KDEPaperCuts

Dev Week -- KDE/Kubuntu Junior Jobs/Papercuts -- seele -- Fri, Jan 29

UTC

   1 [19:03] <maco> Hiya
   2 [19:04] <maco> Ready for the Papercuts session?
   3 [19:05] <maco> I'm going to guess that anyone wanting to sit on in this session is here by now, so...
   4 [19:06] <maco> Hi, I'm Mackenzie, and I'm a MOTU.  I was asked this morning to cover this session for Celeste since she has school, so I'm going off of her notes
   5 [19:06] <maco> This session is on KDE Junior Jobs and *buntu Papercuts (or paperkuts <g>)
   6 [19:07] <maco> So first off, if you don't know yet, Kubuntu is a version of Ubuntu that uses KDE for its desktop environment instead of GNOME
   7 [19:08] <maco> Most development happens upstream at KDE (kde.org) and then the Kubuntu developers package up each upstream release
   8 [19:09] <maco> We try to stick closely to upstream, as giving back to the KDE is a good thing, and having to maintain a bunch of patches is a bad thing
   9 [19:09] <maco> (or at least a not-fun thing)
  10 [19:10] <maco> One thing we do because users seem to like it and it helps KDE get extra testing is package up pre-releases for KDE
  11 [19:10] <maco> For example, KDE SC 4.4 RC2 is currently in one of the (many) Kubuntu PPAs
  12 [19:10] <maco> (more info can always be found at kubuntu.org)
  13 [19:11] <maco> A number of the Kubuntu developers also write patches which then get submitted upstream to KDE
  14 [19:11] <maco> and then those new features end up in whatever the next final release is for KDE
  15 [19:12] <maco> If you're interested in getting started contributing to Kubuntu and KDE, then bug fixes, small patches, papercuts, small improvements on existing features, and other junior jobs are all a GREAT way to get started
  16 [19:14] <maco> For Karmic, the Hundred Papercuts project was started in Ubuntu, and Kubuntu had a share of them
  17 [19:14] <maco> (see: https://launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts )
  18 [19:15] <maco> The goal is to fix 100 papercuts per release, or in the case of Kubuntu (as it's a smaller team (can I add, "and KDE's already awesomer than GNOME"?)), 10 papercuts
  19 [19:16] <maco> A papercut is defined as "a trivially fixable usability bug that the average user would encounter in default installation of Ubuntu or Kubuntu Desktop Edition"
  20 [19:17] <maco> Ok well, that's the surface goal
  21 [19:18] <maco> The REAL goal is to fix all those little annoyances that pile up until the desktop becomes unusable or at least a pain in the rear
  22 [19:19] <maco> For example, a task may require that you click 10 times among 3 different windows, and well, if you only have to do that once every few months, that's not a big deal
  23 [19:19] <maco> but if you have to do that 50 times per day...
  24 [19:19] <maco> It gets old fast ;)
  25 [19:19] <maco> Anyway, Kubuntu tries to deal with 10 paperkuts per release, and we try to get the patches for these paperkuts accepted in upstream KDE as well
  26 [19:20] <maco> Because, again, maintaining patches is much less fun than writing them
  27 [19:21] <maco> Some of the past Kubuntu paperkuts were cases where text was a little too technical for an end-user and had to be changed, or in the Kickoff menu the user's icon was showing next to the search box instead of the user's name
  28 [19:22] <maco> Here are a list of Kubuntu's papercuts from Karmic & Lucid: https://bugs.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bugs?field.searchtext=kubuntu&orderby=-importance&search=Search&field.status%3Alist=NEW&field.status%3Alist=INCOMPLETE_WITH_RESPONSE&field.status%3Alist=INCOMPLETE_WITHOUT_RESPONSE&field.status%3Alist=CONFIRMED&field.status%3Alist=TRIAGED&field.status%3Alist=INPROGRESS&field.status%3Alist=FIXCOMMITTED&field
  29 [19:22] <maco> .status%3Alist=FIXRELEASED&assignee_option=any&field.assignee=&field.bug_reporter=&field.bug_supervisor=&field.bug_commenter=&field.subscriber=&field.omit_dupes.used=&field.omit_dupes=on&field.has_patch.used=&field.has_cve.used=&field.affects_me.used=&field.tag=&field.tags_combinator=ANY
  30 [19:23] <maco> (and apparently not all of the kubuntu ones were tagged...)
