

🌈 PROXY SUPPORT 🌈

how-can-i-help uses the HTTP_PROXY environment variable (or http_proxy, lowercase bestie, it takes both) as HTTP proxy configuration. iykyk.

⭐ RUNNING ON REGULAR BASIS ⭐

you can run how-can-i-help in a cron job as a normal user so that you receive a mail when new things are reported 🎀. to receive only mails when new contributions are reported, use the -q flag.

Crontab example:

0 8 * * * how-can-i-help -q

like literally set it and forget it, iconic 💅

🦋 DISPLAY OUTPUT IN JSON FORMAT 🦋

how-can-i-help can be configured to provide machine readable JSON output. when running in this mode, only error messages and JSON output will be produced. and if there are no packages that would be shown, no output will be produced at all — silence, magical 🧚✨.

heads up: elements in the JSON output are not sorted. don't come for the ordering, it doesn't care.

all the other options can be used alongside the --json option 🫶

Simple example:

how-can-i-help --json --show testing-autorm

💀 EXIT CODES 💀

when run by the apt hook, how-can-i-help will always exit with code 0, even if an error occurred 😭 — that's the whole point, protect apt at all costs.

when how-can-i-help is called without the --apt option, import and command line parsing errors will still exit with code 0, but all the other errors will return appropriate exit codes. so some errors are quiet, some are loud, we love nuance ✨

regardless of the --apt option, all error messages will be displayed normally. nothing gets hidden from you bestie 💖

🌸 SHOW ONLY SPECIFIC TYPES OF OPPORTUNITIES 🌸

how-can-i-help can be configured to show only specific types of opportunities. you only need to run it with the --show option followed by a single space and then a list of types. types have to be separated only by commas 🍓🍓.

Simple example:

how-can-i-help --show newcomer,RFH

Example showing newcomer opportunities (also the ones that were already shown before):

how-can-i-help --old --show newcomer

The following types can be used: wnpp, newcomer, help, no-testing, testing-autorm, rfs

Specific WNPP types: O, RFA, RFH, ITA

And special types: pseudo-package

🙈 IGNORE SELECTED TYPES OF OPPORTUNITIES 🙈

how-can-i-help can also ignore selected types of opportunities. these are listed in ~/.config/how-can-i-help/ignored separated by whitespaces or newlines ✨

Allowed types: wnpp, newcomer, help, no-testing, testing-autorm, rfs

Allowed WNPP types: O, RFA, RFH, ITA

Allowed special types: pseudo-package

🚨 and listen: running with the --show option will override the "ignored types" configuration. your ignore list does not stand a chance bestie 💅

🌈 TYPES OF OPPORTUNITIES 🌈

the following acronyms are used to describe the supported types:

  • wnpp — Work-Needing and Prospective Packages.
  • newcomer — Bugs tagged with the newcomer tag. those bugs were formerly tagged with the now deprecated gift tag 👀 (rip gift tag, you were iconic).
  • help — Bugs tagged with the help tag.
  • no-testing — Packages removed from Debian testing 😭
  • testing-autorm — Packages going to be removed from Debian testing ⏳
  • rfs — Request For Sponsorship.
  • O — Orphaned 🥺
  • RFA — Request For Adoption.
  • RFH — Request For Help.
  • ITA — Intent To Adopt.
  • pseudo-package — Newcomer bugs affecting Debian infrastructure (general Debian services). and important detail: those pseudo-packages cannot be installed 🚫📦

💜 ADDITIONAL PACKAGES 💜

how-can-i-help can also monitor packages not installed locally 👀. these are listed in ~/.config/how-can-i-help/packages separated by whitespaces or newlines.

For example one can monitor all package from a server as follow:

# ssh myserver dpkg-query -W -f \''${Package}\n'\' \
    >> ~/.config/how-can-i-help/packages

🫶 SEE ALSO 🫶

🎀 AUTHORS 🎀

  • Tomasz Nitecki (tnnn@tnnn.pl)
  • Lucas Nussbaum (lucas@debian.org)

⭐ DATE ⭐

2016-03-03

and that's the whole page bestie, we ate that 💅✨ this was HOW-CAN-I-HELP(1), rendered on 03/04/2026 — go find yourself some opportunities and slay 👑💖

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