Daniel Holbach’s blog

Another Ubuntu Developer Week is over and I’m very happy with the outcome. Lots of great sessions, lots of new stuff learnt, lots of new contributors who turned up during the sessions and lots of sharp questions.

Let’s review what happened at the last day:

1. Writing Beautiful Code: this session unfortunately had to be cancelled as Paul Hummer couldn’t make it. We’ll definitely repeat the session soon and I’ll let you all know about it.
2. Doing merges right: an excellent session by Colin Watson. How changes make it from Debian to Ubuntu, how to get the most out of using Bazaar for the merging, how to deal with merge conflicts, etc. It all gets so much clearer after attending the session.
3. Meet launchpadlib: if you have a project that needs data from Launchpad, check out Jonathan Lange’s session about launchpadlib. He uses a nice little example to explain how best to go about gripping into Launchpad’s brain and extracting data from it. In the most cases you should be done really quickly and launchpadlib incantations mostly just add a few lines of code to your project.
4. KDE/Kubuntu Junior Jobs/Papercuts: Mackenzie Morgan and Lydia Pintscher replaced Celest Lyn Paul in this session and they gave a fantastic overview how to get started helping out with KDE and Kubuntu. Read the log and start helping out!
5. Interpreting stacktraces: the last session of the day and of UDW was led by Emmet Hikory. He talked about reading stacktraces, tips and tricks how to use gdb, and covered enough background to help you figure out why a particular crash happens when you investigate it the next time.

Thanks everybody for making this an unforgettable week! This was amazing and I’m looking forward to the next one!

Today is the last day of the wonderful Ubuntu Developer Week. As always it passes much too quickly. On the other hand we’ll now all have a bit more time to put our ideas into action and play around with all the new things we learnt… but I’m getting ahead of myself, there’s still one day left!

Let’s re-cap yesterday:

1. Adopt-an-Upstream: Jorge and I had a great time giving this talk. It’s incredibly important for Ubuntu to have good and healthy relationships to other projects. During the session we gave an overview over adopting an upstream, what to bear in mind, why to do it and how it fits into the bigger picture of Ubuntu development.
2. Kernel patches: Next up was Leann Ogasawara who rocked the house talking about patching the kernel, how the Kernel team works, how to get involved and how to get help. There was loads of questions and lots of interst. Let’s see how many new kernel hackers we’ll have soon!
3. Getting more detailed bug reports: QA mastermind Brian Murray shed more light on one of his favourite tools: apport. What’s great about reporting bugs with apport is that it will get a lot of useful information from your system like the version number of the package, which kernel modules were loaded, etc. This eliminates a lot of bug question ping-pong. The best thing about it is though that it is easily extendable. Read the session log to find out how you can get more specific information for packages you’re interested in!
4. Bazaar and packaging: Jelmer Vernooij did a fantastic talk about Bazaar, Launchpad and Ubuntu/Debian packaging and why they go so good together. In a couple of easily understandable examples he showcased very well how to use them and why they make working with packages so much easier. Awesome!
5. How to get started hacking Launchpad: Ever wanted to fix a bug in Launchpad or improve it somehow? Be sure to check out the log of Karl Fogel’s session. It’s much much easier than you think to get from Getting Launchpad to Having contributed to it. Thanks Karl

Today, last day… what lies ahead of us?

• 16:00 UTC, Writing Beautiful Code — Paul Hummer (rockstar): Paul Hummer is with us and he’ll show you how to write python code like a rock star. There’s a lot of worth in writing understandable, easily scanable code and there’s just a few conventions you have to follow to make yourself happier and your fellow contributors as well.
• 17:00 UTC, Doing merges right — Colin Watson (cjwatson): Merging is one of the inevitable things in open source development. We collaborate, we work together in the open and sometimes we decide to focus our attention on different things, so merges might be a bit more tricky afterwards. Colin Watson has been doing hundreds (if not thousands) of merges in his life, so he’s the perfect person to share a few tips to make the experience more seamless.
• 18:00 UTC, Meet launchpadlib — Jonathan Lange (jml): Ever found yourself in a position where you neede some data from Launchpad? Ever needed to automate a task that involved something in Launchpad somehow? There’s one answer to all these problems: Use python-launchpadlib. We’ll have Jonathan Lange there who will tell you how to use it efficiently and where best to start.
• 19:00 UTC, KDE/Kubuntu Junior Jobs/Papercuts — Celest Lyn Paul (seele): You’re a friend of the big K? You have a small usability bug you always wanted to fix? Always wanted to get involved with hacking on KDE somehow? Awesome. Celeste Lyn Paul knows how to do it and she’ll deliver a great session where we’ll talk about exactly that! Awesome!
• 20:00 UTC, Interpreting Stacktraces — Emmet Hikory (persia): Ever found yourself faced with a crashing application and you were told to decipher some kind of stacktrace? It’s definitely one of the proficiencies that are incredibly helpful and will help you fix a lot of problems. Emmet Hikory will deliver a great session about getting the most information our of stacktraces with the least amount of hassle.

