launchpadblog

The Launchpad team is proud to announce the release of Launchpad 3.0!

Highlights in this release include:

• a new clearer web interface with in-line editing
• personal translation dashboards: see what needs your attention
• automatically updated diffs during code reviews.

Let’s take a look at these, and more, in closer detail.

New user interface, with in-line editing

Visit Launchpad to see our new web interface. You can now view more information on many pages without scrolling, particularly on people and project profile pages.

And the web interface is now faster: you can update more data, including almost everything on bug report pages, without reloading the page.

Take a look at our screencast for more on the new interface:

(Ogg Theora version)

(Read our interview with Launchpad’s UI guy, Martin Albisetti)

Personal translation dashboards

Want to check if a translation needs your review? Or perhaps you want to see which projects need translation work in your language.

You can now get a quick overview of translation work that needs your attention by visiting your new translation dashboard.

(Read Danilo’s post on Launchpad Translations 3.0)

Automatically updated code diffs during code reviews

When you’re going through a code review, you’re likely to make changes to your code based on your reviewer’s comments.

Now, when you push your changes up to Launchpad in the middle of a code review, Launchpad updates the diff shown on the review page. So now it’s easier for your reviewers to see your proposed changes even as you update them.

Launchpad now using Bazaar 2.0

We’re now running Bazaar 2.0. This means that all new code imports — from git, Subersion and CVS sources — are in Bazaar’s new more efficient 2a format. We’re also starting to upgrade existing imported branches to the new format.

To use Bazaar’s new 2a repositories, you should upgrade to Bazaar 2.0.

Community contributions

Now that Launchpad’s an open source project, 3.0 also includes a number of contributions from developers outside Canonical’s Launchpad team.

Many thanks for their work and enthusiasm for Launchpad go to:

• William Grant
• Max Bowsher
• Jamal Fanaian
• Andrea Corbellini
• Simon Olofsson
• Severin Heiniger

(See more detail on our contributions page)

Also in release 3.0

For full details of the bugfixes and blueprints that make up Launchpad 3.0, visit its milestone page.

If you come across a bug, please report it.

See you next time

Launchpad 3.1.10 is due on the 4th of November. See the releases calendar for more.

In the meantime, stay up to date with Launchpad news and views here on our blog.

As always, you can join us in channel #launchpad on irc.freenode.net and on the launchpad-users mailing list.

For development discussion, come to channel #launchpad-dev on irc.freenode.net or to the launchpad-dev mailing list.

The Launchpad team is proud to announce the release of Launchpad 2.2.3!

Here are the highlights of what’s new in this release:

• Additional Personal Package Archives for yourself and your teams
• Translation template imports directly from your project’s Bazaar branches

Read on for more!

Additional Personal Package Archives

You can now create multiple PPAs both for yourself and your teams.

This is ideal if you’re publishing different versions of the same application to different audiences. For example: you may have one archive for alpha versions and another that’s used by your beta testers.

Visit your profile page — or that of one of your teams — to add more PPAs.

See Julian’s blog post for further details.

Translation template imports from Bazaar branches

Host your project’s code using Launchpad and Bazaar? Also translate your software using Launchpad?

Launchpad can now automatically find and import your translation templates from your project’s Bazaar branches.

Once you’ve activated automatic imports, Launchpad will monitor the official branch for each of your series and pull in any new template versions that you commit.

Read Henning’s blog post to get the full story.

Also new in this release

There’s more to Launchpad 2.2.3, including:

• teams can now have +junk branches
• releases are now directly linked to milestones
• project owners and bug supervisors can now set official bug tags
• uploading packages to Launchpad, whether directly for Ubuntu or to a PPA, now earns you karma!

For full details of the bugs and blueprints that make up Launchpad 2.2.3 visit its milestone page.

If you come across a bug, please report it!

See you at the end of the month

Our second release for April — 2.2.4 — is due on the 29th of April.

In the meantime, stay up to date with Launchpad news and views here on our blog.

And as always, you can join us in #launchpad on Freenode and on the launchpad-users mailing list.

The Launchpad team is proud to announce the release of Launchpad 2.2.2! Let’s look at what’s new this month.

Now easier to add upstream links to bug reports

If you’re using Launchpad to track a bug that you think may also be reported elsewhere — such as in a project’s Bugzilla — it’s now easier to find that bug report.

Launchpad developer Graham Binns explains:

Launchpad will now give you direct links to the bug search and filing forms in a project’s external tracker, so long as Launchpad knows the tracker’s location.