  31 [19:25] <maco> I suspect Celeste had links already arranged for seeing past and present Kubuntu papercuts, but I don't have them, so...
  32 [19:26] <maco> here's some more that say kde but dont say kubuntu: https://bugs.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bugs?field.searchtext=kde&orderby=-importance&search=Search&field.status%3Alist=NEW&field.status%3Alist=INCOMPLETE_WITH_RESPONSE&field.status%3Alist=INCOMPLETE_WITHOUT_RESPONSE&field.status%3Alist=CONFIRMED&field.status%3Alist=TRIAGED&field.status%3Alist=INPROGRESS&field.status%3Alist=FIXCOMMITTED&field
  33 [19:26] <maco> .status%3Alist=FIXRELEASED&assignee_option=any&field.assignee=&field.bug_reporter=&field.bug_supervisor=&field.bug_commenter=&field.subscriber=&field.omit_dupes.used=&field.omit_dupes=on&field.has_patch.used=&field.has_cve.used=&field.affects_me.used=&field.tag=&field.tags_combinator=ANY
  34 [19:26] <maco> Anyway, moving on...
  35 [19:26] <maco> If you think you've found a papercut, submit it as a bug to Launchpad
  36 [19:27] <maco> Mark it as  bug both against the "hundredpapercuts" project and the specific package in Kubuntu if you know it
  37 [19:28] <maco> If you would like to fix one of those papercuts you see up there but you need some help ^  join #kubuntu-devel and
  38 [19:28] <maco> er... and we'll help you out
  39 [19:29] <maco> OK, so that's papercuts.  I mentioned something called "Junior Jobs" at the start too
  40 [19:30] <maco> Maybe you've seen bugs tagged "bitesize" in Launchpad, or you might know about Daniel Holbach's Harvest project to show low-hanging fruit for new developers
  41 [19:30] <maco> Junior Jobs are KDE's version of that same idea
  42 [19:30] <maco> And I'm being told in -chat that I should point out that "job" is like "volunteer job" in case you're thinking you can get money for it. Because you won't.
  43 [19:32] <maco> QUESTION: link for the harvest project? (i am google challenged at the moment)
  44 [19:32] <maco> Harvest can be found at http://daniel.holba.ch/harvest
  45 [19:32] <maco> There are plans to make it prettier
  46 [19:34] <maco> By the way, my computer is currently telling me that opening the "sourcepackage list" page on Harvest while having ~100 other tabs open in Firefox is an idea to which it is opposed. You've been warned.
  47 [19:35] <maco> OK, so...Junior Jobs.  The KDE techbase (one of the KDE wikis) page for Junior Jobs is here: http://techbase.kde.org/Contribute/Junior_Jobs
  48 [19:36] <maco> As you can see, KDE separates its Junior Jobs by sub-project, so you can see just KMail or just Kopete or whatever's available jobs
  49 [19:37] <maco> Or you can see all of the KDE Junior Jobs here: https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?keywords=junior-jobs&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&cmdtype=doit
  50 [19:38] <maco> Earlier this question came up and I held it til reaching the Junior Jobs part...
  51 [19:38] <maco> QUESTION: some bugs marked as Junior Jobs don't sound easy, like implementing a new KIO slave, how come they are marked as Junior Job?
  52 [19:39] <maco> Now, I don't have a lot of involvement with upstream KDE like Celeste does, so she'd have a better answer than I do, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a bit of mentorship in there somewhere
  53 [19:40] <maco> I also don't think Junior Jobs are supposed to be aimed at "I've never written code before" but rather "I can code...kind of...but I've never worked on such a big project before"
  54 [19:40] <maco> And a lot of the Papercuts are quite a bit more advanced than "I've never written code before" too, so... keep that in mind
  55 [19:42] <maco> Nightrose: do you have a better answer to "some bugs marked as Junior Jobs don't sound easy, like implementing a new KIO slave, how come they are marked as Junior Job?"
