Ubuntu Open Week - Using Launchpad = Thu, Nov 30, 2006
see also Tuesday Session.
10:00 kiko very well, take it away I must 10:01 kiko hello everyone, and welcome to the second installment of the launchpad overview as part of UbuntuOpenDay 10:01 kiko I'm happy to have had a great first session with a number of difficult questions 10:01 kiko I've posted answers to those questions to launchpad-users, our very exclusive mailing list! 10:02 kiko I've linked to the archives from the UbuntuOpenDay subpage for my talk, so if you were curious about any one which wasn't answered, just look there 10:02 kiko I'm also going to tabulate them as faq entries 10:02 kiko so they should be useful for a wider audience. 10:02 kiko in the first section I covered Launchpad in general and then bug tracking, translating and the answer tracker in Launchpad. 10:03 kiko I'll redo a quick overview today, and then talk about the remaining two applications: the blueprint tracker, and the bazaar branch hosting, import and introspection service 10:03 kiko the branch part is really my favorite but I will try and save it for last! 10:04 kiko so Launchpad is essentially a web service that is designed to make the work inside and between open source projects easier. 10:05 kiko it contemplates some features which no other online tool has really done before -- and these features are mostly related to the way projects communicate between themselves. 10:05 kiko for instance, Launchpad's bug tracker allows a single bug to be tracked in various different distributions, and in one or more upstream projects 10:06 kiko this theoretically allows Ubuntu, Debian and Redhat to all use the same bugtracker to track the status of a fix in, say, upstream Linux kernel, and in other distributions. 10:06 kiko the more projects using Launchpad, the better that collaboration aspect gets 10:07 kiko another example of where cross-project collaboration is easier in Launchpad is with translations: translations for strings used in a project are offered as potential suggestions in other contexts where the same translatable string occurs 10:07 kiko the context's translation review team can verify and decide whether the string is relevant or not. 10:08 kiko if we are making comparisons, one of Tuesday's questions asked: is Launchpad similar to Sourceforge? 10:08 kiko in some ways we are, and in some we aren't. we are similar in the sense that we do offer online services that you /should/ use for /your/ project 10:08 kiko bug tracking -- community support -- translations -- specification tracking -- code hosting 10:09 kiko in others, we are not so much: we don't offer mailing lists or web content hosting. 10:09 kiko so there's some unique aspects to both Sourceforge and Launchpad. 10:09 kiko so that's an overview of the web application, and I'll move on to some more specific examples inside two applications -- the specification tracker, and the code hosting service. 10:10 kiko be sure to ask questions about other applications if you missed tuesday's Q&A, or if you are still curious -- I'm happy to help out! 10:10 kiko XXX The specification tracker: blueprints.launchpad.net XXX 10:10 kiko One of Launchpad's applications is a specification, or 'blueprint' tracker. 10:11 kiko a specification is a general term used in software engineering that is essentially a document that describes something 10:11 kiko moving from very vague to more specific, a specification usually will describe a change to existing software, a new feature to be implemented, a modification in an existing design, or a process that a team should follow 10:12 kiko we use specifications a /lot/ in Launchpad and in Ubuntu 10:12 kiko people that were at the Australian conference last year (UDU) can remember all the specs and post-its on the wall! 10:12 kiko specifications are a great way of capturing history and rationale of your project 10:13 kiko they help answer questions like "how exactly is that supposed to be implemented" 10:13 kiko and also "why the hell did we decide to use a cronscript and not a trigger?!" 10:13 kiko launchpad offers a specification tracker which is something of a unique service 10:13 kiko the spec tracker essentially allows us to capture metadata related to a textual document 10:14 kiko it's important to point out that the document is not actually hosted in launchpad 10:14 kiko you can use any wiki (or other text document hosting -- even flat ascii via apache) 10:14 kiko launchpad just stores metadata 10:15 kiko this metadata allows you to track who is working on the document, who's doing the implementation, who's ok'd the document, and in what status the doc and the implementation are. 10:15 kiko let's look at a live example to see what I'm talking about. 