Launchpad Report for 2006-08-17

Christian Robottom Reis kiko at async.com.br
Thu Aug 17 20:34:30 BST 2006 

Here's a report of Launchpad changes for the first two weeks of August.
These changes were rolled out yesterday, August 16, at revision level
3908.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Highlights
------------------------------------------------------------------------

This has been a busy pair of weeks for the Launchpad team, and this long
report has a lot of news for you. I'd like to start off by calling
attention to the fact that we have a staging server running, something
that some users may already be familiar with. The staging server is
accessible via:

    https://staging.ubuntu.com/

It runs a copy of the production database on the very latest code
integrated into our codebase. This database is discarded and a new
version is copied in daily, which makes it safe to experiment with. And
your Launchpad account already works there!

Bug tracking
============

My second important announcement is an answer to the question

    Can I use Launchpad (Malone) to track bugs for my software project?

The answer is yes -- and it always has been! Launchpad does not intend to
be a system that just links bug trackers together (though it does allow
you to connect your bugs to bugs in remote bug trackers), but a
full-fledged bug management system for any open source project. Ubuntu
uses it successfully, and a number of other products have taken it up as
their main tracker since its first public announcement. You can read
more about what makes bug tracking in Launchpad unique at:

    https://help.launchpad.net/BugTrackingHighlights

On the bug-tracking front, we have a few interesting new features. You
may have noticed by now that bug descriptions and comments are now
rendered in a monospace font. This is an experiment Matthew Thomas and
the Launchpad team are running together to see how much it improves
rendering of structured comments (which include source code, diffs and
ASCII art).

The tags listed in the bug page are now links to listings of bugs with
that tag set. This should make it easier to actually use the tags for
grouping. We've seen an explosion of tags for Ubuntu meanwhile, and we
are thinking of how to manage the pool of tags for a project this
successful; it's likely that more changes will be discussed on the users
mailing list over the next weeks.

Bazaar
======

Last week I wrote of the transition of source code imports to native
Bazaar (bzr) format; this was successfully deployed in this period and
we are now 100% bzr-native. In our second month of active hosting of
Bazaar branches we already have over 600 branches registered on
Launchpad and its code hosting system (dubbed the Supermirror). Two
recent blog posts talk more about pushing your bzr branches to
Launchpad, and managing shared bzr branches using Launchpad teams:

    David Allouche's Community Bazaar Hosting on Launchpad
    http://ddaa.net/blog/launchpad/bzr-hosting

    James Henstridge's Shared Branches using Bazaar and Launchpad
    http://blogs.gnome.org/view/jamesh/2006/08/17/1

Contextual Karma
================

A Launchpad-wide change that many people should find interesting is the
addition of per-context Karma listings. Each distribution or upstream
product now has a listing of its top contributors, both general and
per-activity. For instance, the top contributors to Ubuntu are listed at:

    https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+topcontributors

and, for PIDA and Gnome Baker, two upstream products that use Launchpad
for translations and bugs, respectively:

    https://launchpad.net/products/gnomebaker/+topcontributors
    https://launchpad.net/products/pida/+topcontributors

Note that because we did not use to store the context of your actions,
old karma points (allocated before August 1st) do not count towards your
scores in distros and upstreams.

Edgy Translations
=================

The Edgy translations opening has surprised us in being a harder task
than we expected: our intention is to ensure that Edgy translations
included all translations done in Dapper, and that requires configuring
translations in the database to also point to Edgy. Unfortunately for us
the data volume made this task run into some practical limits: it takes
a couple of hours to run, and though our test coverage is good, there
have been a few hiccups in the migration. The good news is that the code
is written and deployed, and that we are now pending only running the
database update script, and doing acceptance testing the results. We are
planning on doing the official opening on Monday, barring any problems,
and I'll make sure I post any updates to the rosetta-users mailing list.

Other news
==========

Other important changes of note to Launchpad this week include a real
improvement to the package publishing process, speeding it up by 30%.
Specification workflow changes now record the dates and people involved.
We also rolled out changes to the web hosting system, which is required
for our next big UI change: the move to per-application domains, and a
new page layout (but those are all the hints I can give out right now!)
We've improved our Zope form infrastructure in Launchpad, which will
allow improvements such as better error display and AJAX based
on-the-fly validation.

Finally, if you are interested in staying abreast of Launchpad news,
feature discussions and bug reports, consider joining the
launchpad-users mailing list:

    https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/launchpad-users

We'd be honored to have you with us. Thanks, and enjoy the new features!

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Detailed Changelog
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note: In the listings below, Important user-visible features or fixes
are marked with exclamation points; other highlights marked with a star.

