UDS is a great time…

… for planning things, but also for getting things done.

In-between sessions I had discussions with many many folks and I’m happy to say there was renewed and much interest in the Packaging Guide.

Heroes like Andrew Starr-Bochicchio, Leo Iannacone, Joseph Mills and others have contributed suggestions, code, ideas and text bits to improve the packaging guide, and that’s on top of what was discussed in the session we had.

During the session we identified a number of areas of focus. In no particular order, there’s:

• Include the Packaging Guide in Ubuntu
• Translate it in as many languages as possible
• Merge the Wiki documentation into the guide
• Do user-testing of the guide
• Do an editorial review of all the content

Also in many other sessions, the Packaging Guide was usually deemed the best place to educate new contributors about how things work, which is great.

What happened this week (outside of sessions) already was:

• Andrew trimmed down our CSS usage a lot.
• Andrew reviewed debian/copyright, so we get closer to get it into Ubuntu.
• Leo worked on nice new side-bar.
• I split up the package into various variants of the guide.
• I removed some embedded java script bits.
• …and lots more.

This level of activity is fascinating and bodes well for a great 12.10 cycle.

What I love most about the guide is that everybody can help us if you have just a little bit of interest in Ubuntu Development. Let’s have a quick look at some bugs you could help out with, if you’re interested.

Here’s some ‘bitesize’ bugs, I hope we can you interest in:

1. #885315 traditional-packaging.html is empty, but linked to
2. #885317 add info how to get in touch with other developers, find work, etc
3. #890273 Explain that it’s helpful to split up big changes into multiple commits
4. #922576 Encourage new contributors to check out code and toy around
5. #792495 apt-cache included in basic packaging software section
6. #841946 Advertise ‘setup-packaging-environment’ in getting-set-up article
7. #950227 Use ‘bzr lp-propose’ instead of ‘bzr lp-open’
8. #973887 patches-to-packages refers/links to non existing loom information
9. #997753 documentation typo: “intial” should be “initial”
10. #816427 Mention http://screenshots.debian.net/upload in the packaging-from-scratch sections
11. #978493 “bzr commit” should be “debcommit” in fixing-a-bug.html

Obviously, there’s more bugs and there’s a blueprint to subscribe to. Feel free to grab a bug and help out, or catch us on IRC and find out how you can get involved.

Update: I forgot to mention John Kim, who has contributed a bunch of bug reports with his experience. Great work, John!