Ubuntu Developer Week: Review of Day 3

Unfortunately 13.04’s Ubuntu Developer Week is over. All the logs and videos are linked from the timetable, so you can still enjoy the sessions again and again. We hope you had a great time and we will see you soon again in one of our Ubuntu development channels.

Here’s what happened on day 3:

1. Automated Testing in Ubuntu & Automated Testing Technologies — Martin Pitt did a great job of summarising the current work in the Quality Assurance team. It’s getting more and more important to automatically assure us that software we rely on still provides the functionality we expect and nothing breaks. Check out the log and get an idea of how diverse the activities are and where you can get involved.
2. Syncing your app’s data with u1db — Stuart Langridge has been involved in Ubuntu One since ages and knows how to make app authors happy. If you want simple data storage and syncing without headaches, have a look at u1db and Stuart’s introduction to u1db!
3. Interacting with Debian’s Bug Tracking System — You explain things best if you talk about things you make use of every day. As Stefano Rivera is both a Debian and Ubuntu developer, this talk was quite easy to deliver for him. Debian’s Bug Tracking System is a central place of exchange between the two projects and Stefano’s session will surely make it clearer to you.
4. Building Ubuntu images & The Ubuntu Nexus 7 images — Oliver Grawert has been building Ubuntu images for various platforms for quite a few cycles already, so he knows the problems you probably run into most. His sessions give some good insight into what’s involved in bringing Ubuntu up on all kinds of devices.
5. Fixing packages to cross-build — As a member of the Foundations team Dmitrijs Ledkovs has gathered quite some experience cleaning up problems, including build problems in the archive for a while now. Check out the session to find out how to make packages build for other architectures most easily. Get involved in fixing these issues once and for all.
6. Developers Roundtable — Benjamin Drung and Michael Bienia were kind enough to take on the last session of UDW and answer all the remaining questions regarding Ubuntu development. Be sure to check out the log as your favourite question might well be among the ones answered. 🙂

Oh, and before we forget it: join us in the Automated Testing Hackfest today!

Ubuntu Developer Week: Review of Day 2, Outlook: last day

Ubuntu Developer Week is passing by much too quickly, as always. Still it’s great to see how many new people get involved, find out more about Ubuntu Development and get involved. Day 2 was yesterday and brought us many great sessions. Here’s what happened yesterday:

1. How to write apps for Ubuntu — dpm: David Planella was well prepared as always and gave some good insights into what it takes to take an app from idea to a working app. He got quite a number of questions during the session, so I guess we can expect more apps coming to Ubuntu soon. 🙂
2. Ubuntu App review process explained — coolbhavi: Bhavani Shankar explained the next step in terms of apps and demonstrated how a typical App Review works. Unfortunately the session was interrupted by a bot misbehaving towards the end, but lots of questions were still answered.
3. Finding memory leaks — achiang (Hangout!): Memory leaks can become huge problems in no time, and sometimes it’s not easy to debug or fix them. Alex Chiang is passionate about fixing them and provided a great session about how and where to start.
4. Testing with autopilot — balloons: Nicholas Skaggs and Thomi Richards are becoming the autopilot double-act (you will likely see them in tomorrow’s Automated Testing Hackfest as well). They gave a very nice introduction into autopilot and how to use it to test UI elements properly. Be sure to check it out and make good use of it.
5. Unity integration — mhall119: Michael Hall, the author of “Hello Unity” and things like “singlet” knows how Unity works and how best to integrate your apps with it. It’s these finishing touches which make your app stand out and give the users the nice feeling of a seamless experience.

Here’s what’s on for today. Hope to see you all there!

• 15:00 UTC – Automated Testing in Ubuntu — pitti
• 16:00 UTC – Syncing your app’s data with u1db — aquarius
• 17:00 UTC – Interacting with Debian’s Bug Tracking System — tumbleweed
• 17:30 UTC – Building Ubuntu images — ogra
• 18:00 UTC – The Ubuntu Nexus 7 images — ogra
• 18:30 UTC – Fixing packages to cross-build – xnox
• 19:00 UTC – Developers Roundtable — bdrung & geser

This is the last day of this cycle’s UDW, so make sure you let your friends know and show up yourself. Join in!

Ubuntu Developer Week: Day 1 is over, what’s up on Day 2?

