Ubuntu 11.10 Development update

By dholbach | Published: 2011-09-01

Ubuntu Development Update

The Ubuntu 11.10 release is coming closer and closer. Only six weeks left until release! So how are things looking?

This week Beta 1 will be released and testing efforts are going to ramped up. In two weeks the kernel and the documentation text will be frozen and in three weeks Beta 2 will get out the door. You know what this means: test Oneiric and file bugs. This is a good opportunity to get the last bugs ironed out and 11.10 in tip-top shape.

Another activity a lot developers put time into right now is NBS (Not Built from Source). This is an effort to clean the archive and make sure that there’s no packages that are no longer built by any source. Sometimes this mismatch is caused by packages that haven’t followed a library transition or were didn’t follow an upstream renaming. As you can imagine with several ten thousands of packages this is a hard task to tackle. The current TODO list looks much better than a few weeks ago, but still there’s a few things that need to be done. Unfortunately this is not suitable task for very new contributors, as it often requires adapting portions of the code to a new API, etc.

Related to this, you can see how the number of packages that failed to build was brought down considerably in the last weeks. Congratulations everyone!

There’s still a number of bugs on the radar for Beta 2, but most of them are assigned already, so we’re well on track. If you’re interested in any other aspect of Ubuntu Oneiric, I’d refer you to the oneiric-changes mailing list and the big picture specification status overview instead.

Events

Ubuntu Global Jam

Do you have plans for this weekend? No? Excellent! We have one of the coolest events of the whole cycle coming up: Ubuntu Global Jam. Local Community teams around the world are coming together to have a good time on work on Ubuntu directly: translations, bugs, packaging, documentation, testing, documentation – everything goes! Check out the list of participating events to find out where to go, or set up an impromptu event yourself! It will be a bit of last-minute organisation, but still it’ll be worth it and loads of fun!

Ubuntu App Developer Week

Next week (5th-9th September) we will see yet another fantastic Ubuntu App Developer Week happening. If you love Ubuntu and want to develop great apps for it, this is exactly what you’ve been waiting for! Here’s a quick taster of what the event will cover:

  • Monday: Making Ubuntu a Target for App Developers, Introducing Bazaar Explorer: Version Control for your Apps, Your App & Launchpad best practice, Publishing Your Apps in the Software Center: the MyApps Portal, Universal GRUB Recovery
  • Tuesday: Creating a Grooveshark Scope for the Music Lens, The Making of Unity 2D, Making App Development Easy: Gedit Developer Plugins, Getting Started With Python: a Hello World App, Publishing Your Apps in the Software Center: The App Review Board
  • Wednesday: Unity Mail: Webmail Notification on Your Desktop, Launchpad Daily Builds and Rapid Feedback: Writing Recipe Builds, Using the Ubuntu One APIs for Your Apps: An Overview, Supercharging Your Apps with Unity Launcher Integration, Hello Vala: An Introduction to the Vala Language
  • Thursday: Creating an App Developer Website: developer.ubuntu.com, Rapid App Development with Quickly, Developing with Freeform Design Surfaces: GooCanvas and PyGame, Practical Ubuntu One Files Integration, Will it Blend? Python Libraries for Desktop Integration
  • Friday: Getting A Grip on Your Apps: Multitouch on GTK apps using Libgrip, Making Your App Speak Languages with Launchpad Translations, Making your app appear in the Indicators, Publishing Your Apps in the Software Center: The Business Side, Writing an App with Go.

Isn’t that fantastic? Sign up for the Facebook event and start discussing your app plans!

Things that still 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’s packages that fail to build.
  • Also is the Ubuntu Mozilla team 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’s Security bugs you can take a look at, the team is a friendly bunch and they’re incredibly helpful in getting your patch reviewed.
  • Also is the Server team interested in your help: merges from Debian is one possibility, fixing important bugs another.

First timers!

We had two first-time contributors last week! Congratulations to these fine people: Alex Solanos and Gang Wei. Awesome!

New contributor

I had a chat with Oliver Sauder, here’s what he has to say about his experience developing Ubuntu.

