Ubuntu Wiki

   1 [17:01] <mhall119> hello everyone, my name is Michael Hall, and I'm one of the community webapp developers
   2 [17:02] <mhall119> you may not know it, but there are several projects that live under the *.ubuntu.com domain that are actually designed, developed and maintained by the Ubuntu community
   3 [17:03] <mhall119> among the biggest are the loco directory at http://loco.ubuntu.com and the UDS scheduler at http://summit.ubuntu.com
   4 [17:04] <mhall119> a larger (but by no means complete) list of these projects can be found under our umbrella project: https://launchpad.net/community-web-projects
   5 [17:05] <mhall119> most of our projects are written in Python and use the Django web framework
   6 [17:05] <mhall119> which makes them pretty easy to get started hacking on
   7 [17:06] <mhall119> the sites themselves are hosted on Canonical's servers, so we regularly interact with their IS team as well
   8 [17:07] <mhall119> any questions about community projects in general?
   9 [17:07] <ClassBot> abhinav_singh asked: Are there PHP based web projects?
  10 [17:08] <mhall119> not yet, no, though we do maintain Wordpress and Drupal themes that match the ubuntu.com page
  11 [17:09] <mhall119> not that we have anything against PHP, it just so happens that the projects we've accumulated have all been Python
  12 [17:09] <mhall119> though status.ubuntu.com might be in PHP, cjohnston recently added that one so you can check with him
  13 [17:12] <mhall119> I'm going to single out the loco directory to show you how to get it set up, but the process will be similar across all of our django projects
  14 [17:12] <mhall119> first you need to find the development focus by checking https://launchpad.net/loco-directory
  15 [17:13] <mhall119> in this case, it's lp:loco-directory
  16 [17:13] <mhall119> so you can just run "bzr branch lp:loco-directory"
  17 [17:14] <mhall119> if you plan on making a single contribution, that's easy enough, but if you plan on working on multiple features or bug fixed, I'd highly recommend you follow the guide described here: http://micknelson.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/sharing-your-development-environment-across-branches/
  18 [17:16] <mhall119> for loco-directory, there are instructions for setting up a python virtualenv here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoDirectory/Development#Using_Virtualenv
  19 [17:16] <mhall119> virtualenv is great for python development because you can use python packages specific to your project, without them conflicting with versions used by other projects
  20 [17:17] <mhall119> Django provides a manage.py script that lets you perform various setup and maintenance activities, some of which I'll cover in a minute
  21 [17:18] <mhall119> it also provides a settings.py for configuring your project.
  22 [17:19] <mhall119> since some configuration settings are specific to your environment, you might want to override them by creating a local_settings.py, an example of which is included in the local_settings.py.sample
  23 [17:19] <mhall119> an example of why you would want this is database configuration
  24 [17:20] <mhall119> loco-directory uses postgresql by default, but that's a pretty big requirement for development, so you can tell Django to use an sqlite database, which is much simpler
  25 [17:21] <mhall119> once you have your django project configured, you will usually run "python manage.py syncdb", which will create any database tables Django needs to save your project's data to the database
  26 [17:21] <mhall119> after that, loco-directory provides a couple of commands for populating your database
  27 [17:22] <mhall119> the first is "lpupdate", which will perform a series of calls to Launchpad to retrieve the list of loco teams and their admins
  28 [17:22] <mhall119> this will give you the minimum amount of data that loco-directory needs, you won't have events, meeting or venue data
  29 [17:24] <mhall119> the second option is "import-live-data", which uses the loco-directory's JSON API to populate your local database with a copy of what is in the production site.  This will give you everything you need to test out new features or reproduce bugs, but it can take a long time (upwards of an hour) do to the amount of data
  30 [17:24] <mhall119> you can do either of these by calling manage.py again: "python manage.py lpupate" or "python manage.py import-live-data"
  31 [17:25] <mhall119> but, by far the easiest option is to get a relatively up to date copy of someone else's sqlite database, which I happen to have for you here: http://people.ubuntu.com/~mhall119/loco-directory/
  32 [17:25] <mhall119> once you have that, you can run "python manage.py runserver" to run the loco-directory through Django's built in web server, which is perfect for development and testing
  33 [17:26] <mhall119> any questions so far?