10:15 kiko https://blueprints.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu 10:15 kiko this is the listing of specifications for Ubuntu 10:16 kiko you'll see that the listing is ordered by priority (meaning that somebody in project management has made an explicit decision as to what is more important) 10:16 kiko and that the spefication has a name and two statuses 10:16 kiko the "definition" status describes the state of the document itself 10:16 kiko the "delivery" status describes the status of the feature 10:16 kiko in the example Ubuntu URL 10:17 kiko you'll see that Tollef is assigned to the top essential priority specification -- network-roaming. 10:17 kiko let's take a closer look at that specification so you can see the metadata for yourself! 10:17 kiko https://blueprints.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/network-roaming 10:18 kiko first, you'll see on the right-hand side of the page a set of attributes related to the specification 10:18 kiko and that in this case the implementation of the spec has not even started yet! 10:18 kiko the specification itself is approved, and it's been accepted for feisty, so tollef should get busy soon to get it in <wink> 10:19 kiko there's a dependency tree in the page content 10:19 kiko when a spec depends on another, it is rendered graphically 10:19 kiko (this feature was incidentally a gift from sabdfl himself) 10:19 kiko so in this case, Kubuntu only gets networking if tollef manages to deliver network-roaming in time 10:20 kiko the specification tracker is pretty simple to use 10:20 kiko you can see how to register new specs and edit it using our staging server.. if I can get a working URL to it ;-) 10:21 kiko the staging server is a box which holds an exact copy of the production database 10:21 kiko but which allows changing data without concern -- the database is wiped and restored nightly 10:21 kiko To add a new spec to Ubuntu on staging, use https://staging.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+addspec 10:22 kiko you'll see that it allows you to capture metadata, in particular a specification URL 10:22 kiko that URL is the only link to the document -- which is why I pointed out it could be pretty much anything hosted anywhere. 10:23 kiko the specification tracker has a number of features that are not immediately apparent 10:23 kiko for instance, the dependency graph and prioritization allow a suggested to be automatically built from your specifications; the roadmap for ubuntu is at https://blueprints.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+roadmap 10:24 kiko the spec tracker also includes support for managing team sprints 10:24 kiko where the sprints are essentially activities where people develop the specifications that will be implemented 10:25 kiko (in Canonical, we essentially use sprints to capture specifications because we have little face-time together, being a distributed company, and capturing discussions and ideas in documents is a great way to record this historically) 10:25 kiko to see sprints at the latest developer summit for Ubuntu, for instance: 10:25 kiko https://blueprints.launchpad.net/sprints/uds-mtv 10:26 kiko err -- I meant specs at the latest summit. blame hunger! 10:26 kiko anyway, you can see there the overview of specs discussed there. 10:27 kiko you can use the sprint feature to manage your own sprints, and we can even get you nicely formatted schedules that ensure that all the discussions you want to have occur 10:27 kiko that's a whirlwind view of the Launchpad blueprints application, and feel free to ask away if there are bits I was unclear about or omitted 10:27 kiko let's move on to my favorite app!
<vyoman> are we supposed to login into the staging server?
- yes. the staging server is an exact replica of the production server -- so much that you should log in to it to actually change it. your launchpad credentials will be the same as on production.
[vyoman] the _addspec is asking for a login <s>
- right -- just use your launchpad account.
<mruiz> I'm the ubuntu-cl team admin; when mass email will be enabled? (to contact all team members and coordinate)
- so this is a question about a feature in which Launchpad teams would have an externally visible email address. currently, Launchpad teams are used to organize people into arbitrary groups. Launchpad can email these groups directly, and you've seen this in action for instance in bugs, where team subscribers all get notified of bug changes. there is currently, however, no way to externally email a team
[mruiz] but many LoCo Teams use LP, and sign as teams.
