Ubuntu Wiki

Dev Week -- Question and Answers -- -- Fri, Jan 29

UTC

(10:59:33 AM) dholbach: WELCOME TO THE LAST DAY OF UBUNTU DEVELOPER WEEK!
(10:59:57 AM) dholbach: As you can see on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDeveloperWeek we have a bunch of GREAT sessions lined up for today
(11:00:24 AM) dholbach: If you have any questions, please ask them in #ubuntu-classroom-chat and prefix them with QUESTION:
(11:00:46 AM) dholbach: ie: QUESTION: Does Jono really just listen to Death Metal music?
(11:01:20 AM) dholbach: and if you'd prefer not to ask questions in English have a look at the bottom of https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDeveloperWeek - we have a couple of channels where you can ask questions in your native language :)
(11:01:38 AM) dholbach: (and consider helping out there too)
(11:02:11 AM) dholbach: ok... I just learned that our first speaker has trouble making it to the session
(11:02:21 AM) dholbach: I'll make sure that he'll repeat the session some time later
(11:02:23 AM) dholbach: I'm sorry
(11:02:42 AM) dholbach: I'd suggest we make this a Question and Answer session
(11:03:03 AM) dholbach: feel free to ask every development-related question you can think of during this session and I'll try to get you an answer :)
(11:03:13 AM) dholbach: <Daviey> QUESTION: Does Jono really just listen to Death Metal music?
(11:03:32 AM) godzilla is now known as Guest57848
(11:03:56 AM) dholbach: Daviey: I'm afraid he almost exclusively listens to Death Metal. Sometimes there's some AC/DC too and sometimes some ABBA, but 95% Death Metal :)
(11:04:08 AM) mode (+o jcastro ) by dholbach
(11:04:13 AM) dholbach: I'm sure that jcastro can confirm that ^
(11:04:40 AM) jcastro: I can't neither confirm nor deny any ABBA listenage
(11:05:08 AM) dholbach: do we have more questions about Ubuntu and Ubuntu development? anything that was unclear during the week?
(11:05:18 AM) dholbach: <mhall119|work> QUESTION: should tabs be represented as 4 spaces or 8?  Vi or Emacs?  Hungarian notation?
(11:05:24 AM) dholbach: mhall119|work: I guess that depends who you ask :-)
(11:05:53 AM) dholbach: mhall119|work: if you mainly work with python, you might want to check out http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/ which at least has something to say about spaces
(11:06:13 AM) dholbach: <lbrinkma> QUESTION: Is there any advanced guide to packaging, for example many banarie packages out of one source package?
(11:06:57 AM) dholbach: lbrinkma: if you worked your way through https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PackagingGuide I suggest check out http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ (Debian Policy) and http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/ (Debian New Maintainer's Guide)
(11:07:10 AM) dholbach: plus checking out a lot of source packages and see how they do it
(11:07:32 AM) dholbach: I'm no expert, but a lot I know today I learnt from other packages and checking out what other maintainers did
(11:07:50 AM) dholbach: that's one of the things I LOVE about Ubunt, everything is just an "apt-get source ..." away :)
(11:08:02 AM) dholbach: <duanedesign56> <QUESTION> Have you used 'Groundcontrol' yet and how do you see that being integrated into the community?
(11:08:07 AM) dholbach: duanedesign56: I personally didn't
(11:08:12 AM) dholbach: jcastro: ^ did you?
(11:08:23 AM) jcastro: I saw the video
(11:08:35 AM) jcastro: it's a nautilus integration thing for bzr
(11:08:47 AM) dholbach: oh nice
(11:08:58 AM) dholbach: does it integrate with olive (bzr-gtk)?
(11:09:53 AM) dholbach: <duanedesign56> dholbach: he has mentioned bzr-gtk integration in a future release
(11:09:59 AM) dholbach: I guess that answers the question :)
(11:10:19 AM) dholbach: any more questions?
(11:10:44 AM) dholbach: maybe something that wasn't explained due to time constraints?
(11:14:26 AM) dholbach: <amichair> QUESTION: in utilities that are developed "in-house" by (k)ubuntu, rather than just packaged, is there a proper QA cycle, or is it just an 'ok' from the dev followed by waiting for bug reports to flow in?