Be sure to be there and bring your friends.

Time flies when it’s Ubuntu Developer Week. 5 days is just too short. Let’s re-cap what happened on day 3, yesterday.

1. Writing good test-cases: this was a top-notch talk by John Arbash Meinel. Not only did he give a fantastic overview of today’s state of the art of proactively testing software, but also did he dive into the theory behind it and managed to get across a good feeling for what to bear in mind when writing test-cases.
2. Launchpad Translations under the hood: amazing work by Adi Roiban and Henning Eggers. The talk covered quite well how translations work, which tools are used and how Launchpad makes use of all of this to become this fantastic translations platform.
3. Getting Started with EC2: this great talk by Scott Moser was well-researched and full of information about the Cloud, how it works, its importance and why to try it out. If you didn’t attend the session be sure to check out the log.
4. Developing and Testing in KVM: Dustin Kirkland was next and talked about one of the key players in virtualisation land. He covered what KVM is about, how it works and how to use it. Check out the “KVM hacks” section!
5. Python Applications Packaging: Luca Falavigna did the last talk of the day and even spent a bit more than the regular hour to talk the audience through the prodecude of packaging Python applications. Seems like we need to add SABPDFT to the glossary from now on…

Liked day 3? Then I’m sure you’ll love what’s going to happen today:

• 16:00 UTC, Adopt-an-Upstream — Jorge Castro (jcastro) and Daniel Holbach (dholbach): Jorge Castro and Daniel Holbach will talk about the relationship between the Ubuntu project and Upstream projects in general and how you can help out. It’s not as hard as it sounds and if you are really fond of and passionate about a certain Upstream project, this is the perfect session for you!
• 17:00 UTC, Kernel patches — Leann Ogasawara (ogasawara): Kernel work is complicated? It can be… but there’s help! Leann Ogasawara is going to explain the workflow of the Kernel team and how we deal with patches there. You can get help from the team and Leann’s session will help you understand how to avoid the most common mistakes. Awesome.
• 18:00 UTC, Getting more detailed bug reports — Brian Murray (bdmurray): Brian Murray has looked thounsands of bug reports in his life. He knows how important it is to have all the important information right there without going through a feedback loop for weeks. Luckily there’s tools that can automate the process of getting us the right information right at the start. Brian will teach you how.
• 19:00 UTC, Bazaar and packaging — Jelmer Vernooij (jelmer): Jelmer Vernooij knows a lot about Bazaar and a lot about Packaging and he’s a great guy which will make this session great to fun to be in. Using a revision control system makes packaging and maintaining packages a lot more fun, especially if you start merging your work with others.
• 20:00 UTC, How to get started hacking Launchpad — Karl Fogel (kfogel): Launchpad is open source and it’s written in Python, which make it a perfect opportunity to get involved with and your personal pet peeve fixed easily. Karl Fogel will talk you through the first steps of hacking Launchpad. Awesome!

ROCK AND ROLL!

This is the fifth time we are running Ubuntu Developer Week and it always makes me a very happy man. The excitement, the fantastic talks, the really sharp people attending the sessions, the great questions and the sense of learning something new and also the sense of starting new projects soon with that new knowledge. Also I got a lot of great comments about Lernid, so if you haven’t tried it yet, be sure to give it a spin.

Let’s re-cap the sessions we had yesterday:

1. Java libraries packaging: in four easy to understand examples Thierry Carrez explained how to deal with java libraries and how to make them build in the Ubuntu way. He managed to give a good overview of the current state of Java packaging, so let’s hope we see an increase in good quality java packages in the near future!
2. Adding support for Ubuntu One to your applications: the wonderful Stuart Langridge was up next and showcased how simple and easy it is today to work with DesktopCouch as a data backend. His talk was full of nice examples so it should be easy for you to hook up your application with Ubuntu One. If you weren’t in the session, make sure you read the log.
3. Internationalizing your application with quickly and Launchpad: David Planella and Didier Roche are experts in their respective fields: Didier put a lot of work into Quickly and David knows almost everything about internationalisation and translations. Together they delivered a great show of how to easily make translated apps happen.
4. Getting your applications in the panel: Ted Gould did a great job of explaining why the panel currently can get a bit crowded, what’s the plan in lucid and what you can do to make applications fit into the new scheme. It’s pretty easy to work with the new application indicators, so have a look at the log and talk to the Ayatana people about it!
5. Automated server testing: Last of the day was Søren Hansen who talked to us about automated server testing, test suites and server-specific testing. Be sure to read the log to understand how this amazing technology works and what it has to do with the number of your favourite pizza guy.

Thanks again to everybody who helped Ubuntu Developer Week kick arse!