- right. so mruiz for instance would like to be able to contact his team through a specified email address and have the message relayed to the team members. we have a plan for this feature but it hasn't been a priority as of now
10:32 kiko XXX Launchpad code XXX 10:33 kiko so some of you may be familiar with the most amazing VCS that has been under development for the past 2 years 10:33 kiko that's Bazaar (bazaar-vcs.org) in case you were wondering! 10:33 kiko bazaar is a decentralized (ddaa beat me until I agreed to say that) revision control system 10:34 kiko so it has a similar pattern of working to git, darcs, arch, monotone, mercurial and (should I say it?) bitkeeper! 10:34 kiko in particular, each developer has his own tree with history and is able to do commits to his local tree and see changes without needing to hit a central server 10:35 kiko in this model, developers usually move code between each other and onto a specific branch which is maintained as a mainline 10:35 kiko that's the 5000km view of decentralized RCS 10:36 kiko Bazaar is an interesting new VCS, designed to be very simple, usable and fast 10:36 kiko it's written in Python and #bzr is the place to go to learn more about the tool itself
<bhale> does every developer run his own database and or web server?' or the server config is dynamic enough to handle arbitrary branching.
- each launchpad developer runs his own database and web server. I'm not sure what you meant about arbitrary branching, but it's impractical to depend on a central server if you're for instance developing offline. it also places a lot of stress on that server because everybody at some point wants to hit the database to fetch a list of whatnot
10:38 kiko so coming back to Bazaar 10:38 kiko Launchpad is a great match for Bazaar in a number of ways 10:39 kiko and I'll try enumerating some of the ways that I find most interesting and useful 10:39 kiko first, Launchpad offers you a free Bazaar branch hosting service 10:39 kiko anyone with a Launchpad account can push their branches onto the Launchpad supermirror 10:40 kiko the supermirror is essentially an open, global code repository 10:40 kiko let me dig out a tutorial so you can read more about this 10:40 kiko http://ddaa.net/blog/launchpad/bzr-hosting 10:40 kiko there you go 10:41 kiko essentially, if you use bzr, you can host your project's sourcecode on Launchpad 10:41 kiko and have your developers collaborate on that code. 10:41 kiko you can even have shared branches, to which all of your team can commit: 10:41 kiko http://blogs.gnome.org/view/jamesh/2006/08/17/1 10:41 kiko jamesh tells us all about that (and western australia) in his blog entry 10:42 kiko the supermirror is a great service, and I expect a lot of projects to host their main lines off it 10:43 kiko there's no setup cost, and anyone can bzr branch it trivially. 10:43 kiko okay 10:43 kiko a second good example of Launchpad supporting bazaar 10:43 kiko is in the VCS imports service 10:43 kiko what are VCS imports? 10:44 kiko essentially, I wish everybody in the world used Bazaar 10:44 kiko unfortunately, there are historical reasons why this isn't the case YET 10:44 kiko for those projects that use CVS and Subversion, how do we facilitate hackers using Bazaar to work? 10:45 kiko answer: we host continuous imports of upstream version control into Bazaar 10:45 kiko this is a really interesting service 10:45 kiko say your upstream project uses CVS 10:45 kiko say it's Bugzilla (I am so biased!) 10:45 kiko and you want to hack on it using bazaar 10:46 kiko well, easy -- the bugzilla project has an import already set up in Launchpad! 10:46 kiko if you visit 10:46 kiko https://launchpad.net/products/bugzilla 10:46 kiko you'll notice that there's a branch registered in the bottom-most right-hand-side box 10:47 kiko if you visit the branch registered there: 10:47 kiko https://launchpad.net/people/vcs-imports/+branch/bugzilla/main 10:47 kiko you'll notice that it lists all recent revisions committed to upstream bugzilla 10:47 kiko if you want to hack on bugzilla a bit 10:47 kiko or customize it locally while still preserving history 10:47 kiko just do 10:47 kiko bzr branch launchpad.net/products/bugzilla 10:48 kiko and (after some 10 minutes or so) you'll have a branch containing the full history of the bugzilla project 10:48 kiko imported into a conveniently packaged Bazaar branch 10:48 kiko you can hack away locally 10:48 kiko and when upstream changes, we import the changes into Launchpad, and you can simply issue "bzr merge" to get the new changes and merge it into your now-modified tree 10:49 kiko this is a great way to start using Bazaar even through the upstream project hasn't decided to switch yet. 10:49 kiko there are over 500 projects being imported continously into Launchpad 10:50 kiko bugzilla is just one. gaim is another. be sure to register your own favorite projects today, and let's get VCS imports available to the mases. 10:50 kiko there are yet other areas that Bazaar and Launchpad fit in well together 10:50 kiko you can assign Bazaar branches to Launchpad bugs 10:50 kiko when the branch status changes, the bug recipients are notified 10:51 kiko and the next step in that integration is picking up commit log messages and automatically marking bugs closed. 10:51 kiko specifications can also have branches assigned to them 10:51 kiko so you can keep close tabs on how the code that others are working on is progressing 10:52 kiko let me handle some questions!
