News

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Developer News

Concept

There are occasions when something would be of interest to a large portion of the development community, but is not worth a post to ubuntu-devel-announce@. For these cases you are invited to mail the Ubuntu news team with the item. These will then be collected and sent out to ubuntu-devel-announce@ in batches when there are enough to warrant it.

If the item is of wider interest to the Ubuntu community then the news team will take it and may use it in something like the UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter.

Items of interest

Upcoming or completed transitions, major new versions or new packages in the archive.
Success at things like triaging all bugs for a particular set of packages, or fixing all build failures on an architecture.
Availability of a new tool in ubuntu-dev-tools that may save people some time.
Summaries of mailing list discussions.
Events in Debian that may be of interest.

Submitting an item

Write a draft of the item. Typically it will be 1-3 paragraphs with links for more information. It doesn't have to be perfect.
Send the item to ubuntu-news-team@lists.ubuntu.com starting the subject with "[Developer]". The list is moderated for non-subscribers. The list is low traffic, and subscribing would allow you to help with the next section.
Maybe work with the editors to provide some more information or clarify some things.
If the item is time sensitive then you can state this, but in that case it may be best to send it yourself.

Aggregating items

Take the items that have been received since the last mail went out and pull them in to one mail using the template below.
Send out the mail to ubuntu-devel-announce@lists.ubuntu.com
Add the items to the top of the archive at the bottom of this page.

More people are needed to help with this task. Subscribe to the ubuntu-news-team list and keep an eye on articles. When there are 4 or 5 outstanding then do the above.

If there are not enough submissions to do at least one a month then we either need to encourage more submissions or do more newsworthy things.

Template

Subject: Ubuntu Developer News Issue <x>

Welcome to Ubuntu Developer News issue number <x>. For past items or
to submit your own please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment/News.
In this issue we have

  * Title
  * Title
...

Title
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  Item...

  Links...

Title
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  Item...

  Links...

...

Archive

Issue 2

Welcome to the second edition of Ubuntu Developer News. For past items or to submit your own please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment/News More submissions for the developer news would be very much appreciated.

In this issue we have

Karmic Koala Announced
Jaunty Feature Freeze
Removal of aRts
Packaging large Java stacks

Karmic Koala Announced

If you haven't been under a rock for the past few days, you would have heard or seen the announcement for Ubuntu 9.10 - Karmic Koala
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2009-February/000536.html

Jaunty Feature Freeze

Steve Langasek announced the Jaunty feature freeze[0] for Thursday 19th February 2009. MOTU-release have also delegated various authority for certain areas.

Kubuntu: Jonathan Riddell (Riddell)
Mythbuntu: Mario Limonciello (superm1)
Xubuntu: Cody Sommerville (cody-sommerville)
Mozilla Team: Alexander Sack (asac)
Ubuntu Studio:
- Luis de Bethencourt Guimerá (luisbg) Cory Kontros (_MMA_)
Ubuntu Destkop: Sebastien Bacher (seb128)
Ubuntu Netbook, Ubuntu MID: Steve Kowalik (StevenK)
Ubuntu Server: Scott Kitterman (ScottK)
Edubuntu: Jordan Mantha (LaserJock)
- If you need a freeze exception for a universe package that falls into one of these categories, you can coordinate directly with the respective delegates, there is no need to subscribe motu-release. Please see this wiki page for full details on freeze exception requests[1]
  [0]https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FeatureFreeze
  [1]https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FreezeExceptionProcess
  https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2009-February/000533.html

Removal of aRts

aRts is (was) the sound system for KDE3. Since the release of KDE4 aRts is no longer maintained upstream. There are no KDE4 packages that require aRts. Since we no longer provide a KDE3 desktop in jaunty there is no requirement for aRts. All packages that depend on aRts or one of it's libraries needs to be recompiled without aRts support. There is a list of affected packages along with further instructions here:
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/RemoveArts
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2009-January/027310.html

Packaging large Java stacks

An interesting discussion around the packaging of large Java stacks was raised by Thierry Carrez
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2009-January/027272.html

[RFC] apturl repository whitelist application process

Alexander Sack raised an RFC regarding the process that defines how third party repositories can apply for apturl whitelisting and how we can ensure that such repositories are of high maintenance quality
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2009-February/027355.html

New REVU Coordinator

Nathan Handler has taken over Siegfried Gevatter's (RainCT) role of REVU Coordinator. There were also some suggestions on how to make the REVU process quicker for new packages.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-motu/2009-January/005261.html

Brainstorm for packaging requests?

