Ubuntu

Developer
Week
August 31–September 04 2009

What is Ubuntu
Developer Week
all about?
You are excited about Ubuntu, always had the
feeling you want to “give back” in one form or
the other and you didn’t know how? Ubuntu
Developer Week is the perfect opportunity for
you to get involved and get a closer look at
what’s happening behind the scenes. Make
sure you mark the dates from Monday, 31st
August 2009 to Friday, 4th September 2009 in
your calendar!

Ubuntu Developer Week August 31–September 04 2009

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDeveloperWeek
Ubuntu Developer Week
August 31–September 04 2009

What is Ubuntu Developer Week

all about?
During the week we will have developers who will spend an hour each to
talk about a variety of subjects around Ubuntu (and general Open Source)
Development on IRC. They will explain in detail how to be part of the movement
and introduce you to the interesting parts of their daily work. Every session will be
one hour long and you will have time to ask all your questions. It was important
to us to focus on hands­-on sessions, where you get to play around with the tools
and get to immediately try it all out.

• You like to make things work again?

• You like learning something new?
• You like working on software?
• You like working with fantastic people?

If you can answer at least one of the questions above with “YES!”, Ubuntu
Developer Week definitely is the right thing for you.

All information is available at:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDeveloperWeek

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Ubuntu Development
The way in which Ubuntu is developed is transparent to everybody and open to
any contributor who demonstrates the necessary skills and commitment to the
project. Ubuntu is based on Debian and shares many of its packages, tools and
techniques.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment

Ubuntu is released every six months, so which major efforts are going on at the
moment depends on which stage of the release cycle we are in.

1. First the new toolchain gets set up – this means the most important packages
that are necessary to build everything else. Also the worst bugs in the old release
are fixed through the -updates repository.

2. Then we merge changes from Debian and other Open Source projects. At the
same time we have the Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) where new features are
discussed and specified.

3. Now everybody works on new features.

4. At the time around Feature Freeze you can expect things to slowly calm down
and bug fixing becomes the most important effort. At this time no new features
will be accepted.

5. In the last part of the release cycle every week a new freeze date will occur.
This includes the Kernel, the UI, general text on the Desktop, the artwork and so
on. Now everybody focuses on testing and critical bug-fixes.

6. Release Parties!

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReleaseSchedule

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Where does Ubuntu Development

happen?
As all development is open and transparent to everybody, all the discussion about
features, bugs and direction are open and transparent too.

Mailing lists are very important places for discussion and help to get an overview
over what’s going on at the moment.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/#Development+Lists

While bigger debates happen on mailing lists, IRC is the perfect medium to
directly engage and figure out problems together. If you need help and want to
get to know the team, this is where you should go. General Ubuntu development
discussion happens in #ubuntu­ -devel and packaging questions are discussed
in #ubuntu-­ motu.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InternetRelayChat

Ubuntu Development Infrastructure

Launchpad is a central part of Ubuntu’s infrastructure. If you are looking for
bugs, code, translations, feature specifications or packages, this is the best
to look at first.

An example to illustrate this: A reports a translation bug, B fixes the problem

in a code branch, translators pick up the change and fix it in all the individual
languages, and the C uploads the package to the build machines, where the
fixed packages are available for all Ubuntu users.

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu

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Sessions
Processes and Infrastructure Packaging Development Quality Assurance

Mon 31st Aug Tue 1st Sep Wed 2nd Sep Thu 3rd Sep Fri 4th Sep

16:00 UTC Getting Started Fixing small bugs Getting started Let Mago do Translations for
with Ubuntu in Ubuntu with Launchpad your Desktop developers
Development development testing for you
Daniel Holbach Danilo Šegan, David
Daniel Holbach Graham Binns Ara Pulido Planella and Martin
Pitt

17:00 UTC Kernel Triaging Developing Paper Cutting Getting Things

and Debugging Websites with 101 Done for hackers
Django
Leann Ogasawara David Siegel, Ted Lars Wirzenius
Łukasz Czyżykowski Gould and Sébastien
and Stuart Metcalfe Bacher

