BugFixingInitiative

This will be opened for the 13.04 shortly.

Bug fixing initiatives

We are regularly adding new simple tasks to this page, which should be particularly interesting for new contributors.

First things first.

If you are new to Ubuntu Development, please take some time to go through this documentation. It will make your life a lot easier when you work on some of the bugs below.

Working on bugs

Please make sure you take these things into account as they will help to avoid duplicated efforts:

  • If you're new, feel free to work on a couple of the simple bugs. Once you get the hang of it, you can maybe progress to something a little bit more advanced. This way it will not start to get boring for you and you are going to learn more.
  • If you decide to work on fixing the issues pointed out below, please make sure you add your Launchpad ID next to them, ie: "fix bug 12345" → "fix bug 12345 (dholbach)".

  • When you ask for the inclusion of your fix, please direct it at the right place (Ubuntu, Debian, Upstream). If you need help to make a decision where it should go, have a look at our bug fixing example.

Have a great time and be sure to ask questions if you have any.

New contributors

Adding Debtags

Quoting an introduction about Debtags by Enrico Zini:

  • The Debian archive is getting larger and larger, and the software more and more diverse and complex. Organising software in the archive is difficult, and the existing section system, designed to cope with a much smaller number of packages, is no longer sufficient.

  • ..
    Debags attaches categories (we call them tags) to packages, creating a new set of useful structured metadata that can be used to implement more advanced ways of presenting, searching, maintaining and navigating the package archive.

There is a web-based Debtags editor, also one can start from the Debtags TODO list

No homepage field

Here are a few packages which don't have homepages listed which are only in Ubuntu, but there are many more to be fixed (http://lintian.ubuntuwire.org/quantal/tags/no-homepage-field.html).

  • weston (binary): no-homepage-field Fixed

  • winefish (binary): no-homepage-field Fixed

  • libwpeditor-dev (binary): no-homepage-field Fixed

  • libwpeditor0 (binary): no-homepage-field Fixed

  • wulf2html (binary): no-homepage-field Fixed

  • wulfstat (binary): no-homepage-field Fixed

  • wulflogger (binary): no-homepage-field Fixed

  • xmlsysd (binary): no-homepage-field Fixed

  • libwulf-dev (binary): no-homepage-field Fixed

  • libwulf2 (binary): no-homepage-field Fixed

  • xgrep (binary): no-homepage-field Fixed

  • xvattr (binary): no-homepage-field Fixed

  • xvid4conf (binary): no-homepage-field (bkerensa) Fixed

  • yforth (binary): no-homepage-field no-homepage-field (bkerensa) Submitted Patch Upstream

  • python-z3c.autoinclude (binary): no-homepage-field Fixed

  • python-z3c.form (binary): no-homepage-field Fix proposed (obounaim)

  • python-z3c (binary): no-homepage-field

  • python-z3c.formui (binary): no-homepage-field Fix proposed (obounaim)

  • python-z3c.macro (binary): no-homepage-field Fixed

  • python-z3c.optionstorage (binary): no-homepage-field Fixed

  • python-z3c.pt (binary): no-homepage-field Fixed

  • python-z3c.ptcompat (binary): no-homepage-field Fixed

  • python-z3c.rml (binary): no-homepage-field Fixed

No ${misc:Depends}

http://lintian.ubuntuwire.org/quantal/tags/debhelper-but-no-misc-depends.html lists a lot of packages which use debhelper, but don't have ${misc:Depends} specified in their Depends: line.

The following should be in Ubuntu only:

Invalid brace expansions in Debhelper config files

Some config files in these packages use {foo,bar} constructs which should be eliminated. They should be either replaced by an explicit list of files, or use one of the features mentioned in the page linked below.

Intermediate contributors

Fontconfig warnings

Many fontconfig files in fonts use multiple values in test stanza. With new fontconfig in quantal this generates a lot of warnings in the stderr. It would be amazing to fix all the fontconfig file in all the various fonts.

Experienced contributors

GCC 4.7

If you have a bit more experience, you might want to help out with the transition to gcc-4.7.

  • Some hints on fixing these issues can be found at http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.7/porting_to.html

  • To build with GCC 4.7, either set CC=gcc-4.7 CXX=g++-4.7 explicitly, or install the gcc, g++, gfortran, ... packages from quantal.

Here's the list in the Debian bug tracker:

Make sure you use the patch system if available.

Moving away from sqlite

We would like to get away from moving sqlite in favour of sqlite3. http://paste.ubuntu.com/1138024/ has a list of packages which need to be built with sqlite3, sometimes some porting work will be involved in making the switch. Be sure to check for new versions upstream which already moved over. Also are there around 10 packages which depend on python-sqlite and will need to be moved over as well.

Java 7

If you are a bit more experienced and have worked with Java before this might be just the right thing for you.

  • Have a look at JavaTeam/Java7Default and familiarise yourself with the general task of porting packages to Java 7

  • Pick any of the bug list and propose a fix

Make sure you use the patch system if available.

Kill Hal

FIXES DESTINATION is Debian. If not in Debian, then Ubuntu.

As HAL has been deprecated and is officially dead upstream we want to get rid of it eventually in Debian [1].

Please consider disabling HAL support or porting it to newer interfaces like upower/libupwer-glib or using sysfs directly.

Reverse-Recommends

  • dff
  • sleepd

Reverse-Depends

  • dell-recovery
  • halevt
  • moovida-plugins-good
  • mountmanager
  • synce-hal
  • thoggen [amd64 armel i386 powerpc]
  • usb-imagewriter
  • wmbattery

Working with patch systems

Unfortunately, the are many bugs on Launchpad that have patches attached that haven't seen any attention from a developer. Often these patches need intervention by a developer before they are ready for upload. They may just be changes against the upstream code with none of the packaging details taken care of. Often they just need to use the package's patch system, have a changelog entry added, and go through the SponsorshipProcess.

Working on these bugs is a great way to become familiar with patch systems.

Review the patch system documentation before you begin. The ReviewersTeam also has some useful information on getting patches ready to be uploaded.

  • Confirm that the bug still exists.
  • Review and test the provided patch, making sure that it actually fixes the bug.

  • Apply the patch to the package using a patch system.

  • Produce a debdiff and subscribe ubuntu-sponsors or propose a merge.

Below are a few suggested targets, but many more can be found on Launchpad with this bug search.

Make sure you submit your changes to Debian if the problem applies there as well.

More bugs

  • MOTU/TODO lists lots and lots of other tasks you might want to start working on.

Organisation

If you want to help out organising these events, check out our Organisation page and join us at MOTU/Meetings or generally in #ubuntu-motu on irc.freenode.net

CategoryUbuntuDevelopment

UbuntuDevelopment/BugFixingInitiative (last edited 2013-12-03 12:01:55 by dholbach)