Core apps: Sprinting to 13.10

As we are edging day by day to October, the focus on the Core Apps is becoming more and more important. As the primary goal of the project, we want to get each of the Core Apps to 1.0 ready for Ubuntu 13.10.

This is going to require some work, but all core apps contributors have done a phenomenal job so far, and with your help, we're confident we can pull this together.

After the success of the first edition, we're organizing a second set of Core Apps Hack Days, where we'll be tightly focused on Sprinting to 13.10 and address all of the tasks that need to be completed by the time of the release.

We want to encourage our core app contributors to rally around completing the features below during the hack fests, so we can drive all of our core apps closer to completion. Let’s make these hack days the event where transition these apps from projects to software our growing Ubuntu Phone userbase is starting to use!

Fire up your engines!

Hack Days Activities

While our main focus is development, anybody can participate in the Core Apps Hack Days, all you have to do is use them and report bugs. You don't need to be a developer, you don't need to know anything about porting or compiling or packaging. Just fire up one of the apps, on a supported device or on your desktop, and start using it for your daily activities.

The most important thing you can do while dogfooding is to find and report any bugs you find. It's important to provide as much detail as possible in your bug report, including screenshots and device information, and describing the steps to reproduce the bug. Following the steps below will ensure that your bug report will be accurate and helpful.

1. Try to recreate the bug, make note of the steps necessary to recreate it reliably

2. Click the "File a Bug" link for the appropriate project from the list below

3. You will first be asked for a bug title, Launchpad will then try to find any existing bugs that match yours
4. If Launchpad finds an existing bug report, do the following:
   1. Mark it as affecting you by clicking the link "Does this bug affect you?"
   2. Read the description and comments for the bug, and fill in any of the information from the following steps if they are missing
5. If Launchpad does not find an existing bug, it will ask you to fill in a longer description. Include here the steps necessary to reproduce your bug

6. If it's a visual bug, get a screen capture or video of it happening, and upload that to the bug report

7. If you are running the app on a phone or tablet, add a tag to the bug report using the name of your device (nexus4, nexus7, etc)
8. Submit the bug report
9. Keep an eye on your email, or bookmark the bug report, so that you can respond to any inquiries or requests for more information from the application's developers.

Getting a screenshot

You can get a screenshot of your device from your laptop/desktop when it is plugged into an USB cable using the adb tool. Run the following commands (or copy/paste them into a script you can call)

adb root
adb shell /system/bin/screencap -p /tmp/screenshot.png
adb pull /tmp/screenshot.png ./screenshot.png

Hack Days Goals

Below are the specific features for each of the Core Apps that are considered necessary for them to be considered a Beta release.

Calendar

• Implement final designs for day view
• Implement final designs for week view
• Bonus: Implement final designs for month view
• Bonus: Implement final designs for year view

Music

• Implement the new play queue UX
• Implement the new artists view
• Implement the new albums view
• Implement the new player controls
• Bonus: Integrate the grilo media scanner
• Bonus: Play music while the app is not focused using the multimedia backend

Clock

• Integrate the alarms API
• Finish the alarms page

Calculator

• Fix all bugs marked as Critical and High importance

Weather

• Finish daily and hourly scrolling implementation
• Finish final design implementation and add final assets
• Bonus: add geolocation support

Sudoku Touch

• Add Unity actions API support

RSS Reader

• Finish grid implementation
• Re-enable the autopilot tests
• Fix all design bitesize bugs
• Bonus: start implementation of offline suppport

File Manager

• Fix all bugs marked as Critical and High importance
• Triage all bugs

Document Viewer

• TBD

Terminal

• TBD

Dropping Letters

• TBD

Stock Ticker

• Implement new visual designs