18:00 UTC $quickly fun How to update a Hooking your Learning from Fixing an Ubuntu
package app into your mistakes – bug using Bazaar
Rick Spencer and
Didier Roche
desktop REVU reviewing
Didier Roche James Westby
CouchDB best practices
Stuart Langridge Morten Kjeldgaard

19:00 UTC Packaging Perl Using the LP API Writing secure Being productive Packaging from
Modules for fun and profit software with bzr and LP Scratch
Code hosting
Jonathan Yu and Leonard Richardson Kees Cook Iain Lane
other Debian Perl Paul Hummer
maintainers

20:00 UTC Fun with Python Writing Apport Bug lifecycle, Effectively Hacking Soyuz
Plasmoids Package Hooks Best practices, testing for to get your
Workflow, Tags, regressions builds done
Aurélien Gâteau and Brian Murray
Jonathan Riddell
Upstream, Big
Steve Beattie Michael Nelson,
picture Celso Providelo and
William Grant
Jorge Castro and
Pedro Villavicencio

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Session Categories
Some of the sessions on the schedule have two colours because they fit into
more than one category. To get an idea of what the sessions are about, please
find the abstracts below.

Processes and Infrastructure

If you are new to the project you very likely want to attend these sessions.
Knowing which part of the infrastructure deals with your work, which process to
follow to get something done and where to look for answers is essential to be
effective and suffer as little frustration in your daily work as possible.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment

Getting Started with Ubuntu Development (Daniel Holbach)

This session is going to get your Ubuntu Development environment set up, give
you a first glimpse on the packaging tools, what they are about and how your
contributions fit into the bigger picture.

Fixing a small bug in Ubuntu (Daniel Holbach)

Lets’s get together and fix a few small bugs in Ubuntu. This session will not only
show you how to make use of packaging tools, but also how to find patches,
how to integrate them and how to submit your package for review, so it can get
included in Ubuntu quickly.

Being productive with bzr and LP Code hosting (Paul Hummer)

The distributed revision control system Bazaar and the Launchpad Code Hosting
are the perfect combination for storing code in a transparent and open way and
make participation in your project a seamless and efficient experience. Launchpad
hacker Paul Hummer will show you how.

Getting Things Done for hackers (Lars Wirzenius)

You find you have too much to do? Get lost in things that don’t really help you
move forward? You find it hard to focus? Learn more about “Getting Things
Done”! Lars will especially highlight this from a hacker’s perspective and help you
to improve your current workflow.

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Fixing an Ubuntu bug using Bazaar (James Westby)

Distributed Development is the absolute future and you’re going to be much much
happier having Bazaar in your toolbox. James Westby has been a key part in
making Bazaar work for Ubuntu Development tasks and is a great speaker.

Hacking Soyuz to get your build done (Michael Nelson, Celso Providelo
and William Grant)
Launchpad Hackers Michael and Celso will explain what they do with
Launchpad’s Soyuz Build Service and how you go about hacking it. All Ubuntu
packages are built by the service, so if you have ideas for improvement, you
should definitely attend the session.

Packaging

Packaging is the bread and butter of all Ubuntu developers. What is software
good for if it is not available for our users? The sessions in this category will all
be “hands­-on”, so you get to try things out and learn directly.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PackagingGuide

Packaging Perl Modules (Jonathan Yu and other Debian

Perl maintainers)
Envisioned in 1987, Perl today is still alive and kicking. Lots of the core
components of our distribution are written in Perl and hundreds of Perl modules
are available through CPAN. If you want to more about Perl, CPAN, specific
details about Perl packaging, make sure you attend the session!

How to update a package (Didier Roche)

The version of your favourite package in Ubuntu is out­dated? Didier Roche will
show you how to update the package efficiently, what common pitfalls are and
when best NOT to update the package.

Learn from mistakes – REVU reviewing (Morten Kjeldgaard)

REVU is the website where packages that are not in Ubuntu yet are submitted to.
As initial submissions of packages often contain small mistakes, REVU is a good
place to learn more about common problems and how to fix them. Morten is a
reviewer par­excellence and has a lot of stories to share.

Packaging from scratch (Iain Lane)

If your favourite piece of software is not included in Ubuntu yet, you will start with
an empty directory and just a superproject­ 0.1.tar.gz file. Iain Lane will take
you by the hand and show you how to proceed from there.