Ubuntu Developer Week kicked off yesterday. If you couldn’t make it, don’t despair: here are the logs and a quick run-through:

1. Introduction to Ubuntu development — dholbach: This session has become an institution at Ubuntu Developer Weeks and is always packed with people who want to get started. Check out the log for an overview over Ubuntu Development and lots and lots of answered questions.
2. Getting set up for Ubuntu development — dholbach: Similar to the session before, this one is a regular at our events. This time Daniel chose to only show the most important things to get set up and also walk everybody through a very simple bug fix to give an idea of how things work.
3. Introduction to patch systems — coolbhavi: Patch systems regularly confuse people. How do I “patch a package” and why are there multiple ways to do it. Go through Bhavani’s session log and find out how and why to get the most out of patch systems.
4. Working with upstreams — tumbleweed: Stefano Rivera has long been working in both the Debian and Ubuntu camp, so it’s no surprise this topic is important to him. It was great to see that many asked their questions in the session. The foundations of more healthy relations between Upstreams and Downstreams have hopefully been laid in the session.
5. Introduction to One Hundred Paper Cuts — notgary: The One Hundred Paper Cuts team has been fixing small, annoying UI bugs for quite a while and everybody’s happy that Chris Wilson brought some new energy back to the team. Watch this video to find out how you can get involved and how the project works. If you care about UI stuff, this is a great first step. 🙂
6. Ubuntu App Developer tools — mhall119: Building apps for Ubuntu has never been easier and Michael Hall knows how you can most easily get started. Read the log, it’s good fun and start working on your first app today.

Yesterday sounds like it was a great day, but wait for what we’ve lined up for today:

• 15:00 UTC: How to write apps for Ubuntu — dpm
• 16:00 UTC: Ubuntu App review process explained — coolbhavi
• 17:00 UTC: Finding memory leaks — achiang (Hangout!)
• 18:00 UTC: Testing with autopilot — balloons
• 19:00 UTC: Unity integration — mhall119

It’s very simple. Join in. Enjoy Ubuntu Developer Week!

Outlook Day 1 of Ubuntu Developer Week

Today we’ll kick off day 1 of Ubuntu Developer Week in the 13.04 (raring) cycle. Here’s just a quick list of things to look forward to today:

• 15:00 UTC: Introduction to Ubuntu Development — Daniel Holbach
• 16:00 UTC: Getting set up for Ubuntu Development — Daniel Holbach
• 17:00 UTC: Introduction to patch systems — Bhavani Shankar
• 18:00 UTC: Working with upstreams — Stefano Rivera
• 18:30 UTC: Introduction to One Hundred Paper Cuts — Chris Wilson
• 19:00 UTC: Ubuntu App Developer Tools — Michael Hall

If you can’t make it, we’ll provide logs on the Ubuntu Developer Week page after the sessions.

All you need to do is, join in and let your friends know.

Ubuntu Developer Week is over – thanks everyone

Thanks a lot to all the presenters at Ubuntu Developer Week! Thanks a lot also to everyone who joined the sessions and who helped set them up. This UDW was another great success. We had up to 300 people sessions around at peak times, lots of great questions and lots of excitement. It’s events like this where you can get a better sense how Ubuntu development works, can see Open Source development in action and get to know the people.

All the logs of the sessions are now available from the Ubuntu Developer Week page. Thanks again everyone!

Here’s a run through the sessions of the last day:

• Getting started with app development and Intro to translations in Ubuntu – David Planella talked about two topics very close to his heart, Apps in Ubuntu and Translations in Ubuntu. Within 30 minutes each, he managed to give a nice overview and also to address all incoming questions.
• Adding test cases with UTAH and Q&A about test automation  – UTAH is the Ubuntu Test Automation Harness and Gema Gomez-Solano explained in quite some detail how it works and why this changes how we put Ubuntu together a lot. She also explained how to get involved by adding new test-cases. Please have a look at the logs and help out!
• Getting started with Ubuntu WebApps – Alex Launi and Alex Abreu did a great job explaining how Ubuntu WebApps works and how to get started implementing your own. It’s great to see how easily the Desktop and the Web can get closer. Be sure to check it out.
• u1db: synced data for your apps on many platforms – The Ubuntu One team has been cooking something really nice for us and Stuart Langridge showed trivial it is to get up and running with your own databases. It’s a great and very natural way to use, store and sync data, in any application.
• Developers Roundtable – Benjamin Drung and Scott Kitterman were around to answer all kinds of development-related questions and did a nice job of easing everyone into a comfortable atmosphere. Particularly talking from their own experience is nice to read.

