I’ve rambled about this before and still feel strongly about the importance of apps in Ubuntu. We all need to put some work into this to make apps in Ubuntu truly rock. The good news is: you can help and you’re not alone!

The App Review Board has been hard at work, but they need help. So how does this work? If you have packaging experience and would like to help, you can join

The ARB have documented their guidelines and responsibilities. These docs you might want to review before joining to truly see if this is for you.

So what has been happening lately? The ARB team and helpers have been busy reviewing their queue, helping app authors to get their packages ready and perfecting the documentation and tools.

I have put together the apps-brancher, a tool which downloads apps and pushes branches to Launchpad. If you check out the status update I sent to the mailing list earlier, you can see where things currently stand. The wiki page explains how to use it. The great thing about this tool is that it makes use of pkgme, so even if a submitted app does not contain any packaging, we might have a good chance that pkgme can do the job for us.

As you can see, these are very exciting times. We not only review apps and make Ubuntu shine with new gems, but also work on infrastructure and tools which will make the tasks easier for future generations.

We hope to see you on the IRC channel and mailing list and help making apps in Ubuntu truly rock!