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Development

No matter if you decide to work on core parts of the infrastructure or just fix a few
small problems, it will always help to know the tools, the programming languages
and the libraries that are considered to be “everybody’s darling”. Learn some more
from people who work with the tools every day.

Fun with Python Plasmoids (Aurélien Gâteau and Jonathan Riddell)

Plasmoids make the KDE4 Desktop so beautiful and give the KDE hacker so
much flexibility that this is an opportunity you should not miss. If you like Python
and you have fun with the Desktop with the big K, you are definitely going to
appreciate this session.

Using the LP API for fun and profit (Leonard Richardson)

As Launchpad contains all the crucial information of our project (who is in which
team, which role do they have, which bugs were filed in Jaunty, when was which
package uploaded, etc.), you might want to extract or modify certain bits from
Launchpad in an automated fashion. Leonard Richardson put a lot of work into
the Launchpad Web Service, so he is in the best position to share tips and give
you insight into this phenomenal API.

Getting started with Launchpad development (Graham Binns)

Launchpad is open source now, so no matter if you just want to improve some
small bits of it or hack on a new feature, you will want to know how the Launchpad
team works, what PQM is and how the peer review is done. Graham will show you
how.

Developing Websites with Django (Łukasz Czyżykowski and

Stuart Metcalfe)
You like Python, you have some data you would like to share with others in
a beautiful way and you want to get it done quickly? Meet Django, a web
framework, which lets you express your ideas in a very elegant and easy way.

Hooking your app into your Desktop CouchDB (Stuart Langridge)

Did you notice the recent buzz around CouchDB? It seems to be the perfect
solution for easy data replication. According to the Apache project, CouchDB
is a “distributed, fault­-tolerant and schema-­free document­-oriented database
accessible via a RESTful HTTP/JSON API”. What that all means and why it’s so
great to use it on the Desktop, Stuart will tell you.

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Writing secure software (Kees Cook)

Kees (pronounced 'Case') has a long background in software security. He has
reviewed hundreds of software packages and read hundreds of security patches.
Kees will describe common pitfalls, which problems to avoid and his favourite
review methods.

Let Mago do your Desktop testing for you (Ara Pulido)

Mago is a Desktop testing initiative built on top of the Linux Desktop Testing
Project (LDTP). With Mago you can very easily test Desktop applications in an
automated way. Ara has been leading the effort for quite a while and can show
you how to let Mago handle your Desktop testing.

Paper Cutting 101 (David Siegel, Ted Gould and Sébastien Bacher)
The “100 Paper Cuts” project defined a paper cut as “a trivially fixable usability
bug that the average user would encounter on his/her first day of using a brand
new installation of Ubuntu Desktop Edition”. The project has gotten a lot of
attention already and will do a lot to improve the general usability of the Desktop.
To learn more about how to help out and how to fix paper cuts, join the session
and become a Desktop hacker soon.

Translations for developers (Danilo Šegan, David Planella, Martin Pitt)

Most of the millions of Ubuntu users have a different native language than English,
which makes itv essential that applications are set up to be translated correctly.
The Serbo­Spanish­German triumvirate of Danilo, David and Martin are going to
talk about enabling translations, Launchpad Rosetta, language packs and how to
avoid common problems.

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Quality Assurance

Linux Distributions are the link between millions of users and thousands of open
source projects. Integration and Quality Assurance are their primary jobs. The
latter is one of the biggest challenges Ubuntu and others are facing. Keeping up
with thousands of bug reports, small problems, fixes and effective communication
with thousands projects is a set of processes that is constantly refined because it
is so crucial to us.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs

Kernel Triaging and Debugging (Leann Ogasawara)

The Linux kernel is a very special package, not only because it is essential and
has lots and lots of code, but also because it is very hardware­ specific. Leann
does a fantastic job keeping up to date with the Kernel and has a lot of tools and
tricks to be and stay effective and how to have fun with the Kernel team.

Writing Apport Package Hooks (Brian Murray)

Do you find yourself asking always the same questions in bug reports? Brian
Murray has the answer to your problem: write an apport hook for your package
Whenever a crash occurs, it will either ask the user for information or provide it in
an automatic fashion. Of course this works for the ubuntu-bug command too.