Malone (Bugs)
=============
! Malone always has been able to definitely be used as your primary bug
  tracker -- and the front page now makes that clear. The new
  MaloneHighights document was also produced. (bradb, sabdfl, mpt)
! Bug descriptions and comments are now rendered in a monospace font.
  (mpt, r=jamesh)
* Tags listed on the bug page are now links. (kiko, BjornT)
* A number of bugs were associated to package names that were actually
  not legal package names in Ubuntu. This was caused by a Soyuz bug that
  was fixed a while back, and we finally managed to finish the data
  cleanup this week. (kiko, stub)
* The upstream status filter widget's names were clarified, a query was
  fixed to do the right thing, and the radiobutton's default selection
  was fixed. (bradb, r=kiko)
- An error  which prevented bug watches from being updated when more
  than one watch pointed to the same remote bug was fixed. (bug 54898,
  kiko, r=BjornT)
- Distribution.guessPackageNames was refactored, better tested and
  renamed. (kiko)
- The project bug listing no longer crashes when the project has no
  products related to it. (matsubara)
- The ID presented in the title of the bug subscription page is now
  correct. (bradb)
- The targetname logic was moved into IBugTargets. (bradb, r=kiko)
- The text "bug report 123" is now also properly linkified. (kiko)
- The attachment form now properly selects the checkbox if the user
  types into the file input field. (bug 55698, bradb, r=kiko)
- Malone's bugwatch status synchronizer now handles the MODIFIED and
  NEEDINFO_REPORTER statuses. (kiko)

Rosetta (Translations)
======================
! More progress was made towards opening Edgy translations. This process
  has been a lot more complicated than we expected, but we've managed to
  get the translation migration code to a point where it produces the
  expected results, and allows us to do the process smoothly the next
  time it happens. (carlos, danilo)
- Links in translation template listings are now sane, losing their
  Javascript-crazed behaviour. (bug 39586, mpt)

Soyuz (Distribution management)
===============================
! The publisher run was optimized in a few different ways: we now rsync
  the new trees into place, avoiding an I/O bottleneck, and we no longer
  do unnecessary work for unchanged releases and pockets. (malcc, cprov)
* A script to check overrides for out-of-sync components, sections, and
  priorities between architectures was implemented. (spec
  OverridesConsistencyCheck, cprov, r=salgado)
* When processing uploads, we now check not only the publishing history
  but also the accepted queue for packages with the same version and
  name for all releases in a distribution. This should fix another
  annoying duplicated upload issue. (bug 31038, cprov, r=jamesh)
- The queue tool now properly handles custom format uploads. (bug 54649,
  cprov, r=BjornT)
- The build listings were modified to use a stable number of queries per
  listing; this should improve performance there significantly. (bug
  43802, cprov, r=kiko)
- Release files in unchanged pockets are no longer clobbered; this was a
  regression caused by the publisher optimizations that was caught and
  fixed this week. (bug 54039, malcc)
- Uploads of security binaries no longer create additional build
  records, reusing instead the original records created with the source
  package's upload. (bug 53437, malcc, r=jamesh)
- Buildd administrators are now able to reset build daemons that are not
  in automatic build mode. (bug 53517, cprov, r=kiko)
- The shortlist limit for distribution packages was increased to reduce
  spurious warnings when obtaining the package's current release. (stub)
- HPPA and IA64 are no longer checked when probing archive mirrors,
  since they are often absent or out of date. (bug 54791, salgado)
- Form fields expecting branches now accept URLs as input, and the
  vocabulary tied to them uses names instead of IDs as tokens for its
  items. (bug 43807, jamesh, r=BjornT)
- There is a now a special sort key function that can be now used to
  order source packages by version efficiently. (stub)
- The publishing cronscript's handling of the backup dists directories
  was fixed. (malcc, r=kiko)

Code (The Bazaar)
=================
! The native bzr imports are now live and in production. This has made
  the whole import process much simpler (and faster) and has allowed us
  to start making incremental improvements to the system that will
  improve performance and flexibility further.
* As a first example of that, the import daemon now automatically
  upgrades bzr branches from weaves to knits, dramatically improving
  performance of the weave format on vcs imports that were done before
  knits became the norm. (ddaa, r=BjornT)
- The conversion of the cscvs test suite is now complete: all tests that
  depended on baz have a counterpart that uses bzr instead. (ddaa,
  r=jamesh)
- Columns in the branch table listings were reordered. (ddaa, r=SteveA)

Support Tracker
===============
- The action items for a ticket were sanitized; it's now possible to
  update a ticket in different statuses, which means you don't need to
  reset the status to fix a typo in the description, for instance. (bug
  41972, flacoste)
- A link to file a new request on source packages was added. (bug 45967,
  flacoste)