Brian Murry pointed out the specification https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/Specs/NeedsPackagingBugs
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-motu/2009-January/005301.html

Reinhard Tartler (siretart) resigns as MOTU Launchpad Liason

William Grant (wgrant) and Morten Kjeldgaard (mok0) will share the duties. The Launchpad Liason provides Launchpad developers with prioritized bugs/specs relevant to MOTU and MOTU with information on Launchpad changes and progress.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-motu/2009-February/005371.html

REVU gets Filtering and Tags

Tags can be formed by alphanumeric characters and dashes ("-"), and both Reviewers (ie, MOTUs) and Moderators can change the tags assigned to source packages. Any name can be used as a tag, but the idea is that there will be a few "official" ones used as part of the normal workflow.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-motu/2009-February/005466.html

Tools

apport-collect: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2009-February/000535.html ubuntu-qa-tools: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-qa/2009-February/000375.html upstream tasks: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-bugsquad/2009-February/001292.html

Developer Changes

Nick Ellery (nellery) became an Ubuntu Contributing Developer in recognition of the work he has put in to help Ubuntu development. He has been very active merging packages from Debian in the Jaunty cycle.
Didier Roche (didrocks) joined the MOTU team, thanks to his great contributions to the desktop team and other activities.
Christophe Sauthier (huats) was the second person from France to become a MOTU at the first MOTU Council membership IRC meeting. Christophe has also been very active on the desktop team, and is currently the leader of the MOTU mentoring reception.
At the same meeting Iain Lane (Laney) was also accepted as a MOTU, thanks to his sterling work in many areas.
Alessio Treglia (quadrispro) was the last person to become a MOTU through the old membership process. After contributing a lot of work in the Jaunty cycle he was deemed ready to become a MOTU.
Nicolas Valcarcel (nxvl) steps down from MOTU-SRU
- https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-motu/2009-January/005255.html
Iulian Udrea accepted as a MOTU Release Member
- https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-motu/2009-February/005398.html
Nathan Handler accepted as a MOTU Release Member
- https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/motu-council/2009-February/002029.html

Meeting minutes/Weekly reports

Issue 1

Welcome to the first edition of Ubuntu Developer News (a.k.a the Keybuk-repeater). For past items or to submit your own please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment/News More submissions for the developer news would be very much appreciated.

In this issue we have

Jaunty Developer Week logs available
Colin Watson elected to the Technical Board
Package bug reporting guidelines in launchpad
Testing Days
New D-Bus Uploaded
Launchpadlib support in ubuntu-dev-tools
The removal of /dev/.static/dev
udevadm, and why you should stop what you're doing
Developer changes

Jaunty Developer Week logs available

The Developer Week for Jaunty is almost over, and there have been many great sessions. Logs of all sessions have been kept and they are appearing on the wiki as they are processed. They can provide a useful resource on the topics covered.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDeveloperWeek

Colin Watson elected to the Technical Board

Colin Watson became the newest member of the Technical Board. Developers voted in a poll with a choice between him and Kees Cook.
https://edge.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-dev/+poll/2009-01-tb-nominees

Package bug reporting guidelines in Launchpad

Brian Murray recently reported that Launchpad now supports package bug reporting guidelines, which can help users to file better bug reports by giving them specific instructions for a particular package. He outlined the method by which they will be updated.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2009-January/027206.html

Testing Days

Ara Pulido explained that the QA team are planning to do Testing Days for new features in Jaunty, so that the new code is tested before it is announced as a new feature at release.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2009-January/027159.html

New D-Bus Uploaded

Scott James Remnant announced changes to dbus in order to to fix a security problem. This change may impact any package that ships a dbus service, and may cause them to stop working if their service configuration is incorrect, though an attempt was made to audit services to avoid this.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2009-January/027220.html

Launchpadlib support in ubuntu-dev-tools

Markus Korn and Jonathan Davies worked on integrating launchpadlib in to ubuntu-dev-tools to provide more robust access to Launchpad. It uses different credentials to the current ubuntu-dev-tools, so you will be required to generate new credentials. A new tools was also included to make managing these credentials easier. Work is ongoing to transition all of ubuntu-dev-tools to use launchpadlib.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2009-January/027186.html

The removal of /dev/.static/dev

Scott James Remnant explained where /dev/.static/dev went, and what the replacement is. If you relied on access to the static /dev then you should read his post for how to make udev do what you need instead.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2009-January/027184.html

udevadm, and why you should stop what you're doing

Scott James Remnant (yes, him again) explained some of the misuses of udevadm, and how to achieve the desired effect without abusing udev. If you know of a package that calls udevadm in its maintainer scripts then you should update it according to the instructions in Scott's post.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2009-January/027260.html