Bug lifecycle, best practices, workflow, tags, Upstream, big picture

(Pedro Villavicencio and Jorge Castro)
Looking at Ubuntu bugs the first time can be daunting. It’s important to know
more about the big picture, where you fit in, how to be effective and who can help
you out when you get stuck. Pedro and Jorge are quite the double-­act. They will
sure answer your questions.

Effectively testing for regressions (Steve Beattie)

Regressions suck! Whenever something breaks that our users knew to work
before­hand it creates frustration. In his work Steve is very careful because he
helps to fix problems in stable releases. Together with the Security Team he has
set up a regression test suite. In our session he is going to talk about effectively
testing for regressions, how the test suite works, how you can contribute to it and
how you can make it work for you.

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Our Session Leads

Daniel Holbach got involved in Ubuntu Development
somewhere between the Warty and the Hoary cycle.
He says “When I started, everybody was so helpful and gave
me a warm welcome. I made my mistakes, learned a lot
along the way and had a fantastic time. The feeling of getting
your first fix uploaded and knowing ‘This is going to fix the
problem of thousands of users around the globe!’ is just
overwhelming. I want everybody who starts out today
to have a similar experience!”

Rick Spencer is not only the leader of the Ubuntu Desktop

team, but also one of the lead hackers on quickly. He has a
wealth of hacking experience and with quickly wanted to easily
expose a fresh hacker to the power that our Desktop application
frameworks have and the ultimate fun that it is.

Didier Roche is not only very active in the Ubuntu Desktop

team and knows a lot about packaging, he is also very active
in the French Ubuntu LoCo team: he was involved in planning
a release party that 4000+ people attended in Paris. He also
worked for an NGO that sent refurbished computers to Togo
and trained local people.

Jonathan “jawnsy” Yu is a very active Debian contributor, Perl

hacker, Google Summer of Code student and is interested in lots
of things: Electric Engineering, Computer Sciences, algorithms,
Debian, Kubuntu and much more. He’s here to talk to us about
packaging Perl modules, so make sure you attend the session
and learn more.

Aurélien Gâteau and Jonathan Riddell are the Scotto­-French

connection of KDE awesome. They both like KDE, they both work
for Canonical, they both like Karaoke and they just started
a Country band.

One of the above is not true.

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Leann Ogasawara knows everything about Quality Assurance,

especially of the Linux kernel. Chances are good that if you ever
had a problem with the Ubuntu Linux kernel, you were in touch
with Leann and she probably still knows the bug number.

She is in a perfect position to teach you how to stay efficient with

problems on such a many­-faceted project as the Linux kernel and
how to debug it. Leann likes running and almost wins every time.

She is part of the Portland posse.

Leonard Richardson has been programming since he was

eight years old and for the last months worked on Launchpad,
particularly the Launchpad Web Service API.

He wrote a book about “RESTful Web Services” and the “Ruby

Cookbook” and likes dinosaurs, turtles, trilobites, and humans.

There are many Brian Murrays on the internet, we are sure to

have the one who knows most about Ubuntu bugs and how to
deal with them.

He is part of the Portland posse.

Graham Binns puts a lot of work into the Launchpad Bug

tracker. Due to his work for example, we can track upstream
bugs better and more efficiently. From his window he can see
cock pheasants occasionally, he likes photography and is not a
terrorist.

Łukasz Czyżykowski is unstoppable. He likes running a lot, he

recently participated in a 7 hours race and did 62km – WOW! He
also likes python, emacs and Django.

He’s just a great guy.

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Stuart Metcalfe lives in the UK and knows a lot about OpenID

and Web Development in general. For example was he very much
involved in the work on Launchpad Drupal modules.

Stuart Langridge is a hacker of JavaScript, Python, Django (and

much much more) fame. He says of himself that he’s a drinker
of decent beers, he has a BSc in in Computer Science and
Philosophy, was one quarter of the LUGRadio team and is going
to talk to us about CouchDB and Desktop Applications.

He can be found outside looking for the smokers’ area.