  56 [19:43] <maco> Oh yeah, let me introduce Nightrose, aka Lydia
  57 [19:43] <maco> She's the Amarok lead, I believe
  58 [19:44] <Nightrose> jep :)
  59 [19:44] <Nightrose> so people said some of the junior jobs are hard
  60 [19:44] <Nightrose> there are two reasons for this:
  61 [19:45] <Nightrose> 1) the person who marked it as a junior job didn't know the program very well and didn't know how hard it actually is
  62 [19:45] <Nightrose> 2) the person who marked it is having a hard time judging how hard a particular task is
  63 [19:45] <Nightrose> neither is really nice but it happens
  64 [19:45] <Nightrose> we try to keep them at junior level as wel as we can of course :)
  65 [19:46] <maco> Nightrose: can they be un-marked as JJs?
  66 [19:46] <Nightrose> yes of course - tell me or other people in #kde-bugs
  67 [19:46] <maco> Great! Thank you :)
  68 [19:46] <Nightrose> you're welcome :)
  69 [19:47] <maco> Feel free to thwap me if I say anything wrong/stupid between now and 15 minutes :)
  70 [19:48] <maco> <Quintasan> maco, Nightrose: is anyone in particular responsible for reporting PaperKuts to KDE? I mean something like Bug #510219, marked as tiriaged but not linked to any of KDE bugs, it's safe for me to report that upstream and link it to LP?
  71 [19:48] <maco> Go right ahead :)
  72 [19:49] <maco> QUESTION: If I want to patch KDE progressbar animation smoothness, where would I start? The oxygen theme? (I've patched it locally before :) )
  73 [19:49] <maco> Neither Nightrose nor I know know to answer this one, so I guess now's the time to note that on this IRC server there is #kde-devel, and they would likely have an answer
  74 [19:51] <maco> And Mamarok is pointing out that Nightrose is release manager, not lead. oops!
  75 [19:51] <maco> Anyway, time to start wrapping up
  76 [19:52] <maco> So the benefits to participating in Junior Jobs or Papercuts are that you get a chance to test out your skills in a *real* project, not those silly things the teachers make you write at school
  77 [19:52] <maco> You get a chance to gain some rapport with the rest of the project so that as your skillset grows, they know and trust you
  78 [19:52] <maco> You end up witha more usable desktop, which is always great
  79 [19:53] <maco> programming, why hasn't it caught with enough strength? Do women like C++?
  80 [19:53] <maco> bah
  81 [19:53] <maco> QUESTION: if Qt (C++) is supposedly hundreds of times better than GTK+ (C) for GUI programming, why hasn't it caught with enough strength? Do women like C++?
  82 [19:54] <maco> Honestly, the reason I know how to do C/GTK+ programming and not C++/Qt is that my school taught C, not C++
  83 [19:54] <maco> and I haven't gotten around to learning C++
  84 [19:55] <maco> In either case, PyGTK and PyQt (and PyKDE) exist, so even so, learning C/C++ is not a requirement to participation
  85 [19:55] <maco> And I'm just not going to answer that women...C++ part.  People use what they like, regardless of gender.
  86 [19:55] <Nightrose> there are also bindings for scripting languages
  87 [19:55] <Nightrose> so you can do cool stuff in ruby or java script
  88 [19:56] <maco> This does bring up the point that on top of learning just Python or C++, there are libraries you need to learn to work in the KDE world, so Junior Jobs / Papercuts give you a chance to build on top of your base programming knowledge if you just know Python or C++
  89 [19:57] <maco> Any other quick questions in the 3 minutes we have left?
  90 [19:58] <maco> QUESTION: Does everybody know that KDE+Kubuntu will rule the world?
  91 [19:58] <maco> Yes, but whether they're willing to admit it is another thing entirely
  92 [19:59] <maco> <Mamarok> also, Qt/C++ allows to do shorter code, the Qt framework is very powerful   <-- good point. you'll find you can do a lot of painful things very easily as you get into KDE programming
  93 [20:00] <maco> OK, time's up here. Hope everyone's all excited to get cracking on these bugs
  94 [20:00] <maco> Bye!
  95 [20:00] <Nightrose> thanks everyone for coming and maco for rocking :)
  96 [20:01] <maco> Thanks for your help, Lydia

MeetingLogs/devweek1001/KDEPaperCuts (last edited 2010-02-01 17:53:58 by unassigned)