Contents
Introduction
This page is specifically for the planning of the Maverick development cycle. As such, it initially included a number of links for proposed UDS sessions.
However, prior to UDS, we needed to organize the proposed Foundations track sessions, so this work was moved to a separate UDS planning wiki page: /UDSBrussels. The format of that page is simply a long list of sessions that can be ordered, adjusted, etc. This will help in that we will only maintain one wiki page with a complete list of blueprint links, not two (or more).
Please note: if you wish to add links to various blueprints for inclusion in the session planning efforts, do not put them on the page that you are currently viewing. Please add them instead to /UDSBrussels.
Ideas
smoother boot splash via grub2 and a boot framebuffer (ColinWatson, ScottJamesRemnant)
Package Culling - find and aggressively deal with packages whose merges have been lagging for several releases
Finish Upstart (ScottJamesRemnant)
Refactor update-notifier - make update-notifier a more modular design (probably with vala), it has out-grown to be a update-notifier since some time (MichaelVogt)
make screenshots.ubuntu.com show ubuntu branding and add support for PPAs and archive.canonical.com (MichaelVogt) -- should this be a bug ticket? a work item in some blueprint?
Remove Demoted Packages on Upgrade - We need to explore the removal of demoted packages on upgrade (all, only auto-installed ones, only default installed ones, only unused... how to detect).
D-Bus Refactor of release-upgrader - discuss refactoring the release-upgrader backend as a dbus service to improve reliability/responsiveness (MichaelVogt)
CD build speed - CD build speed has been creeping back up of late; attack it again
- Automatic mirror selection based on the apt "mirror" method
Foundations Support
As usual, Foundations will be providing Ubuntu support for the other teams. A high-level listing of projects where we likely will be involved is given in this section.
Desktop
Desktop Application Selection - As part of their UNE work, Desktop may end up promoting Chromium to main; may need help from Foundations to do this
- HUGE push for Software Center
- goal: sell stuff in software center,
Opportunistic Apps in Software Center - figure out how to deliver opportunistic apps via the software center
Software Center Ratings - finish ratings work
Touch Support - Big push for touch, not sure what the impact is going to be for Foundations yet, but we need to be aware of it
Wayland Testing - functional testing and related packages in Universe
Design
- We probably ought to have a look-in on the multi-screen work, if it's dealing with remembering configurations for individual devices;
- Installer, first boot, upgrades, Update Manager, and Software Centre;
- System settings (maybe, depending on what this comes down to);
- Possibly keyboard indicator but it depends what they're doing (if it's just visual then probably not).
Server
Gluster FS for the Could - Cloud cluster file system (not sure if we'll be needed for this or not)
- Java/JDK improvements (doko does a lot of that; Server team is getting a Java person, so this may impact us less)
- Support of alternate install modes
Kernel
- Improved battery power support work; Foundations may need to (or be able to) assist
- synaptec multi-touch (multi-finger... not multi-touch)
- new multi-touch driver enhancements that may need work from Foundations
OEM
General Priorities
- Software Center enhancements (High) - Already planned
- Multi-touch tablet support (Med) - Foundations work here may not be very strong; DX and Desktop, however, will be deeply involved
Base Platform
- Hardware support for the new Intel (and likely AMD) CPU/chipset/GPU support (High) - 90% Kernel ownership; 10% Foundations
- Remove use of intramfs in desktop and netbook editions (Med) - Foundations will support OEM removing this; however, Foundations actually needs initramfs to support more complicated use cases
Use swap files by default (instead of swap partitions) (Med) - Foundations would like to see this; there is an existing spec; currently blocked on a kernel problem (out of memory)
- More flexible than swap partitions -
- Need to make this work with hibernate/hybrid suspend
- Energy Star compliance power settings by default (High) -
- Add btrfs support - option at install time (High) - Already planned
- More efficient for storing lots of small files. Helps w/ OS size and may help boot time
- Supports compression. Good for OS size and may help boot time too.