Kees Cook loves everything to do with security. He is one of the

heroes who makes your Ubuntu machine safe and secure and
has spent hours, days and weeks reading security patches. He
also likes Drum’n’Bass music.

His two dogs out­weigh him. He is also part of the Portland posse.

Jorge Castro is never short of awesome. He’s excitable, a great

friend and loves Metallica. Apart from that he also likes Metallica.
He works with lots of Upstream projects and is always up to
date on what’s happening in the Open Source world. He is going
to talk about Bugs, together with Pedro. Some people call him
“Orlando”.

Pedro Villavicencio can always be found in a muddle of

Desktop bugs, and in Santiago de Chile. Pedro loves the
GNOME Desktop, ice cream and photography.

He’s a long­-lost brother of Jorge.

Ara Pulido is joining Ubuntu Developer Week to excite us about

Desktop testing and showing us how easy and how much fun it
can be.

She lives in Spain and likes couches.

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David Siegel, also known as djsiegel although there are no

known DJ gigs of his announced yet, is one of leading hackers on
GNOME Do. He is also involved in the Paper Cuts project and will
tell us some more about it in his session.

Ted Gould is an Ubuntu Desktop Developer for Canonical.

He mainly focuses on usability issues working to make the
Ubuntu Desktop the best desktop experience available for your
computer. He also develops on the vector graphics program
Inkscape. He enjoys great design, serene hikes and a well
composed photo.

Sébastien Bacher is probably better known as seb128 or

sebbuild, with a strong background in Debian and GNOME he
fits very very well in the Ubuntu Desktop team. There’s very few
people who did more uploads in Ubuntu than he did. He is still
trying to make French the official language of the Ubuntu Desktop
team.

Morten Kjeldgaard has been part of the Ubuntu community

for quite a while already. He has done a great lot of work helping
new people getting acquainted with Ubuntu development and
packaging. He is going to talk to us about reviewing patches and
learning from mistakes.

In his other life he deals with molecular design.

Paul Hummer is one of the masterminds around Launchpad

Code Hosting and author of lots of very useful pieces of software.
Apart from that he also enjoys working on his Volkswagen
camper van.

He goes by the nick rockstar.

Michael Nelson is another Launchpad hacker and works on

Launchpad’s Build service. He moved all the way from Australia
to the Berlin area. He’s simply a great guy.

He worked in Mongolia for a while.

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Celso Providelo is another unstoppable Launchpad Build

Service hacker, who comes from Brazil. He never really sleeps
and among other things speaks fluent SQL.

William Grant joins us from Melbourne, Australia. He has been

member of the Ubuntu Development team for quite a while
already and always showed a great interest in the Launchpad
platform. He was the first community contributor to the
Launchpad project.

Danilo Šegan works on Launchpad’s Translations Service,

GNOME’s intltool and other parts of GNOME’s translations.
He lives in Belgrade, Serbia and is (like the rest of his family) a
fantastic host.

“Just kidding” is his favourite words.

David Planella, often referred to as “the man with the plan” lives
and breathes Ubuntu translations. He is from Catalonia, lives in
Germany and speaks several languages fluently.

He is a lot of fun to work with, very kind and the fourth Horsemen.

Martin Pitt was also known as the “derooter” in the beginnings

of Ubuntu and is all over the place. He put a lot of work into
making Language Packs work in the beginning and lives in
Dresden, Germany.

He was probably the first Ubuntu developer ever to have

a fan club.

Lars Wirzenius is very well known in the open source

community as he has been around for a long time and
contributed to a lot of projects. Debian being one of them. He
lives in Finland. In his session he is going to talk less about
hacking itself, but more about Getting Things Done!

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James Westby is another incredible workhorse of the Ubuntu

community. He is not only our man for Distributed Development,
he also very much likes helping people into the project.

He is a fantastic Drum’n’Bass DJ and likes horses.

Iain Lane has been very active in the Ubuntu Developer

community for quite a while now. He is interested in Mono
applications, Games, Haskell and various other parts of the
Ubuntu community. He closely works together with the Debian
maintainers too and gave various packaging-related sessions
already.

He lives in the UK.

Steve Beattie is very much into Quality Assurance. He has the

very responsible job of Stable Release Updates and is a fun guy.

He is another member of the Portland posse.

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