Ubuntu Developer Week always flies by much too quickly, but there will be more events related to Ubuntu development, so stay tuned.

Ubuntu Developer Week – last day ahead, summary of day 2

Day 2 is over and what a fantastic day it was! Without further ado here’s the summary of day 2:

• Introduction to Quickly – Michael Terry rocked it. As he is one of the maintainers of Quickly it was easy for him to give a nice overview of our favourite app development tool and answer all questions which came up.
• Getting help to start with Ubuntu Development The developer advisory team and beyond – As member of the MOTU team and the Developer Advisory Team, Bhavani Shankar knows what kind of questions and concerns new contributors have. He did a great job explaining how the DAT tries to help newcomers and explain what to watch out for when getting involved with Ubuntu Development.
• Fixing small bugs and forwarding the patches upstream – Stefano Rivera filled multiple pages with content during his session and explained very nicely where to find easy tasks to work on and which typical bug fixing initiatives are going on in Ubuntu and Debian.
• libmessagingmenu – As a new member of the Desktop infrastructure it was great to see libmessagingmenu explained by somebody who put lots of work into it. Thanks Lars Uebernickel – now it should be easier to integrate with libmessagingmenu for interested developers.
• Ubuntu Juju Tips and Tricks – With Ubuntu’s focus on the Cloud world, we had to have a session about Juju. Read the log and see how Mark Mims went into detail about how to get the most out of it.

I’m sure you’re as sad as everybody else, but today is the last day of Ubuntu Developer Week. Don’t despair though, there’ll be many many more. Here’s what’s up on the schedule for today:

1. 15:00 UTC: Getting started with app development – David Planella has been working with the App Developer community for quite a while, so he knows the pitfalls and problems you might run into when writing your first app.
2. 15:30 UTC: Intro to translations in Ubuntu – David has also worked with the Translations community a lot, so stay tuned for a great session on making software speak all kinds of languages.
3. 16:00 UTC: Adding test cases with UTAH – Quick introduction to Ubuntu Test Automation Harness. How to get involved, and how to get support from the development team or contribute.
4. 16:30 UTC: Q&A about test automation – Answers for anyone with questions about starting a new automated suite, where to start with automation (with or without UTAH) of package testing, feel free to come over and ask. If there are no questions there won’t be any answers either!
5. 17:00 UTC: Getting started with Ubuntu WebApps – Getting the Ubuntu Desktop closer to the web was a huge undertaking, but totally worth it. Ubuntu is just so much better with all the goodness being closely integrated. Alex Launi and Alex Abreu are experts on the topic.
6. 18:00 UTC: u1db: synced data for your apps on many platforms – If your app deal with any kind of data, you might be interested in hooking it up with Ubuntu One DB. Stuart Langridge will tell you exactly ho.
7. 19:00 UTC: Developers Roundtable – Do you have questions about Ubuntu development? Here you have the best opportunity to ask everything you want to know, because we will have a number of developers there who can answer your questions for you.

We hope to see many of you around today as it’s the last day. Tell your friends and bring them and your questions. Join in!

Ubuntu Developer Week – Summary Day 1, Outlook Day 2

Day 1 of Ubuntu Developer Week is over – it was brilliant. Lots of people, last I looked it was close to 300 and many many excellent questions. Here’s a quick run through the sessions we had yesterday:

• Introduction to Ubuntu development – The even was started by Daniel Holbach, who gave a one-hour introduction to Ubuntu development. Many of the things you need to understand first were discussed, but lots more as well. Especially the Q&A parts are an interesting read.
• Getting set up for Ubuntu development – After a very short break, just enough to get a cup of tea, the session continued and we talked about all the tools a developer typically needs and how to set them up properly. This as well raised many good questions. Reading through the log you can get a sense for how our attendees were interested in getting started.
• Something about ARM – Oliver Grawert was up next and started off with a brief history of how the efforts around ARM evolved in Ubuntu. The rest of the session was very much about questions and answers and by getting through them all, it was very easy to understand how busy a place ARM in Ubuntu is.
• Ubuntu Development for the Youth – Bilal Akhtar gave an excellent session about contributing to Ubuntu and answered many very common questions and was able to put many minds at ease. If you should be still unsure about Ubuntu development and if it’s a good idea to get involved, read the session log.
• Using and porting to Python3 – Barry Warsaw could have filled three hours about Python3 without problems. The session was very interesting as he managed to highlight both challenges with porting from 2 to 3, but also what we have to gain.