To find the links, all you have to do is click “Also affects project” on the bug report and select the project you want to link to.

There’s more in Graham’s blog post.

Also in Launchpad 2.2.2

February saw the Launchpad team dedicate a week to tackling slower-loading pages. Read our write-up of what happened in Launchpad Performance Week.

You can find full details of Launchpad 2.2.2 on its milestone page.

If you come across a bug, please report it!

See you next month!

We’ll be releasing Launchpad 2.2.3 at the start of April. In the mean time, stay up to date with Launchpad news and views right here on our blog.

And as always, you can join us in #launchpad on Freenode and on the launchpad-users mailing list.

The Launchpad team are proud to announce Launchpad 2.2.1, our first release of 2009!

In 2.2.1 we’ve introduced:

• a unique signature for each Personal Package Archive
• a way to introduce new translators to your team’s way of working
• an easier way for projects to export translations made in Launchpad.

Read on for details of what’s new!

Signed PPAs

If you’ve recently installed software from a Personal Package Archive, your package manager may have told you it doesn’t recognise the PPA’s public key.

That’s because we’ve added a key to each PPA in Launchpad, allowing you to verify you’re downloading from the archive you expect.

Our screencast shows how to add a PPA’s key to your system.

Help new translators find their way

The ease with which newcomers can make translations is one of the reasons many projects choose Launchpad.

If you’re in a translation team, you can help new translators pick up the style and rules of the project(s) you’re working on by linking to your translation style guide directly from the relevant translation pages.

Take a look at our blog post for details.

Upstream projects: easily integrate translations made in Launchpad

Thousands of people use Launchpad to help translate Ubuntu. Many projects whose software is in Ubuntu also have their own translation efforts outside Launchpad.

In the past, translations made in Launchpad weren’t always easy for upstream projects to integrate back into their own translations.

We’ve added a new translation export option that provides only those strings that have changed since we last imported the project’s own translations. This should make it much easier for projects to take and use translations made in Launchpad.

See our help page for more.

Full details of 2.2.1

To get the full details of the Launchpad 2.2.11 release, visit its milestone page.

If you come across a bug, please report it!

We’re proud to announce the release of Launchpad 2.1.12 and two exciting new ways for other services to use data in Launchpad.

Create a Launchpad plugin for your bug tracker

Launchpad can already import the status of a bug report that’s in another tracker, such as Debian’s BTS or Sourceforge.

Recently, we also announced two plugins — for Bugzilla and Trac — that enable two-way communication, starting off with sharing a bug’s comment history between those trackers and Launchpad.

We’ve published our bug plugin API on the help wiki, so now anyone can create their own plugins to enable other bug trackers to communicate directly with Launchpad.

Graham has more in his blog post.

Launchpad modules for Drupal 5.x

Building on Launchpad’s OpenID support, we’ve produced two Drupal 5.x modules that let you:

• use Launchpad to authenticate your Drupal site’s visitors
• assign Drupal roles based on someone’s Launchpad team memberships.

We’re working on support for Drupal 6.x right now.

Read more in our blog post.

Full details of 2.1.12

If you filter Launchpad bug mail, look out for a new header:

X-Launchpad-Bug-Commenters

It lists, alphabetically, everyone who has commented on the bug, including the original poster, with each name separated by spaces.

To get the full details of the Launchpad 2.1.12 release, have a look at its milestone page.

If you come across a bug, please report it!

See you next year!

We’ll be back in the new year with Launchpad 2.2.1 on the 28th January.

There are two new ways to get Launchpad news, via Twitter and identi.ca:

• http://twitter.com/launchpad_net
• http://identi.ca/launchpad

  And don’t forget the Launchpad News blog!

  As always, you can join us in #launchpad on Freenode and at the new home of the launchpad-users mailing list.

The Launchpad team is proud to announce the release of Launchpad 2.1.11, which includes two major new features!

OpenID: log into other websites using your Launchpad identity

How many website usernames and passwords do you juggle each day? Your Launchpad account now includes an OpenID identity, meaning you may be able to reduce the number of website login details you need to remember.

OpenID is an open standard that lets you use one online identity to access many different websites, such as SourceForge, Blogger, LiveJournal and thousands of others. Look out for the OpenID logo next time you log into or register for a website.

There’s more on our OpenID help page.

Get in touch with any other Launchpad user

Ever wanted to contact someone you’ve come across in Launchpad only to find they’ve hidden their email address?

