Previous Ubuntu Developer Week Sessions

January 2009

Details

Day 1

• Getting Started -- This is a true novelty and is going to be awesome. We'll have an action-packed two-hour session to get you started for UbuntuDeveloperWeek and getting you all set up for developing Ubuntu. Be sure to bring questions. Sounds good? It gets better: we'll have the session in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish at the same time.

  • English: #ubuntu-classroom on irc.freenode.net, host: James Westby

  • French: #ubuntu-classroom-fr on irc.freenode.net, host: Dider Roche

  • German: #ubuntu-classroom-de on irc.freenode.net, host: Daniel Holbach

  • Italian: #ubuntu-classroom-it on irc.freenode.net, host: Devid Antonio Filoni

  • Spanish: #ubuntu-classroom-es on irc.freenode.net, contact: Nicolas Valcarcel

• Packaging 101 -- MOTU DanielHolbach will talk you through the bare-bone structure of an Ubuntu package and how to get there the easiest way.

• Working well with Debian -- Debian is our most important upstream project. In their session Nicolas Valcarcel and Barry deFreese will demonstrate how to best collaborate with Debian, how to send patches to Debian, the workflow and what's important. Barry is a Debian Developer as well, so together they'll surely be able to answer all open questions.

• Understanding GNOME Technologies -- Dbus? Gconf? GNOME Libraries? Huh? TedGould will give a one-hour session to explain which layer is necessary for what and what exactly they do. If you're excited about GNOME and want to start participating in the Desktop world, this is a great place to be.

Day 2

• Launchpad Bug Tracking -- Launchpad developer Tom "intellectronica" Berger is going to be there to talk about Launchpad Bug Tracking. This is an awesome opportunity to ask questions, understand how Launchpad Bugs, formerly known as "Malone" works, how to use it and how it is developed.

• QA Tools -- We'll stay on the QA side of things for a bit and Ara Pulido will talk a bit about QA tools. If you're interested in quality assurance, bug management and making our beloved distro better, this is your opportunity to learn the tricks and help out.

• Stop Screen-Scraping, Use the Launchpad Web Service API -- Launchpad Web Service API specialist Leonard Richardson will be there to talk you through using launchpadlib, a fantastic, easy-to-use python module that will make your life a lot lot easier. No more screen-scraping, get the data from Launchpad easily.

• Creating high-quality updates -- Ever wondered how the Security team works? What CVEs are, what embargoing is, how security updates are prepared and tested? This is your opportunity to talk to Jamie, Kees and Marc and find out more.

• Debugging program crashes -- Ubuntu hacker Martin Pitt is probably in the best position to talk about examining program crashes. He wrote apport which uploads debug information of program crashes to Launchpad, wrote the tool that examines the dump and adds debug info to it and has looked at thousands of crash reports in his life. Start fixing program crashes, Martin tells you how.

Day 3

• Pushing out GNOME releases to millions of users -- He never takes a rest, some think he's actually a team of three people. Right, it's Sebastien "sebuild" Bacher I'm talking about. He has largely been responsible for keeping large parts of GNOME in shape and he's doing a fantastic job. Learn how to help out in Desktop land and learn all his tricks.

• Fixing Bugs in Ubuntu -- We all want to make Ubuntu better, but where to start? The answer is Harvest, a great tool to find easy tasks. Daniel Holbach will pick a few easy tasks and demonstrate what to do about them. It's not hard to help out and make Ubuntu better. Really!

• Bazaar for packaging -- James "Merge Proposal" Westby is in a very good position to talk about the topic: he wrote bzr-builddeb, a fantastic tool to automate tasks around building packages, he's involved in the Bazaar community and a very active MOTU. Make things easy: maintain packages in Bazaar.

• Kubuntu Bug Squishing -- You love Ubuntu with the big K? So does Jonathan Thomas. He's unstoppable, he knows his stuff and he knows how to get you started helping out in Kubuntu land! Awesome!

• Using VMBuilder to create tests environments -- Søren Hansen and Nicolas Barcet will entertain you with virtual machines and the fantastic vmbuilder. Need a clean test environment for something? Don't want to run the latest development release on actual hardware yet? These two fine men have the answer for you.

Day 4

• Automated Desktop Testing -- Ara Pulido is up again and will talk to you about testing the Desktop in an automated fashion. Write just a few lines of Python code to test your application in an automated way and find regressions quickly. Fantastic!

• Ubuntu Netbook Remix Q&A -- Excited about Ubuntu mobile? Heard of great new Netbooks running Ubuntu? Neil Patel (and friends) are going to be there to talk to you about exactly that. Bring questions, get excited, get involved!

• Boot performance -- Ubuntu hacker Scott James Remnant will lead this session and give you insights into what's happening to make Ubuntu boot faster. Find out more about the plumbing, find out how to test things, measure and improve Ubuntu.