Very soon we will kick off day 2 which has this for us in store:

1. 15:00 UTC: Introduction to Quickly – Michael Terry is one of the people behind Quickly, so he’s a pretty good person to get you started writing your first app for Ubuntu. Prepare yourself for a pleasant journey towards your first app.
2. 16:00 UTC: Getting help to start with Ubuntu Development – The developer advisory team and beyond – Bhavani Shankar has been part of Ubuntu Development for a very long time and part of the Developer Advisory Team for almost all of its lifetime. Join his session for an overview of what the DAT is doing and some tips to get started.
3. 17:00 UTC: Fixing small bugs and forwarding the patches upstream – Stefano Rivera is both, an Ubuntu and a Debian developer, and has contributed to both for an extended period of time. He’d love you to help fix small bugs in both, so join in, ask your questions and get involved.
4. 18:00 UTC: libmessagingmenu – libmessagingmenu is one of the key components on the Ubuntu Desktop and Lars Übernickel a person who knows everything about it. His session will give you a good idea how it works and how to integrate with it easily.
5. 19:00 UTC: Ubuntu Juju Tips and Tricks –  juju has taken the DevOps world by storm, because it was never easier to massage your knowledge about the deployment and administration of services into charms and to administer many many systems very easily. Mark Mims will be here to tell us more about it.

As you can see, we brought together all kinds of Ubuntu developers to give you a taster of the richness of our community. Tell your friends and bring them and your questions. Join in!

Ubuntu Developer Week starts today

One of my favourite parts of the cycle is about to start in just a few hours: Ubuntu Developer Week is about to kick off today. If you’re interested in Ubuntu Development, you’re in for three days of talks and workshops. Join in and be part of these sessions today:

1. 15:00 UTC: Introduction to Ubuntu Development – If you are completely new to Ubuntu Development, this is a session you will want to attend. Daniel Holbach will give you a good overview how things work and you will have heard about all the essential bits.
2. 16:00 UTC: Getting set up for Ubuntu development – In this session you will learn which tools you need and how to configure them best. Afterwards you will be ready to go to start working on Ubuntu packages.
3. 17:00 UTC: Something about ARM – Heard a lot about ARM devices recently? We’re sure you have. Everybody’s excited about Ubuntu’s new first-class citizen. Learn more from Oliver Grawert what it takes to make Ubuntu run on these.
4. 18:00 UTC: Ubuntu Development for the Youth – Bilal Akhtar is one of Ubuntu’s younger Ubuntu developers and has been involved in making it easier for other young contributors to get involved. Attend the session and be convinced that anybody can start getting involved! 🙂
5. 19:00 UTC: Something about Python3 – Barry Warsaw has been involved in Python for a very long and he’d love to see everything ported to Python3. In this session Barry will give you a few really good reasons to look into Python3.

Join us in #ubuntu-classroom on irc.freenode.net and get involved! You won’t regret it.

Ubuntu Developer Week Planning starts

From Tue 28^th Aug to Thu 30^th Aug we will have another action-packed Ubuntu Developer Week. As we still have a couple of weeks until it’s happening, we invite everybody who wants to speak about Ubuntu Development or packaging or general hacking techniques which might of interest to aspiring developers is welcome to join in.

If you want to demo just a cool new tool or speak about a shorter topic, we have 30 minute slots available too. Just head to the UDW planning page and add yourself.

A few ideas for the uninspired:

• Getting your fix into Ubuntu: common pitfalls
• What’s a debian/watch file good for?
• Porting your code to Python 3
• pkgme and what it can do for you
• UDD, quilt and bzr and how to make the most of it
• Using autopkgtest and jenkins for fun and profit
• Demo: fixing bugs
• Demo: updating packages to a new upstream version
• Demo: getting stable release updates right
• Writing safe C code
• <and lots more…>

Just grab one of the above or think of your own session topic idea and add it to the timetable.