Usability and Performance
- Continue boot performance work, 10s goal for Dell Mini w/SSD, Lucid is still above that (High) - This goal was for unity, however there is no harm in continuing work; most work on this will likely be done with Scott finishing upstart
- Hybrid suspend/hibernate by default. Allows the system to go to sleep, but also stores a hibernate image on disk. If the battery dies, the system wakes from the hibernate image (Med) - this might be ideal... however, not sure how feasible it will be; would make suspend a lot slower; means we'd be forced to use dodgey kernel hibernate code
Internationalization
- Collaborate with i18n upstream more closely, especially on release schedule, e.g., we missed ibus-1.3 for LTS 10.04 (High) - general platform issue; Foundations will host a UDS discussion for this
- Per-language ISOs (e.g. a Chinese ISO, a Swahili ISO, etc) (Low) - Foundations can't support this as a whole -- it would explode our test cases; however, Foundations will work with OEM if they need help generating their own ISOs
Small Disk Configuration Support
- Audit packages and see if "depends" can become "recommends", making it easier for OEM to reduce dependency lists. (High) - let's use the bug-filing process to accomplish this: OEM can file, and Foundations can address this on a case-by-case basis
- Example: xserver-xorg depends on xserver-xorg-video-all (actually, it depends on this OR a single driver) which pulls in *all* video drivers; if it were only recommended, you could specify only xserver-xorg-video-intel e.g. for your image
- Remove all on-disk help/documentation and move it online. At the very least, split documentation into separate foopackage-doc.deb and make it a recommends. (High) - this is not appropriate for all use cases; we need to address this on a case-by-case basis; doing for all would guarantee that the index files would explode in size
- Compressed r/w filesystem (High) - we will get this via btrfs
- If btrfs is not feasible for some reason, we need a 'blessed' (by distro) r/w filesystem that supports compression (reiser, something FUSE-based, something else?)
- We need r/w support to prevent the problem of updates taking too much disk space when using a r/o compressed filesystem like squashfs+unionfs
- Updates for small disks - perform update as a sequence of partial atomic steps to minimize the use of disk (Med) - we do this now... so Foundations needs more detail to understand what need is not being fulfilled; OEM may mean downloading chunks and then applying it?
Other
- BIOS validation tool (kernel team problem, not foundations? Colin King already working on this?) (High) - mostly Kernel with some Foundations
- More stress testing before release (Med) - we will create UDS session for this: improving our testing procedures, using more automated tests, further brainstorming, etc.
Support FOR Foundations
Collect here items which we would like to see be done by other teams
Desktop
- Java Applet maintainance / development
- Stable xulrunner-1.9 interfaces when having more than one xulrunner version on the desktop (both eclipse and the icedtea6-plugin don't seem to get it right).
Launchpad
- Soyuz/IS: Rebuild tests take too long, or slow down PPA buildds.
- Soyuz: Native syncing via web service, to free up man-hours of archive admin time per week.
- Buildd configuration, and how to reproduce results from test runs on the buildds. Differences in the configuration of distro and PPA buildds. LP: 556597 as an example. Seen with some eglibc test cases as well.
QA
- TCK testing
Placeholders for Big Topics
10.04 Review - hold this early to aid breakout topics, maybe in the first roundtable
- Distributed Development
- Boot Performance/Experience
- Spring Clean (right after an LTS release is a good time for an aggressive cleanup of things we don't need or that should be extensively refactored)
- Python
Automated transition testing framework (build, run upstream unit test, 2to3, report on ftbfs and test failures, against any/every python version) (BarryWarsaw)
Eliminate symlinks for python-central and -support using PEP 3147? Needs support for extensions. (And mostly done for python-central). (BarryWarsaw). This is a duplicate of foundations-lucid-robust-python-packaging.
Python 2.7 (BarryWarsaw) That should be tested before UDS as a basis for a decision.
Freezing (e.g. cx_freeze) critical dist upgrade tools? (BarryWarsaw)
- Compile for i686 as the default on i386 (instead of i486).
Toolchain decisions for Maverick. May be followed up with architecture specific sessions. (MatthiasKlose)
Lucid specs not done
(Numbers in parentheses indicate to-do/postponed/done.)
desktop-lucid-language-selector (0/1/1)
foundations-lucid-daily-builds (1/0/10)
foundations-lucid-software-raid-in-ubiquity-for-desktop-install (0/7/7)
security-lucid-catchall-medium (0/0/1)
Lucid specs partly done
foundations-lucid-apt-python-apt-network-error-handling (2/0/7)
foundations-lucid-lts-upgrades (14/0/24)
foundations-lucid-software-center-history-of-packaging-transactions (4/2/9)