(11:15:01 AM) dholbach: amichair: yes, although there's no strict one-QA-process-for-everything there's quite a lot of QA being done
(11:16:08 AM) dholbach: tools like bazaar and launchpad which are mainly developed by Canonical engineers are developed through test-driven development and have extensive test-suites that are run for every merge
(11:16:20 AM) dholbach: (and run several hours in the case of Launchpad AFAIK)
(11:16:39 AM) dholbach: tools that actually are in Ubuntu, like upstart have testsuites too
(11:17:23 AM) dholbach: http://mago.ubuntu.com/ is an approach to test desktop applications by test-driving them through the accessibility interface (IIRC)
(11:17:55 AM) dholbach: the security and SRU team add test-cases for stuff that broke to ensure it doesn't break again
(11:18:28 AM) dholbach: and we do quite a lot of certification testing and ISO testing of CD images
(11:18:31 AM) dholbach: I'm sure I forgot heaps of things
(11:18:35 AM) dholbach: jcastro: anything I missed?
(11:19:02 AM) jcastro: I don't know anything about testing
(11:19:16 AM) dholbach: #ubuntu-testing and #ubuntu-bugs and #ubuntu-qa are good places to talk about that
(11:19:27 AM) dholbach: (and we had a session about automated server testing too! :)
(11:19:39 AM) dholbach: <donaldharvey> QUESTION: I'm a Git/Github user, and am really comfortable with the system. I maintain a project on Launchpad and use bzr-git to import the existing repository. Should I switch to bzr, and if so, why?
(11:20:13 AM) dholbach: donaldharvey: what you could easily do without having to switch tools is setting up a bzr in code.launchpad.net
(11:20:18 AM) dholbach: erm sorry
(11:20:21 AM) dholbach: a bzr import
(11:20:48 AM) dholbach: that'd give people the opportunity to use code.launchpad.net to propose merges when they're used to using that already
(11:21:13 AM) dholbach: I love using code.launchpad.net and made great experiences with new contributors who quickly "got it" and knew how it worked
(11:21:23 AM) dholbach: <donaldharvey> That's what I'm doing currently, yeah
(11:21:59 AM) dholbach: I have little experience with git to be honest, but a lot of good with bzr, so I'm probably the wrong person to talk to :-)
(11:22:23 AM) dholbach: but the fine people in #bzr and #launchpad can probably give you some further advice
(11:23:42 AM) dholbach: <duanedesign56> <QUESTION> Are there any charts or graphs that show bug stats plotted over time?
(11:23:49 AM) dholbach: jcastro: ^?
(11:23:55 AM) dholbach: I know there are some on qa.ubuntu.com
(11:23:59 AM) dholbach: let me see if I can spot them easily
(11:24:08 AM) jcastro: not anything that isn't on qa.ubuntu.com
(11:24:52 AM) jcastro: for large packages they have this
(11:24:54 AM) jcastro: http://status.qa.ubuntu.com/qapkgstatus/knetworkmanager
(11:24:58 AM) jcastro: as an example
(11:25:26 AM) jcastro: but nothing that summarizes everything.
(11:25:54 AM) jcastro: this would be good info to get started on
(11:26:00 AM) jcastro: for example look at this one: http://status.qa.ubuntu.com/qapkgstatus/gnome-power-manager
(11:26:10 AM) jcastro: oldest bug with status NEW: 446 days
(11:26:35 AM) jcastro: that means someone either can't confirm the bug or it's been forgotten
(11:27:47 AM) jcastro: jml mentions that he has this: http://people.canonical.com/~jml/lp-bugs/
(11:28:17 AM) jml: jcastro, it's a prototype that uses out-of-date data and is a chart of the bugs on Launchpad itself
(11:29:13 AM) jml: jcastro, I'd be over the moon with ecstasy and joy if someone wanted to turn that into an actual page on Launchpad, and would be more than happy to help whoever wants to do it
(11:29:30 AM) jcastro: graphing in general would be useful I think
(11:29:35 AM) jml: heck yes.
(11:33:12 AM) dholbach: <breinera> <QUESTION> as a newbie to Ubuntu developer, but someone who can program, where can I make the most impact and help Ubuntu?
(11:33:17 AM) dholbach: breinera: awesome question!
