For 11.04 we made an effort to make Unity easy to contribute to so that anyone who wanted to participate could help out and help drive the development of Unity forward.
During UDS in Budapest, Hungary, we had a session on how we’re going to improve this program. As luck would have it this was a video’ed session, and what you’ll read in this post is a result of that session and some other feedback from people.
The first adjustment we’re going to make is add what we’re calling “backlog” bugs. These are bugs that the design team has completed, are approved, but just need to be implemented. What’s great about these bugs is that they’re (mostly) design improvements made as a result of user testing or little bits of design that directly improve using Unity, basically, it’s a hit list of things that we can do early in the cycle that would really help the overall Unity experience.
So what do these bugs look like? Here’s the full list, and here’s a sampling of what this sort of bug looks like.
- 676453 Launcher – Add ‘installing’ animation for when app is installed via drag & drop
- 767075 Launcher – when the user reveals the Launcher by moving the pointer to the left side of the screen, the Launcher should unfold at exactly the point entered
- 616866 Installation of apps by dragging them to the launcher
- 750375 Dash – Cursor navigation allows the user to keep scrolling down indefinitely
- 723866 Dash file Lens – Rename “Favourite Folders” category header to “Folders”
- 765715 Launcher – When a app icon de-couples from the Launcher a small shadow should appear on the bottom and right sides of the icon
- 767272 Top bar menus – there should be a very quick and subtle fade out/in effect when a user shifts from one menu to another or closes a menu
These bugs are a bit more than bitesized, in fact, we’ve started a team, ~unity-community-hackers for people who want to step up from bitesize bugs and tackle larger feature implementations. The team is open and gets assigned bugs that you can work on.
Don’t worry, we still have Bitesize bugs, however at this point in the cycle we’re going to concentrate on feature development, you’ll see me ramp up bitesize bugs as we move out of the Alpha stage. When I return next week we’ll get started on the new contributors that have joined in and do a weekly play-by-play of Unity development!
How to Get Involved
1. Get the Code
Follow the Step by Step Instructions and Wiki Page. This will get the code from Launchpad, set up your development environment, and getting you used to the Launchpad workflow.
2. Pick a Bug
Here’s the full list, or you can just join the team and watch them roll in and pick what you’d like.
3. Fix your bug and then get your code into Unity
Don’t worry we won’t leave you hanging, you can get a-hold of a Unity developer through many different ways:
- #ayatana on freenode IRC during European and American workdays. Or you can post to the mailing list if you have a question.
- We also have weekly IRC Q+A for any developer who wants to dive in and ask a Unity developer. 7pm-8pm UTC (That’s 2pm EST) every Friday!