Launchpad developer, Barry Warsaw, has the solution:

“You can now email up to three other Launchpad users or teams per day using the new Contact this user/team link on profile pages.

“Launchpad preserves the privacy of the recipient’s email address — unless they respond, when it becomes a normal email conversation — and you can choose which of your registered email addresses the message comes from.”

To give it a go, try it on your own profile page.

Find out more about contacting people in Launchpad and receiving email that’s sent using the contact form.

That’s all for this month

To get the full details of the Launchpad 2.1.11 release, have a look at its milestone page.

Launchpad 2.1.12, our final release of 2008, will be out on the 17th of December.

In the meantime, join us in #launchpad on Freenode and on the launchpad-users mailing list.

We in the Launchpad team are proud to announce the 21st August 2008 release of Launchpad 2.1.8!

This release brings two items of good news for anyone who commits code to branches registered in Launchpad:

• Karma for commits: Launchpad now awards karma for code commits to project branches.
• Feeds of each person’s code commits: as well as a feed that shows which branches you work on, Launchpad now gives you a feed of all the commits you’ve made to branches in Launchpad.

To subscribe to your own branch commits feed, visit your code overview page and click the feed icon in your browser’s address bar.

There’s more about karma for commits in our blog post.

Bugzilla and Trac plugin beta now open

Sharing the same bug report and comment history between communities is one of Launchpad’s most useful features.

With the beta of our new plugins for Bugzilla and Trac now open, projects who run their own external bug trackers can now also share bug comment histories with Launchpad.

Graham Binns from the Launchpad Bugs team blogs about how to take part in the beta, if you run a Bugzilla or Trac instance.

Regular updates on the Launchpad API beta

If you’re following the beta of the Launchpad API, you can now get regular updates on what’s new from Leonard Richardson, one of the Launchpad team working on the API.

Leonard’s posts are in the Launchad News blog’s API category.

Full details of Launchpad 2.1.8

Full details of the features and bug fixes that went into this release are on the Launchpad 2.1.8 milestone page.

If you come across any bugs in Launchpad, please report them.

We’ll be releasing Launchpad 2.1.9 on the 17th September.

In the mean time, join us each Thursday at 18.00 UTC in #launchpad-meeting on Freenode for the Launchpad team meeting and also any time on the launchpad-users mailing list.

I’m thrilled to announce the release of Launchpad 2.0!

This brings together new features from the past nine months of Launchpad’s development and introduces two exciting beta features.

And, of course, if you’ve visited Launchpad recently you’ll have seen our new, simpler, layout and navigation.

Let’s take a look at the key new features in this release.

Restful web services API and Python library

One of our main goals for Launchpad 2.0 has been to make it easier to manipulate data in Launchpad.

With this release, we’re introducing a beta test of two things that will enable you to develop external applications that can authenticate,
query and modify data in Launchpad’s database:

• a restful web services API
• and a Python library to access the new API.

Initially, the API will provide access to file and search for bugs, as well as the people and teams systems.

We’ll announce full details of the API and Python library later this week; keep an eye on this blog!

In the mean time, apply to join the Launchpad Beta Testers team if you’d like to take part in the beta.

Closer integration with Bugzilla and Trac

Often, bugs in free software affect more than one project. Launchpad lets projects share the same bug report and comment history so they can worth together on a fix.

Up until now, that’s only been available where each project uses Launchpad as their bug tracker. With Launchpad 2.0, we’re introducing a beta test of two new GPL plugins — one for Bugzilla, one for Trac — that enable projects to share a comment history between the bug as it’s tracked in Launchpad and in external trackers.

If you would like to help beta test the new plugins, let us know.

Simpler page layout and navigation

One of the most obvious changes in Launchpad 2.0 is the web interface’s new design. Our aim has been to simplify the layout and navigation. There’s more in our blog post.

New tour

Want to show someone what Launchpad’s all about? Send them to our new tour!

Other new features that make up Launchpad 2.0

Since our 1.0 launch in April 2007, we’ve introduced many new features that make up Launchpad 2.0, including:

• Code review: public discussion and voting on proposed code merges.
• Mailing lists for teams.
• Personal package archives: publish Ubuntu packages in your own apt repository.
• Atom feeds for bugs, branches and project announcements.
• Plus: binary file downloads, improved universal search, translation string search and support for more external bug trackers, amongst other improvements.