Oliver SauderWho am I?
Well, I have been an open source and Linux user for quite a while. First few years dual booting Linux with Windows (for different reasons). However, since the first Ubuntu version has been released in 2004 I got rid of Windows altogether in favor of Ubuntu. Since then I haven’t missed any Ubuntu release .

In 2006 I’ve finished my Computer Science degree in Switzerland. Thenceforth working for several companies. First involved in low level programming such as implementing printer drivers and different network protocols in C/C++. From there on moving into the Web sphere and also diving into the world of Java and its surrounding technologies.

All the while long I have been involved in different open source projects, mainly bug fixing but also starting some projects such as Diodon. Unfortunately, as my job is very time consuming I can not spent as much time as I would like to. Hope to change this in the future.

The Ubuntu community:
Working in the Ubuntu community has been a real pleasure. Personally I benefit the most of the code reviews where experienced developers take a look at my changes and give constructive and helpful comments. Thumbs up. Furthermore, questions are allowed; even encouraged, which makes working in the community a pleasant experience.

What could be improved?
Some parts of Ubuntu are very fast moving targets which is great. However, it makes it difficult for occasional contributors to keep up the pace. Therefore good documentation and source code comments are essential.

In comparison to other projects Ubuntu has always had a big amount of good documentation. However it has been a bit cluttered which makes it sometimes difficult to find the right part. Some initiatives to clean up and summarize the documentation have been made which improved the situation a lot (e.g. “Improve packaging guide” to only mention one). Hope to see more of such initiatives in the future.

To close up I’m looking forward contributing more in the Ubuntu community and excited to see where Ubuntu is heading to.

Get Involved

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

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 most 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, Identi.ca or Twitter.

Unity Contributor Report for Beta 1: It’s peanut butter beta time.

By jcastro | Published: 2011-09-01

Now that feature freeze is past the team has been concentrating on polishing up Unity for 11.10 Beta 1. While Jono has outlined the user-visible changes in 11.10, here are the meaty guts behind that work and some things that might not seem so obvious to the naked eye.

If you are interested in contributing to Unity then right around this time is the time to do it. The major plumbing has been laid down and it’s all polish from now on, so if you have something that is niggling you then jump on in, instructions at the bottom of this post. Alright, let’s get started:

Unity Contributor Activity This Week

  • Marco Trevisan made it so applications not on the current viewport get a hollow arrow rather than a solid one on the launcher. (Bug #690143)
  • Marco’s also added two new icon backlight options:
    • Edge illumination toggle: illuminate only the edge of the icons linked to running applications.
    • Backlight and Edge Illumination Toggles: illuminate the background of the icons linked to running applications; if the windows of this application are all in a non viewable workspace, then only the edge of the icon is illuminated.
  • Andrea Azzarone fixes it so we do not show the application menu when the launcher is a little to the left/bottom/top in relation to the window-buttons. Fixes LP: #820293
  • Andrea’s also fixed it so Nautilus prompts you before emptying our your trash can (Whoops!) LP: #808162
  • Andrea’s also made it so the launcher detects the contents before the mouse enters the launcher X window. #727901). Fixes also bug #724986 (Launcher reveals when dragging a window widget), and bug #72790 (Launcher icon highlighting should not switch off as soon the cursor moves after the app spread appears) and bug #77302 (any text drag causes bar to show up).
  • Doesn’t show an empty menu when coursor reaches the title in the panel. It refers just to maximized windows, since the case is already fixed for non-maximized ones. Fixes LP: #734900.
  • He’s not done yet folks! Fixes for bug #824831 “Window buttons don’t respect Ambiance Radiance themes”

Other branches for incoming fixes are in the review queue. Thanks to all the contributors who’ve spent time making Unity better. Want to dive in? Check out the big list below and dive in!

