GettingStarted

Revision 8 as of 2007-05-25 06:28:48

Clear message

So this all sounds cool to you? You want to get involved in the Desktop Team?

Brilliant!

Places to sign up

What

Why

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop

our mailing list, currently low traffic, but expect the new stuff there

https://launchpad.net/people/desktop-bugs

Launchpad team

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs

Bugzilla Bugs, QUITE high-traffic, but worthwhile to catch up

What can I do?

Work on Bugs

Bugs managements is a good part of the work for the desktop team at the moment and required to prioritise the work and now what problems should worked first

Communication with other teams, upstream, Debian, etc

We want to have a good relationship with the people we work with

  • work on forwarding patches upstream (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/UpstreamDelta), having a low delta is better for everybody

  • become point of contact between the distribution and upstream for packages you have an interest in
  • work with other teams and Debian

Documentation

A good documentation help new contributors to know where to start and also not-so-new team members how to do specific things, or what is to do by example

  • help by writing specifications (i.e: documents on launchpad and the wiki that describes the changes we want to get implemented and how)
  • update wiki pages for the DesktopTeam (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam) (goals, list of things to do, documentation, how to start, etc)

Packaging

Most of the work for a distribution is at the packaging level which means there is some place to contribute there too Smile :)

  • help doing desktop packages updates (update the package, test the new version, communicate issues with upstream is there is any)
  • pick a package you have interest in (contacting the usual maintainer before starting to work on it might be a good idea) and start working on it. No need to have uploads right to start on a package, having your first updates mentored is usually a good start and way to learn. If you do a good job you can quickly become the maintainer for that package
  • work on fixing issues by writting patches or backporting them from upstream and applying those fixes to the packages
  • package new software
  • https://launchpad.net/~desktop-bugs/+mentoring

Testing

  • help testing GNOME, write specific test plans

Other

  • new ideas: bring your good ideas of changes for the Ubuntu desktop and help to implement them
  • teams: if you can motivate several people to work on a project creating a team around it is a good way to organize work: pda, printing, mono, telepathy, etc
  • If you have crazy ideas, write them up on ["DesktopTeam/Visions"] and discuss them on the mailing list.
  • If you want to have new software included in the Ubuntu Deskop, head to ["DesktopTeam/NewSoftware"]

  • ...

Useful places to start

* https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU/School/PatchingSources to learn how to create a patch and apply it to a package


Go back to [:DesktopTeam].BRBR [:CategoryDesktopTeam]