Daniel Holbach’s blog

Did you ever have to deal with source packages and found the variety of patch systems simply mind-boggling? I certainly have.

Enter: the unstoppable Michael Vogt.

If you are running lucid and don’t have ubuntu-dev-tools installed, install it now. Forget about all the crazy stuff and incantations you might need for random patch system X, Y or Z (it supports cdbs, dpatch and quilt at the moment), just type:

edit-patch <name-of-patch>

and it will do the rest for you, even remind you do make use of the patch tagging guidelines.

Michael simply rocks! Give him a hug and if you find bugs in edit-patch, file them.

Brian Murray has spilled the beans about it already: we’ll try to put more work into getting patches into Ubuntu. The regular sponsorship process is working well and hundreds of patches get reviewed every month. The problem is that many patch submitters don’t know about the process, so patches or workaround sit there for a longer time.

If you have a look at our code review pages, you’ll see that we have a two-step process in which we’ll try to attack the problem:

1. take a look at the bugs of the ubuntu-reviews team, make sure the patch is a genuine patch, have a look at the current discussion and either upload it (if you can) or
2. pass it on to the sponsors, who will review the patch and upload it.

For step 1 you don’t need to be a package uploader, but if you know about bugs and patches, you can still help out and make a valuable contribution.

Let’s try to get a dent into this graph and all the improvements into Ubuntu!

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.