Things going on in Oneiric

Today is Beta 1 so there’s been a bunch of polish work. Here is a tour of some of the work in this release of Unity 4.12.0:

  • The Dash has seen a bunch of work this week. Shortcut icons now work, and the “blank” dash showing up us also fixed, drag and drop to the launcher, a horizontal renderer for lenses that need it, nicer blur for the buttons, copy and paste and sizing fixes.
  • A bunch of window management fixes in Unity: various placement issues fixed, offscreen dialogs with Qt apps, fixed the paint system.
  • The blur color has been darkened and should fit more wallpapers (Better color handling and grayscale images now get assigned one color)
  • The panel gets RGBA support, and positioning and resizing fixes.
  • The blur and alt-tab are now much faster.
  • Support for ibus and some other input methods.
  • Tons o’ memory leaks fixed all over the place. (Too many to mention).
  • Alt-tab now has a companion Alt-`, which is window switching for the current application. On english keyboards it’s Alt-`, but it’s actually whatever key is above your tab key depending on your keyboard. Jason explains this in more detail here. here. You can also invoke the per-application switching without using alt-tab first, so if you’re in an application with many windows you can just hit alt-` and you can cycle between the current application windows, then hit alt tab to “go up” to all the applications, alt-tab to the one you want, then alt-` to the individual windows. (This is hard to explain, you’ll have to just try it.)

And here are the bits from last week’s desktop team report (though these are out of date by now, but still interesting):

  • Compiz and Unity upload with a lot of backports last week to get a functional beta1.
  • Compiz stacking bugs (mumble, alt + tab) under investigation and priority for next release with minor gnome integration
  • Next small unity release due to holidays and bank holidays for Thursday (dash and panel fixes mostly)
  • Unity-2d release as well. Seems there is a crash at loading for beta1. It’s fixed in trunk right now (bug #834001)

You can check out the rest of the progress on the desktop from the desktop team’s report for the week.

The Big List

Here’s a list of targeted bugs that would make Unity better to use. Here’s the full list if you want to dig in.

  • 709461 – Application windows can sometimes fail to display and will mask regions of the screen.
  • 700757 – Unity aborts when you plug in an external monitor
  • 732727 – When hiding the clock indicator, a gap appears
  • 792201 – Launcher leaves focus nowhere after Alt+F1, Esc
  • 795065 – Scrolling on top of a close animation switches viewports
  • 816692 – Widget textures are loaded even though they may not be used

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:

  • Join the ~unity-community-hackers team and start digging in.
  • We now have a Weekly Meeting at 1800UTC Wednesdays on #ayatana on Freenode IRC if you feel like hanging with us and getting organized and ask questions
  • #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!

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 230

By nhandler | Published: 2011-08-30

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #230 for the week August 21 – 27, 2011, and the full version is available here.

In this issue we cover:

The issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

  • Elizabeth Krumbach
  • Amber Graner
  • James Gifford
  • Neil Oosthuizen
  • holstein
  • Nathan Handler
  • And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License

Ubuntu 11.10 Development update

By dholbach | Published: 2011-08-25

Ubuntu Development Update

This week we are about to hit UI Freeze and Beta Freeze and we have only 7 weeks left until release. A lot of the great work everybody put into Oneiric is already visible and things look great, even if there are a couple of bugs that still need to be ironed out. If there are show-stopper bugs you still want to help get fixed, this is a great time for it!

I talked to a number of developers and asked what they are excited about in the upcoming release. Let’s hear what they have to say.

What do you personally find most exciting about the upcoming 11.10 release?

  • Neil Patel says: “What I love about the upcoming Ubuntu release is our improvements of the Unity interface, in particular: Alt+` for switching between windows of the same app, the new Dash style, Panel window buttons control the Dash now (maximised/non-maximised), Dash filters rendering correctly (but there’s still some hooking up to do on the daemon side), Lots and lots of Dash fixes in searching/opening/closing/etc/etc, faster active blur, Memory leak fixes. Next week we’ll still get some performance fixes in.”
  • Rodrigo Moya, Desktop team member, is very happy about all the GTK3/GNOME3 bits that have made it into Oneiric: I like the new cleaner control center, the gnome-shell, although it’s not in main and the new on-line accounts panel to set up Google and other on-line accounts.
  • Ahmed Kamal says: “I think to me the most exciting is development happening on the cloud front. The first being, the new Ubuntu Cloud product, Ubuntu is taking the OpenStack project, an open source project that created a lot of buzz in the cloud space, and tightly integrating it within Ubuntu server. The second being Ensemble, a framework for devops enabling service orchestration over private clouds (Ubuntu Cloud), public cloud like ec2, or even your local laptop (in the works!)”
  • apt- and software-center hacker Michael Vogt was quite brief today and said: “I’m excited about the new software-center-gtk3 UI!“

The great thing is: this is just a minuscule part of the great work that went into Oneiric. Isn’t it awesome?