<vyoman> how do you commit to bazaar?
- in bazaar, everybody has their own branch. what happens is that you (generally) create your own branch based on another one. so, most projects organize their work around a branch which is made publically available, and which is conventioned the "mainline." the pattern of use is that all developers branch off this mainline do their own work merge in new changes from mainline periodically and when their work is ready for distribution. they merge /their work/ into the mainline. the mainline from that point on contains the full history of that branch that they developed locally. so, to answer your question directly:
- bzr branch launchpad.net/products/gaim # create a new bazaar branch of gaim cd gaim vi Makefile # hack away bzr commit
<gumpa> it sounds to me like Launchpad hosts the trunk, each developer has their own branch. Is this correct?
essentially, Launchpad can host both trunk and developer branches. the thing is, anybody can host any branch on Launchpad. if you are a developer, you can hack on your branch locally, and then publish ("push") it to the world via Launchpad. bazaar makes it very easy to create and maintain remote copies of your branch exactly for this functionality. so you could, for instance, "bzr push" your branch to your own location up on the supermirror. again, read more about this on http://ddaa.net/blog/launchpad/bzr-hosting essentially, the "trunk" is a convention. any developer can do the job of merging other people's work and offering a trunk for the project. many projects work like Linus does for Linux -- pulling people's changes in and offering them reviewed and merged as a mainline trunk. but all branches are technically alike.
<silwol> What do the commit messages have to look like in order for launchpad to recognize that a bug was closed?
- very good question -- we haven't decided yet. I'd love to get your opinion on the matter in #launchpad or on launchpad-users. this feature is upcoming and I think it'll be a really neat one. so be sure to ping me about it
<paran> Are there any way to use Bazaar to send your work back upstream when you use a bazaar branch from VCS imports?
- not yet! that's a really good observation -- you need to produce diffs and communicate directly with upstream to get it submitted. you can work with upstream to get them to use certain Launchpad features to make the integration easier (for instance, the bug tracker, since you could pick out branches from bugs) and you can offer upstream with the address of your bazaar branch to make it easy for them to pull in your changes. there is a planned but not yet scheduled feature that would simplify this for at least Subversion-hosted projects, but it's a non-trivial endeavour and I've been suffering over that project of late.
11:01 kiko well, wow, my hour is already up! 11:01 kiko (I do talk a lot as you have realized by now) 11:01 kiko if you have any further questions, /please/ drop by #launchpad and let me know 11:01 kiko suggestions are equally appreciated 11:02 kiko I'll post a rehash of questions to launchpad-users tomorrow so people that missed out on them can check them out 11:03 kiko feel free to email me directly (kiko at canonical.com) or via launchpad-users (https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/launchpad-users) 11:03 kiko I'll be happy to follow up 11:03 kiko thanks for being here and picking up all these electrons I'm sending out 11:03 kiko I wish everybody a nice thursday evening and see you on #launchpad