Three days left! So what’s cooking today you ask, let’s have a look together:

• 16:00 UTC, Writing good test-cases — John Arbash Meinel (jam): We all agree that encountering bugs in most cases is just not necessary. Sometimes it’s just a small typo that caused the problem or a wrong assumption. Enter test-cases. A lot of big open source projects have moved to test-driven development already or ask developers to add a test-case for bugs they fixed. The notion of making sure that bugs don’t happen again or that assumptions don’t suddenly change during some phase of re-design has prevented a lot of bugs. We have John Arbash Meinel here who will tell us how to cause less bugs by writing good test-cases.
• 17:00 UTC, Launchpad Translations under the hood — Adi Roiban (adiroiban) and Henning Eggers (henninge): Launchpad Translations is amazing. Millions of strings, thousand of translators, hundreds of languages and thousand of applications get together and make for an accessible and understandable great linux distribution. If you ever wondered how it works under the hood and how things get together, this is the perfect opportunity. Listen to what Henning and Adi have to say!
• 18:00 UTC, Getting started with EC2 — Scott Moser (smoser): Next up is Scott Moser who will talk to us about how to use Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud. Ubuntu is a great platform to use in the cloud and this session will give you an overview and cover the best tools to make your cloud experience most enjoyable.
• 19:00 UTC, Developing and Testing in KVM –Dustin Kirkland (kirkland): Dustin Kirkland has been working a lot with KVM, a fantastic virtualisation technology, in the last few months. Once you learned all of Dustin’s tricks you will never going to miss them for developing and testing every again.
• 20:00 UTC, Python Applications Packaging — Luca Falavigna (DktrKranz): Your favourite application is writting in Python? That’s quite understandable. It’s not packaged yet? Looks like a small challenge ahead. Luckily we have Luca Falavigna who can help you with the task. He’ll talk about common pitfalls, how to avoid them and how to make the task as easy as possible.

HOLY COW… what a first day of Ubuntu Developer Week! Let’s go through yesterday’s sessions one by one.

1. Getting Started with Ubuntu Development: we had a great start in the first session, between 300 and 400 people attended it and we were able to resolve lots and lots of questions around the initial steps of developing Ubuntu. Check out the log if you want to start your journey too.
2. Fixing small Ubuntu bugs: I simply love these sessions. Nothing is as powerful as the realisation that you can really fix a bug and really get it fixed for millions of users. One of the small bugs we discussed yesterday was fixed in Ubuntu Lucid today.
3. Django: Dave Walker gave an excellent session about Django. If you ever think “I need some kind of website”, make sure you read the session log and try it out yourself. Judging by the really sharp questions that Dave got we can expect more Django sites coming up soon.
4. Working on the Bleeding Edge: I’m very glad that Kees Cook gave this session because one of the most frequent questions of new Ubuntu Developers is “Do I need to run the current development release? Won’t that break my system?”. Kees gave very good advice to stay sane and avoid problems on the “bleeding edge”. He also uploaded a presentation about the topic.
5. Server oriented packages: Mathias Gug was up next and talked about the specifics of server packages: firewall rules, apparmor profiles, init scripts, etc. If you like servers, read the log and talk to the Server Team.

Thanks everybody who contributed to the sessions! Session leaders, session attendants, bloggers, IRC helpers, log wiki-fyers and everybody else: you ROCK!

So what’s in store for today?

• 16:00 UTC, Java libraries packaging — Thierry Carrez (ttx): We have Thierry Carrez here who had the pleasure of working with Java Packaging extensively. Did you ever want to package a Java library or a Java application and struggled with your first steps? Don’t despair, we have an expert with us. Attend the session and learn Thierry’s tips and tricks.
• 17:00 UTC, Adding Ubuntu One support to your applications — Stuart Langridge (aquarius): You want your application to save data in a clever way? You want to get it synced across various computers? You want it in a place where it’s properly backed up? You have heard of Ubuntu One? Great, because Stuart Langridge will explain how to get this all done very very easily.
• 18:00 UTC, Internationalizing your application with quickly and Launchpad — David Planella (dpm) and Didier Roche (didrocks): quickly is a fantastic little application. It makes writing apps so much easier and comprehensible. There’s already a lot of apps written with quickly and already a bunch of instructions on how to use it. This session will specifically deal with how to get applications translatable and translated. Thanks a lot Didier and David.
• 19:00 UTC, Getting your application in the panel — Ted Gould (ted): The status area in the panel has gone through some pretty fantastic changes in the karmic and lucid cycle. Ted Gould has been massively involved in the planning, design and coding. If you want to do some good work on the Desktop and make your favourite application benefit from the new indicators make sure you attend this session.
• 20:00 UTC, Automated server testing — Søren Hansen (soren): Mr. Søren Hansen wrapped his head around Automated Server Testing in the last few months and he has a lot of ideas to share. If you’re intererested in automating tests in general and testing servers specifically, this is exactly where you should be going.

Please note that the sessions slots for “Getting your application in the panel” and “Getting started with EC2″ swapped because of scheduling conflicts. The correct times and dates are:

• Tue 26^th Jan 19.00 UTC, Getting your application in the panel — Ted Gould
• Wed 27^th Jan 18.00 UTC, Getting started with EC2 — Scott Moser