  34 [17:28] <mhall119> I guess not
  35 [17:29] <mhall119> each of our projects generally has a lead developer, who is your best point of contact for getting setup, as well as designing new features of solving bugs
  36 [17:29] <mhall119> for loco-directory, the lead is cjohnston
  37 [17:29] <mhall119> for summit it's nigelb
  38 [17:30] <mhall119> for cloud portal: daker
  39 [17:30] <mhall119> and for hall of fame it's cdbs
  40 [17:31] <mhall119> the leads generally set the targets for new features, and will also prioritize bugs if necessary
  41 [17:31] <mhall119> but you are encouraged to make whatever contributions interest you
  42 [17:32] <mhall119> some projects, like loco-directory, will tag small, easy bugs as "bitesize", and this is a good way for you to get starting making a contribution while you get familiar with the codebase
  43 [17:32] <mhall119> here's the list for loco-directory: https://bugs.launchpad.net/loco-directory/+bugs?field.tag=bitesize
  44 [17:33] <mhall119> once you have your local setup working, the process for contributing is generally the same:
  45 [17:33] <mhall119> 1) find a bug or feature to work on
  46 [17:33] <mhall119> 2) fix/implement it
  47 [17:34] <mhall119> 3) push it to a bzr branch on launchpad using "bzr push lp:~${your username}/${project name}/${branch name}
  48 [17:35] <mhall119> where ${branch name} is a unique name for your branch, typically something like "fixes-12345" where 12345 is the bug number
  49 [17:36] <mhall119> then you find your branch on launchpad and click the "Propose for merging" link and describe what your branch does
  50 [17:36] <mhall119> you should also add a "commit message" on this page, this is what will be added to the bzr log when your branch gets approved and merged
  51 [17:37] <mhall119> from there one of the developers on the project (not always the lead) will review your code, and either ask for changes or approve it
  52 [17:37] <mhall119> once it's approved, it will automatically be merged into the project's main branch
  53 [17:37] <mhall119> all of this is pretty standard for Ubuntu distributed development
  54 [17:39] <mhall119> any questions?
  55 [17:40] <mhall119> you don't need to know Python to contribute either, there's plenty of work that can be done in the HTML, CSS and Javascript sides too
  56 [17:44] <mhall119> Oh, I forgot to mention, discussion of community web projects is held in the #ubuntu-website channel here on freenode
  57 [17:44] <mhall119> you can find one or more of us there pretty much any time of day, since we have contributors all over the world
  58 [17:46] <ClassBot> pleia2 asked: you mentioned that launchpad.net/community-web-projects is not a complete list, is there a more complete list somewhere?
  59 [17:47] <mhall119> good question, unfortunately not
  60 [17:47] <mhall119> there are several sites that are different mixes of canonical and community involvement, like the wiki, planet, etc
  61 [17:47] <mhall119> also some that probably should be on there, but aren't yet, like status.ubuntu.com
  62 [17:48] <ClassBot> pleia2 asked: do you know the status on the Ubuntu Team Reports project? (I get asked about such a thing a lot by teams who hate using wiki for reporting)
  63 [17:49] <mhall119> I don't, dholbach might be able to give you more information on that
  64 [17:49] <mhall119> I know it's come up in the past couple of UDSs, but we just haven't had anybody willing to lead the project
  65 [17:50] <mhall119> if there are any aspiring community web contributors who want to take it for a spin, that would be awesome
  66 [17:51] <mhall119> right now our list of projects is outpacing our number of contributors
  67 [17:51] <mhall119> so there are plenty of places for people to get involved
  68 [17:51] <mhall119> and we are very encouraging to new contributors
  69 [17:52] <mhall119> any other questions before I'm out of time?