If you’re interested in any other aspect of Ubuntu Oneiric, I’d refer you to the oneiric-changes mailing list and the big picture specification status overview instead.

Events

Next week’s weekend we’ll have one of the coolest events of the whole cycle coming up: Ubuntu Global Jam. Local Community teams around the world come together to have a good time on work on Ubuntu directly: translations, bugs, packaging, documentation, testing, documentation – everything goes! Check out the list of participating events to find out where to go, or set up an event yourself! It will be a bit of last-minute organisation, but still it’ll be worth it and loads of fun! There’s still some time until 2nd-4th September!

The week after the Global Jam we will see yet another fantastic Ubuntu App Developer Week. Stay tuned for more info on the event. If you love Ubuntu and want to develop great apps for it, this is exactly what you’ve been waiting for!

Things that still 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’s packages that fail to build.
  • Also is the Ubuntu Mozilla team 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’s Security bugs you can take a look at, the team is a friendly bunch and they’re incredibly helpful in getting your patch reviewed.
  • Also is the Server team interested in your help: merges from Debian is one possibility, fixing important bugs another.

First timers!

We had a couple of first-time contributors last week! Congratulations to these fine people: Oliver Sauder and Gustavo Goretkin. Awesome!

New contributor

I had a chat with Daniel van Vugt, here’s what he has to say about his experience developing Ubuntu.

I’ve found working on Ubuntu quite rewarding. To see my fixes make their way into the world where millions of people are benefiting is really nice.

The process of working on Ubuntu is fairly impressive. I’m not a fan of on-line social networking, but Launchpad works really well as a community
for lots of people coming together to get software built and bugs fixed. And I have to say it’s much more functional and professional than “professional” tools I have worked with in big technology companies.

To improve things? I think Ubuntu needs to step up from a product that’s only-just finished by the time each beta cycle ends. And we saw the unfortunate side-effects of this when natty was released. Some new components (Unity etc) had literally just been developed, and so the community has spent months fixing what should have been obvious bugs that should not have reached release. It also created some bad publicity for Ubuntu. Good software should look finished before it reaches beta, as you find in most of the commercial software industry. To solve this, all I can suggest is: (a) Longer (less frequent) release cycles or a rolling release; and (b) More careful management. Management should not allow the release of brand new components to the world until they’re a little more mature.

 

I’ve been a fan of Linux since around 1996. In 1999 I finished a degree in Computer Science in Western Australia, majoring in graphics, systems programming and AI. Initially working for Curtin University doing Linux software development, I was asked to join a startup which a few acquisitions later was IBM. In those 11 years I’ve constantly developed for Linux, many UNIX variations as well as Windows and Mac.

In 2005 an IBM coworker introduced me to Ubuntu when I was still using other distributions. I switched to Ubuntu and have never looked back. But the corporate life gave me no time to contribute to Ubuntu or open source in general.

In 2010 I left IBM to pursue my own business ideas, which are still under (secret) development. However being my own boss has given me the time I needed to finally give back to Ubuntu. Sometimes it’s much more time than I should be spending, but I’ve really enjoyed contributing to Ubuntu and open source in general. So much so, that I’m now contributing fixes to Ubuntu faster than they can be reviewed. It’s all fun and I think the community aspect of Ubuntu on top of a generally nice product is what makes it so great.

Get Involved

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

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 most 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, Identi.ca or Twitter.

New Asia and Oceania Membership Board Members

By pleia2 | Published: 2011-08-25

The Community Council has been working with the LoCo Council to identify qualified individuals for membership on the Asia and Oceania Membership Board.

I’m happy to announce that the following individuals have been appointed to the board:

Jared Norris
https://launchpad.net/~jarednorris

Eleanor Chen
https://launchpad.net/~chenyueg

oneleaf
https://launchpad.net/~oneleaf

Congratulations and welcome to these board members!

Originally sent to the ubuntu-news-team mailing list by Elizabeth Krumbach on Thu Aug 25 06:26:25 UTC 2011