Where is everyone? Maps on profile pages
Published by Matthew Revell September 17, 2008 in Cool new stuff
Something I love about Launchpad is that I can quickly get a feeling for the people whose work I come across. Some of what you see on a Launchpad profile page is more geared towards knowing the person than their work.
We’ve added a bit more to that “getting to know you” part of the profile page with our new Google Maps mash-up. Now you’ve got the option of showing other people where in the world you are by flagging your location.
This is pretty cool for a bit of fun but when it comes to organising team meetings – in person or online – it becomes really useful. Take a look at the profile page for the Launchpad Developers team. On our team map you get a quick-glance feeling for where in the world members of the Launchpad team are.
Visit your profile page to set your location.
Karma for code reviews
Published by Matthew Revell in Code, Cool new stuff
The guys in the Launchpad-Bazaar integration team added code review to Launchpad earlier this year.
Now, when you take part in a code review it’ll count towards your Launchpad karma!
If you’re new to code review, take a look at my previous post.
Launchpad offline 22.00 – 23.59 UTC 17th September 2008
Published by Matthew Revell September 15, 2008 in Notifications
We’re releasing Launchpad 2.1.9 on Wednesday (17th September). During the roll-out of the new code, we need to take Launchpad offline for a short while. We allow a window of two hours.
Going offline: 22.00 UTC 17th September 2008
Expected back before: 23.59 UTC 17th September 2008
Keep reading this blog for the 2.1.9 release announcement!
Last week in Launchpad’s web API
Published by Leonard Richardson September 8, 2008 in API, General
Barry Warsaw, Francis Lacoste, and I gave an IRC chat about the Launchpad web service as part of Ubuntu Developer Week. There’s a transcript available in case you missed it.
The big news from last week is that we finally have the API documentation being generated whenever a new version of Launchpad is deployed. Whatever server your script is running against, the /+apidoc URL will contain the reference documentation for that version of Launchpad. launchpad.net’s documentation will change when we do an official release of Launchpad, and edge.launchpad.net’s and staging.launchpad.net’s will be updated much more often, as our changes get pushed out to those servers.
But there’s more! I also added support to launchpadlib for access to the binary files hosted by Launchpad: mugshots, bug attachments, and so on. This is everything described in the reference doc as “a file resource.” If you upgrade launchpadlib, you can now access these files with a Pythonic file object interface.
The server side of this has been in place since we launched the web service, so in theory you could have been messing with uploaded files this whole time by writing a custom-built client. But only recently did I update the hacking document that makes it easy to see how to do this.
Finally, Edwin, Brad, and I have continued working on exporting the Launchpad registry. Of note are three new hosted-file resources: a project’s brand, logo, and icon. Project groups also have more of their fields published.
This week: more things published through the registry, hopefully some progress on bugs as well.
This week in Launchpad’s web API
Published by Leonard Richardson August 29, 2008 in API, Cool new stuff
Last week the Launchpad web service didn’t change, because the source tree was frozen pending a Launchpad release. But this week we landed the branches we wrote last week, as well as some new ones.
The biggest change this week is client-side caching. Update your copy of launchpadlib to revision 17 and change your scripts to pass a directory name into the Launchpad constructor. That directory will be used as a cache.
>>> cachedir = "/home/me/.launchpadlib/cache/"
>>> launchpad = Launchpad(credentials, STAGING_SERVICE_ROOT, cachedir)
Without the cache, it takes several seconds just to start up launchpadlib. Every time you create a Launchpad object, the library has to download information about how Launchpad
works. With the cache in place, launchpadlib will download that information once and reuse it for every Launchpad object you create. The cache will also store the bugs, people, and other objects you retrieve as you use launchpadlib. The more often you use the same Launchpad objects, the more time the cache will save you. When we change Launchpad, launchpadlib will notice and will download the documents that have changed.
Second, Edwin Grubbs continued his work on publishing the Launchpad registry. launchpad.projects is now open for business. You can get basic information about Launchpad projects, their milestones and branches.
>>> bzr = launchpad.projects['bzr']
>>> bzr.title
u'Bazaar Version Control System'
>>> bzr.programming_language
u'Python'
>>> [milestone.name for milestone in bzr.all_milestones]
[u'0.9a', u'1.3.1rc1', u'1.4rc2', u'1.5', u'1.6', ...]
