Look what we built together, a retrospective on Unity bitesize bugs.

This cycle we started off determined to make it easy for anyone who wanted to contribute to Ubuntu Unity to have no roadblocks in their way. We concentrated on making our work processes as smooth and easy as possible. We had Q+A sessions in IRC, Ask Me Anythings on Reddit, and regular status reports so that anyone who wanted to dive in this cycle could grab Unity and fix a bug.

This cycle the following 17 contributors have landed code into the “Unity” module:

Andrea Azzarone, Andreas Reichel, Connor Carney, Dylan McCall, Jamal Fanaian, Jamie Rowe, Jimmy Wahlberg, Marco Biscaro, Marco Trevisan(Treviño), Matthew Rasmus, Nico van der Walt, Oliver Sauder, Ruben Verweij, Shane Fagan, Stefano Candori,  Ying-ChunLiu(PaulLiu), and Артём Попов.

Collectively this group help fix close to 60 bitesize bugs:

This was part of part of a greater effort of bug fixing over this cycle as the entire collective Unity team has closed close to 1200 bugs. Do note that in certain cases a contributor fixed meatier bugs than what was just on the bitesize list. Indeed without Andrea Azzarone we wouldn’t have a resizeable launcher,

So Now What?

Software is never finished. As of this writing three more new people have code proposals pending. As 11.04 is finalized it will get into the hands of millions of users. They will also want to fix and add things. The Get Involved page isn’t going anywhere. As we put the finishing touches on 11.04 we’re already having a think of where we want to go for 11.10 and how to grow contributions.

Other Unity Updates for this Week

• Two Unity releases this week (Thursday and last Monday), totalizing an impressive number of 120 bugs fixes! As usual full story at https://launchpad.net/unity/3.0/3.8.4 and https://launchpad.net/unity/3.0/3.8.6
• Compiz as well got multiple uploads with additional fixes (you can find them in the unity links above)
• Mostly bug fixes/crashers
• Compiz fixes crash issues with gitk, multimonitor support fixes for grid, some (still remaining) stacking issues
• What is noticeable this week is probably the left edge reveal and the unity-preferences dialog to change it. The icon urgency animation is also back. All paperwork done for string freeze.
• Also the grid plugin won an animation and is now orange (unity –reset to be back to the default!)
• Dynamic quicklists are back (just needed to wire the latest pieces)

There is a known issue of random freeze with Xorg, we don’t really konw if it’s compiz hammering it too much with the stackattack patch (we will lower the value in next upload) or something else. RAOF is looking at it. Compiz is still crashing on plugins added/remove in ccsm. That’s priority #1 for Thursday to ensure we are in a good state but the amount of work to get there is huge.

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 if you want to find more, feel free to just grab one, assign it to yourself, mark it in progress and get started.

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!