As ever, we’d love to hear what you think of our new release. If you come across a problem, please file a bug. Otherwise, send us an email, in particular if there’s something you really want to see in a future Launchpad release.

The Launchpad team is proud to announce the 1st July 2008 release of Launchpad 1.2.6!

New features in this release include:

• two great improvements to code review, including an email interface
• a new interface for bugs, translations and distribution pages
• and more control code imports!

Read on for more about what’s new and how it affects you.

Code review by email

Launchpad’s new code review system gives you a public place to discuss and vote on proposed code mergers. What’s more, you can easily access the discussion directly from both the target and source branch.

This month, we’ve added an email interface to make it easier to fit Launchpad-based code review into your workflow.

Read more in our blog post on code review by email.

Nominate a code reviewer

More improvements to Launchpad’s code review!

If you’re involved in a merge proposal – as the owner of either the source or target branch – you can invite someone else to give their view on the proposal.

Visit any of your merge proposals to trigger an email invitation to take part in your code review.

Bugs, translations and distribution pages now easier to use

We’ve revamped the bug view, translations and distribution pages to make them easier to use.

Read more in our blog post on the simplified bug page, translations and distro page UI.

More control over code imports

Launchpad’s code imports give you all the benefits of Bazaar’s distributed version control for code that’s stored in CVS and Subversion repositories.

Now you can get far more detail on the progress of individual code imports direct on that import’s overview page.

Michael Hudson, the Launchpad developer whose been working on the new code import system, explains more in our blog post.

Other changes this month

Launchpad’s now running Bazaar 1.6b3, which will pave the way for quicker uploads to projects that already have code in Launchpad. Stay up to date with the latest Bazaar release news.

For full details of the bug fixes and features that make up this release, take a look at the 1.2.6 milestone page.

Stay in touch!

Thanks for your bug reports, feature ideas and other feedback! If you come across any bugs, please report them.

If you want to get in touch for any other reason, join us in #launchpad or on launchpad-users.

July’s going to be an exciting time for Launchpad. Keep an eye on this blog!

The Launchpad team is proud to announce the 29th May 2008 release of Launchpad 1.2.5!

New features in this release include:

• voting and commenting on code branch mergers
• new Launchpad-wide search
• and translations search!

Read on for more about what’s new and how it affects you.

Vote and comment on proposed branch mergers

Launchpad’s merge proposals are a great way for project contributors to get their code considered for inclusion in the main line.

Now, branch owners – and anyone else who’s interested – can vote and comment on merge proposals.

Aaron Bentley, who’s been working on the feature, says:

“These changes make it easy to discuss and tweak proposed changes to a branch. You can browse the branch which contains the changes then comment and vote directly on what you’ve seen.”

Comments build into a threaded conversation about the branch. You can also vote either on the branch as whole, or use custom tags to apply your vote to a specific aspect of the work.

Take a look at one of the first branch merger comments.

This is just the start for this feature. Keep an eye on future Launchpad releases!

Launchpad-wide search

Want to find something in Launchpad quickly? Our new site-wide search looks for results right across Launchpad – in bug reports, branch descriptions, people, teams, projects, blueprints and more.

Try it out using the search box at the top-right of most Launchpad pages or on the dedicated search page.

Translations search

Finding typos or untranslated strings in translation files is now far easier, thanks to Launchpad’s new translations search!

Right now, you can search for a word or phrase within a particular translation file.

You’ll find the translation search box towards the top-right of translation file pages. As an example, take a look at the French translations page for Wordpress.

Other changes this month

• Packages now have an estimated build start time. Pick a package from Ubuntu’s pending queue to see an example.
• You now have the option of automatically subscribing to a team’s mailing list at the same time as joining the team. Edit your subscription options.

For full details of the bug fixes and features that make up this release, take a look at the 1.2.5 milestone page.

Launchpad podcast

Each week we’re producing a Launchpad team podcast, called Launchpod! In it we interview people who are doing cool things with Launchpad and talk to Launchpad developers about what they’ve been working on.

If you’ve got a question about Launchpad, let us have it and we’ll answer in the podcast. Post your questions on the podcast’s wiki page.

Subscribe to the podcast feed.

Stay in touch!

Thanks for your bug reports, feature ideas and other feedback! If you come across any bugs please report them.

If you want to get in touch for any other reason, such as with ideas for our new podcast, join us in #launchpad or on launchpad-users. See our Feedback page for details.

There’ll be more in Launchpad 1.2.6 at the end of June!