Finally, I’ve given launchpadlib some code that uses the client-side cache to avoid the “lost update problem.” This happens when two people modify the same object without coordinating, and the second one unknowingly overwrites the first person’s changes. If you use launchpadlib to make a change and it turns out someone else has changed the same object, you’ll get a chance to look at the new version of the object and see if your changes are still relevant.
One thing we haven’t done yet is gotten the API HTML reference to be regenerated whenever we change the web service. I planned to work on this yesterday, but instead spent the day fixing bugs. I’m working on it now and we should have it up early next week.
Next week we’ll see also more of the Launchpad registry exposed, and some long-awaited aspects of Launchpad’s bug tracker. And on Tuesday, Barry Warsaw and I will be talking about Launchpad’s web service API as part of Ubuntu Developer Week. That’s at 1900 UTC, in #ubuntu-classroom on irc.freenode.net.
Launchpad 2.1.8: Bugzilla and Trac plugins now available, plus karma for commits
Published by Matthew Revell August 21, 2008 in Releases
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.
Bugzilla and Trac plugins now in beta
Published by Graham Binns August 20, 2008 in Bug Tracking, Cool new stuff
A few weeks ago, Matt announced the new Launchpad plugins for Bugzilla and Trac.
The plugins allow bidirectional communication between Launchpad and the remote bug trackers that have them installed. Obviously, we need to test the plugins – and that’s where we need your help.
If you know of any Trac or Bugzilla instances whose administrators might be interested in installing the requisite Launchpad plugin – or indeed if you run such a bug tracker yourself – you can find details on how to install the plugins and what you need to do to get Launchpad to work with your bugtracker on the Launchpad Help wiki:
- For Bugzilla, see http://help.launchpad.net/Bugs/BugzillaPlugin
- For Trac, see http://help.launchpad.net/Bugs/TracPlugin
So, what will installing the plugins do? Well, initially, installing one of the plugins will mean that:
- Launchpad will be able to import comments from upstream bugs which are being watched in Launchpad. If you register a bug watch against an upstream bug you’ll be able to read the conversation about that bug on Launchpad, including the comments that are made on the upstream bug tracker.
- Launchpad will be able to push comments to upstream bugs which are linked to a Launchpad bug, so if you add a comment on Launchpad in reply to a comment which was imported from an upstream bug tracker, the comment will automatically be added to the conversation on the upstream bug tracker, too. This means that users of both Launchpad and the upstream tracker can view the whole conversation about the bug without leaving their preferred environments.
Once we’re happy that the plugins are working correctly we can use them to add some even cooler functionality to Launchpad:
- Launchpad will be able to forward bugs to upstream bug trackers that have the plugin installed. Users of those bug trackers won’t have to check Launchpad for bugs registered against their project; they’ll be forwarded straight to the upstream tracker.
- If a bug watch is created against an upstream bug, Launchpad will tell the upstream bug tracker which Launchpad bug is watching it. This means that not only is there a link in Launchpad to the upstream bug, but there’s also a link in the upstream bug tracker to the Launchpad bug.
The Bugzilla plugin is licensed under the Mozilla Public License and the Trac plugin is licensed under GPLv2.
If you’ve got any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us by email at feedback@launchpad.net.
Karma for commits!
Published by Matthew Revell in Code, Cool new stuff
While in some parts they take their pay in Warcraft gold, round here we’re karma fiends!
To feed the habit, Tim in Launchpad’s Code Hosting team has provided another way of earning karma: making commits to any Bazaar branch that’s registered to a project in Launchpad.
We’re backdating the karma for commits but, as with all karma the older the action is the less it’ll count towards your karma score; really old actions don’t count at all. Also, +junk branches don’t count towards karma at all.
Terms of Use Update
Published by Joey Stanford August 19, 2008 in Notifications
Hi,
Today we have updated the Launchpad Terms of Use. Specifically, the section on Automated Querying was updated and extended to reflect the addition of our Public APIs. Please take a moment to inspect the changes.
Thanks,
Launchpad offline 00.00 – 02.00 UTC 21st August 2008
Published by Matthew Revell in Notifications
This week we’re releasing Launchpad 2.1.8! During code roll-outs we allow a down-time window of a couple of hours. This week, we’re making the release in the early hours UTC of Thursday 21st.
Going offline: 00.00 UTC 21st August 2008
Expected back before: 02.00 UTC 21st August 2008
I’m sorry for the inconvenience this down-time will cause. I’ll post details of what’s new in 2.1.8 here after we’ve made the release.
