NattyHarvestPlans

Summary

Harvest is in the best shape it ever was. Still there's a few issues we want to fix this cycle. The issues fall into three categories:

  1. more useful opportunity lists
  2. data access
  3. usability fixes

Release Note

Harvest received a number of improvements. It now should be easier to add data to it, it provides RSS feeds and a number of usability issues were fixed. Also has the number of data feeds for Harvest grown considerably.

Rationale

Two Harvest features have been requested for a long time now:

  1. RSS feeds to stay on top of opportunities for a certain package or package set
  2. Ability to add more arbitrary (as opposed to just 'sourcepackage, description, url')

Also do we want to grow the list of opportunity lists, because there is still a lot of automatically generated "TODO lists" out there.

Apart from that there's a number of small usability issues we want to fix.

User stories

Dylan runs a script that generates a list of important bugs every night. Apart from just listing the source package, a short description and the link to the bug, he wants to add custom data like "importance" of the bug. With the new data format this will be trivial to set up.

Sébastien uses RSS a lot. For the Desktop package set, he adds the RSS feed to his reader and stays on top of things easily.

Implementation

Code-wise the most important changes will be the ability to import JSON data and to subscribe to various RSS feeds. In addition to that we will reach out to authors and maintainers of scripts that generate TODO lists, so we get more data into Harvest. In addition to that a few usability and accessibility issues will be addressed.

UI Changes

We expect only small changes to the UI this time. Some improvements in usability and accessibility and a link to possible RSS feeds.

Code Changes

In addition to the .csv import, we will add JSON as format, which will more easily allow us to add custom data fields, like bug importance, long description, etc.

BoF agenda and discussion

Suggestion: change data feeding into harvest to provide bug description / title (launchpad bug: http://bugs.launchpad.net/harvest-data/+bug/614194)
add links to information about each opportunity list

What would make life easier for Harvest from Launchpad?
 * Two malone bugs that haven't been fixed they are about bugs being fixed elsewhere
  * 239606?
  * 200890

Why does bugs-with-patches have the .cgi on it?
 - that's a bug :)
 
possible data sources:
 - sru-able bugs (bdmurray)
 - merges.u.c
 - rcbugs page (laney)
 - open CVEs
 - watch file related stuff
 - ftbfs tracker (lucas + launchpad + archive rebuild)


package components
"packages I can upload"
"packages I maintain in Debian"

Interface Ideas:
- RSS FEEDS! (dylan)
- filter by programming language?
- group into "easy" vs "medium" vs "hard"?
- "bookmark selection"

Ask people to mark things as "easy".
Ask people to use "found in Harvest" in commit message.


Easy bugs and featured opportunity lists could be more visible


action items:
 - dholbach to find out who worked on merges.u.c last and ask if they can provide .csv
 - laney to work on rcbugs.csv
 - brian-murray to look into sru-able bugs
 - dholbach to give deryck "fixed elsewhere" bug numbers
 - deryck to get those bugs fixed
 - dholbach to blog about creating new opportunity lists
 - dholbach to look into new data format
 - dylanmccall to look into rss feeds
 - dholbach to file outstanding bugs
 - dholbach to blog about harvest, how to help, how to use, etc.
 - mbp to think about improving inline help
 - dylanmccall to look at design improvements for accessibility

bugs:
http://harvest.ubuntu.com/opportunities/package/evolution/ (lots of "resolved upstream")
focus on extending data format (json with optional fields (severity, short title, long title, etc.))
associate team info with package sets, where available (subscribe Jussi)

CategorySpec

Specs/NattyHarvestPlans (last edited 2010-11-08 09:38:48 by i59F72BBB)