• Kubuntu Ninja's - Packagers in Unicorn mode -- This is by far the most melodramatic session title. One hour with Kubuntu hackers to find out what it's all about! One thing's for sure: Harald Sitter and Stephen Stalcup and talk to you about Kubuntu Packaging and how best to do it. It's going to be great!

• Packaging software for Mono, for great justice -- Jo Shields and Debian Mono team expert Mirco Bauer are going to be around to talk Mono. How it's packaged, why it's so great and how you can help out.

Day 5

• Testing your .deb with piuparts -- Lars Wirzenius is back again and will talk to you about piuparts, an awesome tool to test not just the installability of your package, but also if it does it all in a clean way. Keep installations clean, use piuparts!

• Fun with python-apt -- The unstoppable Michael Vogt brought a lot of awesome programs to Ubuntu. A lot of them use python-apt. Find out why it's so great and how it can make your life easier.

• Bazaar and Launchpad - How to do it -- There's a good reason why Bazaar and Launchpad are so tightly integrated: because it's awesome and because it makes maintaining your open source project really really easy. Paul Hummer and Martin Albisetti spent a lot of time to making this integration as great as it is today and they'll talk to you about it.

• Packaging Kernel modules with DKMS -- Kernel hacker Ben Collins has been around in Ubuntu for a long time and has taken good care of making sure that all hardware runs as seamless as it does today. DKMS is the best thing since sliced bread when it comes to maintaining separate Kernel modules in Ubuntu. He'll show you how to do it.

• Xubuntu -- Cody Somerville and the Xubuntu team invite you to one hour of Xubunturama. Get involved, find out why it's so great and what you can do to make it better.

September 2008

The Timetable

February 2008

Timetable

You may also read the schedule via Google Calendar, available in the HTML and ICAL formats.

Details

• Patching packages - Martin Pitt will explain the different techniques of patching packages. His session will help you get started with UbuntuDevelopment as it's a good entry point to improving the software we use every day.

• Launchpad PPAs - Launchpad Hackers Celso Providelo and Matthew Revell will introduce you to a great feature of Launchpad: Personal Package Archives. Building packages for testing and preview reasons made easy.

• Packaging 101 - Daniel Holbach will talk you through the most important properties of Ubuntu and Debian packaging.

• MOTU School - Working with Debian - We'll have James Westby around, who is very interested in collaboration between Debian and Ubuntu. His session will showcase tools, initiatives and processes to make this happen.

• Introduction to the ServerTeam - Interested in servers and services in the Ubuntu landscape? Matthias Gug introduces you to the ServerTeam.

• MOTU Processes - Interested in becoming a MOTU? Daniel Holbach will explain the MOTU processes: how to get involved and how to get things done.

• Virtualisation - Virtualisation is definitely one of the hottest topics at the moment. Virtualisation Specialist Søren Hansen will talk you through the state of things and answer all your questions.

• Kubuntu - For those of you interested in development of the big K, we'll have the Kubuntu developers around.

• Ubuntu Derivatives Team - We have new Derivatives coming up almost every day. The Derivative Team aims to make collaboration seamless and help derivatives to get things done.

• Debdiffs and how to get them submitted - Daniel Holbach will showcase one of the most important entry points to get involved: how to produce good patches and explain how to get them submitted for inclusion.

• First steps on contributing (MOTU/TODO & MOTU/TODO/Bugs) - MOTU contributor Nicolas Valcárcel will talk about his experiences and give you first-hand hints how to get started.

• Desktop Packaging Session - Mastermind of the french Desktop mafia Sébastien Bacher will take you on a tour through Desktop Packaging: your entry point to the Desktop Team

• SRU/Security updates - Two of our MOTUs, William Grant and Luca Falavigna, experienced in doing security and stable release updates will talk about exactly that.

• Firefox 3 Extension Packaging - We'll have Mozilla hacker Alexander Sack around, who will talk you through packaging of Firefox 3 Extensions.

• Writing Scripts For Automated Desktop Testing - QA developer Lars Wirzenius spent quite some time thinking about testing of applications and will take you on a tour through testing Desktop applications.

• Bughelper - making bug work easier - Bugmaster Brian Murray and bughelper hacker Markus Korn are the de-facto maintainers of python-launchpad-bugs and bughelper. Numerous tools make use of the interface and make working with bugs much much easier.

• BugTriage - Pedro Villavicencio has an incredible record of triaged bugs and even managed to give Sébastien Bacher a run for his money. He'll get you started doing bug triage which is one of the most important points of development.

• MOTU Q&A session - This session has become an institution and happens every Friday at 13:00 UTC. For once we'll move this to a later time and invite you all to be there. Prepare your questions and let's get started together.

• Library Packaging - Long-time MOTU Stefan Potyra will talk about the bread and butter of almost all packages: libraries and how to package them right.

• Hosting Code With Launchpad - Launchpad Hacker Tim Penhey will talk you through how using bzr and Launchpad's Code Hosting is good for your project.