(11:33:47 AM) R_ is now known as Guest24303
(11:34:16 AM) dholbach: the most important thing you need to have as somebody who wants to help out with Ubuntu is: a knack for making things work again, some patience, some humour and being a team player
(11:34:51 AM) dholbach: I'd recommend having a look at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU/TODO for now until we managed to give http://daniel.holba.ch/harvest a facelift
(11:35:12 AM) dholbach: we soon will have a nice overview over tasks that need some help and group them by packages and everything
(11:35:22 AM) dholbach: until then it's this a bit ugly list of lists
(11:35:27 AM) dholbach: so... what do we have there?
(11:35:35 AM) dholbach: jcastro mentions 'bitesize' bugs
(11:35:47 AM) dholbach: we tag bugs in Launchpad to indicate what kind of task there are
(11:36:01 AM) dholbach: 'bitesize' for example indicates "this is a job to get started with"
(11:36:15 AM) dholbach: 'update' means "this package needs updating to a new upstream version"
(11:36:24 AM) dholbach: 'packaging' means "here's something wrong with the packaging"
(11:36:25 AM) dholbach: etc.
(11:36:31 AM) cjwatson: I'd also be inclined to say that it's always most effective to follow your own interests
(11:36:50 AM) cjwatson: people tend to be more productive with things they care about
(11:36:57 AM) dholbach: the list of official tags can be found here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Tags
(11:37:32 AM) dholbach: thanks cjwatson - absolutely agreed
(11:38:41 AM) dholbach: Ok, maybe we should broaden the scope of the session somewhat and ask for some feedback about the whole week... what do you think about the week? what do you think went well, what didn't?
(11:39:39 AM) dholbach: (if you still have questions, that's fine too)
(11:41:06 AM) dholbach: Any feedback?
(11:41:10 AM) dholbach: Any questions? :)
(11:41:59 AM) dholbach: maybe requests for the next Ubuntu Developer Week?
(11:43:07 AM) dholbach: or other development related classes outside of UBuntu Developer Week?
(11:43:21 AM) dholbach: <SevenMachines> [QUESTION] i was wondering if theres a difference in focus over the development cycle, ie, work on merging, fixing bugs in ubuntu, or getting bugs fixed in debian
(11:43:37 AM) dholbach: SevenMachines: definitely
(11:44:14 AM) dholbach: one key decision is to try to land as many earth-shattering changes as early as possible so they can get tested and debugged most appropriately
(11:44:47 AM) dholbach: also if you find out that Debian suffers from the same problem and you want to fix it there too, then early in the cycle is a good time for that
(11:45:03 AM) dholbach: the later it gets in our cycle the more we exclusively focus on just fixing stuff
(11:45:28 AM) dholbach: it doesn't make sense to first push the critical fix to Debian, wait for it to get included, then maybe sync or merge it again
(11:45:50 AM) dholbach: http://people.canonical.com/~dholbach/cheatsheet.jpg tries to give a bit of an overview over release-cycle decisions
(11:46:29 AM) dholbach: <dscassel> QUESTION: Any suggestions for running a successful Global Jam? Focus more on giving people the tools to help, versus actual triage and packaging?
(11:46:35 AM) dholbach: jcastro: ^ you want to take that one?
(11:48:36 AM) dholbach: dscassel: I'd try to do everything that the people want to do
(11:48:52 AM) dholbach: dscassel: if some of them are very new to the processes and to Ubuntu they will need all the help they can get
(11:48:57 AM) jcastro: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Jams is a place to start
(11:49:09 AM) jcastro: the key is to ask around for groups that have done jams in the past
(11:49:14 AM) jcastro: so you don't make a simple mistake
(11:49:25 AM) dholbach: I'm in the Ubuntu Berlin team and we made good experiences with splitting up stuff among team members: one organises bug triage efforts, somebody else does packaging, etc.
(11:49:29 AM) jcastro: for example our first jam we did in a bar and then didn't realize that under-21 people couldn't attend!
(11:50:12 AM) jcastro: now we have that in a wiki page so people don't repeat our mistake
(11:50:22 AM) dholbach: haha :)
(11:51:38 AM) dholbach: more questions? more feedback? more requests?
(11:55:07 AM) dholbach: ok my friends, thanks a lot for your questions