Developer Week: Summary Day 3

It’s sad news, yes – Ubuntu Developer Week for the 12.04 cycle is over. It’s been three fantastic days full of action-packed sessions. If you couldn’t attend, check out the logs of the sessions, all of them are posted on the UDW page.

Here’s what happened on day 3, yesterday:

1. Fixing Desktop bugs — seb128Sébastien Bacher kicked off our last day. At first he took some time to explain how the Desktop team works and how they go about fixing bugs, then he took a quite recent example and explained how to work all the individual packaging bits to fix a Desktop bug in Ubuntu. For bonus points he explained how to get Wanda the Fish working in Ubuntu.
2. Triaging Desktop bugs — om26erNext up was Omer Akram, who first gave us an update about his personal life, then quickly dived into triaging bugs. He explained all the actors involved, what to bear in mind and general things to make sure when you are reviewing bug reports. Omer, who started out by triaging bugs himself, did a great job explaining how to get involved and why it’s so important.
3. Simple Lenses with Singlet — mhall119Michael Hall, an unstoppable force throughout UDW, provided a great session about how to write lenses for Unity using Singlet. For developers who have used Python in the past, this might be an even easier (and more pythonic way) to interact with Unity and Desktop bits.
4. Building locally with pbuilder — tumbleweed
   Those of you venturing into the land of Ubuntu development will have to deal with packaging and it’s good to do it in a safe, clean and reproducible manner. Stefano Rivera explained a lot of options for doing that including some advanced features useful if you want to debug builds. Great work.
5. Writing Crisp Changelogs — coolbhavi
   Again for those of you interested in package maintenance: it’s important to document your work properly. You don’t want anybody (including yourself) having to go back in a few months or years and dive into the archaelogy of a package to understand what exactly was changed and why. Bhavani Shankar shared his experience in writing crisp changelog entries.
6. Getting started with contributing to Ubuntu Documentation — jbicha
   The Ubuntu Documentation project is of vital importance to everyone who is new to Ubuntu. Also is it a great way to get involved with Ubuntu, as Jeremy Bicha showed. He explained how to the team works generally and how to actually go and contribute improvements.
7. Adding Ubuntu One to your applications — aquarius
   If you want to allow you application to sync data to the internet, it never was easier. Stuart Langridge showed and explained some easy examples which demoed how to tie in Ubuntu One services into your app.
8. Pair Programming and Code Review in the Cloud! — kirkland
   Dustin Kirkland did an impressive live demo of how to use EC2 to do pair programming, review of code and builds. He used tmux and byobu and explained in detail how to drive the infrastructure. Unfortunately the log is a bit colourless without the live demo right next to it.
9. Syncing your app data everywhere with U1DB — aquarius
   Nothing stops Stuart Langridge when he’s on a roll. He delivered his second session all about the new Ubuntu One Database. For those of you new to the initiative: “U1DB is for syncing data — that is, something structured — to every device you want”. The session is short, has lots of good information in it and a nice example of how to work with it.
10. Automated packaging with pkgme — james_w
    James Westby gave a great introduction to the pkgme project he has been working on and it’s fantastic to see that a lot of repetitive tasks are done by a tool. It was nice to see pkgme package itself. Give it a whirl and let James know how it works out for you.
11. Fixing internationalisation bugs — kelemengabor
    Gábor Kelemen is one of the heroes of Ubuntu’s internationalisation. Keeping all packages translatable and translations in shape matters deeply to him and he gave a nice overview over how common problems can easily be resolved. Köszönöm Gábor!
12. How to fix small bugs in Ubuntu — warp10
    Andrea Colangelo took over and quickly ran us through a couple of examples of fixed bugs and explained how exactly they were fixed. By the end of the session it was clear that in a lot of cases it’s no rocket science to go and fix a bug. Grazie mille, Andrea – I hope many will find your session as encouraging as we did.
13. Problem Lifecycle in Ubuntu — cprofitt
    Charles Profitt delivered the last session of the event and explained how all teams in Ubuntu work together to go from problem to solution, involving the lifecycle of a bug report, which was a big enough topic on its own already. Throughout the session he showed how you can join each of the teams and make a difference. Awesome!

What a fantastic day. Thanks a lot to all the speakers who made this Ubuntu Developer Week possible. Thanks a lot to everyone who attended as well. It was great to see a lot of interaction, questions and interest. Until next time! 🙂