Development Update
The Precise Pangolin Beta 2 is set to be released on Thursday, the 29th, If you feel comfortable testing beta releases, get the latest daily build and keep it updated. Don’t forget to report any bugs you find!
From now on it’s only one month until the release of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Here’s the run-down of what is going to happen in the following weeks:
- Week of April 5th: Kernel Freeze.
- Week of April 12th: Non Language-Pack Translation Deadline (Tuesday), Final Freeze, Language-Pack Test Rebuild (Friday).
- Week of April 19th: Language-Pack Translation Deadline (Tuesday), Candidate Window Starts.
- Week of April 26th: Unseeded Universe Final Freeze (Tue), Final Release!
You know what this means: get your testing cap on or get ready to fix some last minute bugs.
Letting developers speak for themselves
- Server Team lead Robbie Williamson points out a great article about juju.
- Kees Cook announces the availability of seccomp filters in Ubuntu and how to use them.
- Michael Hall points out a nice article about Unity 5.8.
- Matt Fischer wrote a blog entry about how to use ubuntu-defaults-builder for rolling your own distro.
- Bjoern Michaelsen reports there’s a team putting together nice templates for LibreOffice.
- Marcin Juszkiewicz explains how to cross-compile a kernel an ARM kernel in Ubuntu 12.04.
Events
LibreOffice HackFest on April 14/15, 2012
Release Parties
And just a reminder to watch Ubuntu LoCo Directory for a Ubuntu 12.04 Release Party near you coming next month.
Things which need to get done
If you want to get involved in packaging and bug fixing, there’s still a lot of bugs that need to get fixed:
- There are Merges which need to be done (main,restricted, universe, multiverse).
- Also the Ubuntu Mozilla team is looking for help, so if you’re excited about Mozilla and what’s happening there, join IRC, talk to the guys on #ubuntu-mozillateam on irc.freenode.net.
- And then there are Security bugs you can take a look at, the team is a friendly bunch and they’re incredibly helpful in getting your patch reviewed.
- There are bitesize bugs.
- Also did John Lea from the Ubuntu Design team talk to us and mentioned that there are bugs up for grabs, where the design has been decided on and the implementation might need YOUR help. If you want to help improve Ubuntu’s UI, have a look at these!
First timers!
Adam Gandelman got upload rights for Ubuntu Server! Congratulations!
On their way to become Ubuntu developers, we had three folks who got their first uploads into Ubuntu. We have Vibhav Pant, who fixed bugs in gthumb, mercurial and kupfer. Also Vibhav synced ebook-speaker, jinput and calendarserver from Debian. Next up is Pasi Lallinaho who got a new version of xubuntu-artwork in. Charles Kerr got new versions of libappindicator, indicator-session, indicator-power and indicator-datetime into Ubuntu. Well done everyone!
Get Involved
- Read the Introduction to Ubuntu Development. It’s a short article which will help you understand how Ubuntu is put together, how the infrastructure is used and how we interact with other projects.
- Follow the instructions in the Getting Set Up article. A few simple commands, a registration at Launchpad and you should have all the tools you need, and you’re ready to go.
- Check out our instructions for how to fix a bug in Ubuntu, they come with small examples that make it easier to visualise what exactly you need to do.
Find something to work on
Pick a bitesize bug. These are the bugs we think should be easy to fix. Another option is to help out in one of our initiatives.
- Help out with fixing packages which don’t build anymore.
- Help out with security bugs.
In addition to that there are loads more opportunities over at Harvest.
Getting in touch
There are many different ways to contact Ubuntu developers and get your questions answered.
- Be interactive and reach us immediately: talk to us in #ubuntu-motu on irc.freenode.net.
- Follow mailing lists and get involved in the discussions: ubuntu-devel-announce (announce only, low traffic), ubuntu-devel (high-level discussions), ubuntu-devel-discuss (fairly general developer discussions).
- Stay up to date and follow the ubuntudev account on Facebook, Google+, Identi.ca or Twitter.