Features (Blueprint)
====================
! We now track dates and actors related to changes in a specification's
  lifecycle, allowing us to better inform progress and participation.
  (mark, r=salgado)
- The hostname for this service is now http://features.launchpad.net/
  (SteveA)
- A number of small improvements were done to the specification graphs.
  (SteveA)
- The New Specification form now properly describes the format required
  for specification names. (bug 3186, sivang, r=kiko)
- Sprint dates are now properly validated. (bug 53357, matsubara)
- Links to edit sprints no longer appear if you're not authorized to do
  so. (bug 50816, matsubara)

ShipIt
======
* Handling of multiple requests is now implemented to specification.
  (salgado, r=kiko)
- The totals displayed in the request listing are now generated using a
  single SQL query.  (salgado, r=kiko)

Launchpad
=========
! The top contributors in a product or distribution are now listed
  separately, providing a better idea of the community around specific
  open source projects. (spec KarmaContext, salgado, r=BjornT)
! Product, Distribution and Project names are now globally unique. This
  paves the way for many interesting UI simplifications and
  enhancements, both in URL structure and in selecting items. (spec
  CanonicalNames, stub, r=jamesh)
! A mysterious new feature called PillarGotchis was worked upon. Nobody
  knows what it is yet! (stub)
* A special icon is used to denote email addresses that are kept
  private; the icon and email are of course only displayed to the
  end-user himself and to Launchpad administrators. (kiko, r=SteveA)
* The pages related to Ubuntero and Codes of Conduct were updated to be
  less confusing, guiding the user through the steps of successfully
  signing the code. (kiko, r=salgado, SteveA)
* The pages related to GPG key processing were also improved, and the
  error messages now clearly attempt to set the user in the right
  direction. The GPG view code itself was also greatly improved and is
  now properly tested. (bug 3471, kiko, r=sabdfl, bradb)
- The IE portlet layout hack was made more IE-specific. (mpt)
- The login page now explains why your registration email may not have
  arrived, and what you can do about it. (mpt, r=BjornT)
- A <span> element was added to more easily identify a person's Karma.
  (kiko, r=salgado, SteveA)
- We now present an informational message when GPG and SSH keys are
  successfully registered or updated, instead of one marked as an error.
  (bugs 45103, 42064, salgado)

Infrastructure
==============
! A large portion of work was done to bring us closer towards
  virtual-hosted applications, ShipIt and the specification tracker
  being the first to actually benefit from this. (stub, SteveA)
! The zope formlib is now being used for forms in Launchpad, which will
  allow us to gradually roll out great improvements to all forms in
  Launchpad. (jamesh, r=SteveA)
* Unordered queries are now automatically caught inside our test suite;
  this is done by a clever ordering trick that applies to any database
  query emitted. (jamesh, r=salgado)
* Enhanced XMLRPC testing infrastructure is now in place. (BjornT,
  r=SteveA)
- Constraint violation exceptions are now caught and converted to Retry
  exceptions. This causes errors caused by concurrent updates to be
  handled more gracefully. Database adapter tests are once more enabled.
  (bugs 31755, 32231, stub)
- We no longer run twisted tests when merging Launchpad code. (SteveA)
- Test layers were refactored, and an optimization was done to the
  Librarian startup and shutdown sequence. (stub, r=spiv)
- SQLObject's family of selectBy-related methods now accepts foreign
  column names and instances. (bug 1555, kiko, r=spiv)
- Cleanups following the implementation of bug 49029 were finalized.
  (kiko)
- The GeoIP code no longer crashes when a user provided a non-UTF8
  language code. (bug 43123, matsubara, r=jamesh)
- A bug in the full-text searching code related to parsing of whitespace
  was fixed. (bug 54972, stub)

Upcoming Changes
================
- Distribution Release Bug Targeting (bradb)
- Attaching files to bugs through email (BjornT)
- Improvements in bug tracker registration (BjornT)
- Opening of Edgy translations (carlos, danilo)
- Performance enhancements to the translation pages (danilo)
- Soyuz ArchiveRework (malcc, cprov)
- Karma for the support tracker (salgado)
- Support tracker workflow enhancements (flacoste)
- Mysterious and Wonderful Launchpad UI changes (stay tuned)

Feedback
========
Feedback to the release announcement can come directly to me:
    <kiko at canonical.com>
Bugs and regressions in Launchpad should go to:
    https://launchpad.net/products/launchpad/+bugs
Questions and administrative requests should go to:
    https://launchpad.net/products/launchpad/+tickets

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks,
-- 
Christian Robottom Reis | http://async.com.br/~kiko/ | [+55 16] 3376 0125

More information about the launchpad-users mailing list