Launchpad Blog

Launchpad 2.0: new beta API, new UI and more!

Published by Matthew Revell July 29, 2008 in Releases

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

Launchpad 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.

Simpler Launchpad web interface

Published by Matthew Revell in Cool new stuff

With the release of Launchpad 2.0, we’ve introduced a new, simpler, design and navigation.

Over the past couple of weeks, you may already have seen that we’ve made some changes to Launchpad’s web interface. For a start, there’s our fabulous new logo (designed by Eugene Tretyak) and new silver header bar.

The changes that we think are likely to have most effect on how you use Launchpad are:

The beginning of the end of the Actions menu:we’ve started the process of removing the catch-all Actions menu. Now, many of the links you use to change information on a page are closer to the information itself.
Page-wide application tabs: to emphasise the importance of the effect that switching between applications has on the information you’re viewing on the page, we’ve made the application tabs much more prominent.
New sub-tabs: take a look at your person profile and you’ll see that below the main application tabs are a second row of tabs that switch between pages of different information about your activity in Launchpad. These new sub-tabs appear on many pages and should make it easier to drill down to the info you want.

If you come across a bug in the new web interface, please report it. If you have any other feedback, we’d love to hear from you.

Bugzilla and Trac plugins

Published by Matthew Revell July 28, 2008 in Cool new stuff

You may have spotted, on the Launchpad front page, a new summary of what Launchpad’s all about:

“Launchpad is hosting service for open source projects that’s big on collaboration.”

One of the earliest manifestations of our approach to collaboration was Launchpad’s ability to track the status of the same bug as it affects different projects. For example, a bug discovered in the Silva CMS may actually be a bug in the Zope 3 web application framework.

Because both Silva and Zope 3 use Launchpad to track their bugs, Launchpad treats that shared bug report as a single entity with the same bug number and a shared comment history. The bug report turns into a cross-project effort to find a fix for everyone, while both Silva and Zope 3 keep track of how the bug affects their projects through separate statuses, assignees and so on.

Now, if that same bug also affects a project that tracks its bugs outside Launchpad – say, in Sourceforge or the Debian BTS – then it’s harder to share a comment history. Instead, Launchpad links to the bug report in the external tracker and imports it status. If the bug gets fixed by the other project, everyone working on it in Launchpad can see straight away.

However, we’re committed to the idea that a shared comment history in effect creates an ad-hoc, cross-project, team to fix the bug. A project’s choice of bug tracker – in so far as is possible – shouldn’t prevent them from taking part in that conversation.

That’s why we’re about to launch a beta test of two new GPL plugins that make it easier for Launchpad to interact with Bugzilla and with Trac. Once they’re released, the plugins will enable Bugzilla and Trac instances to share bug comment histories with Launchpad.

We’re on the look-out for people to help us test the plugins. If you’re interested, drop us a mail.

Help test Launchpad’s new API!

Published by Matthew Revell in Cool new stuff

Launchpad is big. Really big. Almost two and a half million people have Launchpad user accounts and close to seven and a half thousand projects are registered in the directory.

Then there are the couple of hundred thousand bug reports, thousands of code branches, millions of translated strings, blueprints, user support questions, personal package archives, mailing lists and more.

One of the goals of Launchpad 2.0 is to make it easier to access that data and, with this release, we’re introducing the beta test of our new restful web API and Python library!

During the test, the API and library will provide access to the bug tracker, as well as people and teams. Within time, our aim is to make the API as comprehensive as the web interface. In the Launchpad team, we’re really excited by the idea that this gives you the tools to do things with Launchpad we haven’t even dreamt of.

We’ll be making the full announcement of the API beta test on this blog later this week. In the mean time, sign up to the Launchpad Beta Testers team!

Launchpad offline 22.00 – 23.00 UTC 23rd July 2008

Published by Matthew Revell July 23, 2008 in Notifications

We’re rolling out an update to Launchpad at 22.00 UTC today (23rd July). Launchpad will be offline for a few minutes, however we’re allowing a one hour window.

This down-time is part of our roll-out of Launchpad 2.0 release.

Offline at: 22.00 UTC 23rd July
Expected back before: 23.00 UTC 23rd July

Launchpod episode 8: developer interview with Curtis Hovey and chat about Landscape

Published by Matthew Revell July 21, 2008 in Podcast

Launchpod: the Launchpad team podcast! The latest from the Launchpad developers, questions from Launchpad users and stories from people who’ve found Launchpad useful.

Hosts: Matthew Revell, Joey Stanford, Barry Warsaw and Graham Binns.

Theme: Obscurity by Barry Warsaw.

00:45: Introducing Graham Binns, Launchpad Bug Tracker developer.
06.20: Curtis Hovey, from the Launchpad Foundations team, talks about Launchpad’s community support application, Answers.
20.15: Joey’s number of the week!
22.50: Jamu Kakar talks about Landscape, Canonical’s remote management tool for Ubuntu machines.

Send us your ideas and questions to feedback@launchpad.net!

Download ogg vorbis file

Podcast feed.

Launchpad’s new look

Published by Joey Stanford July 17, 2008 in Cool new stuff

Hey – quick update from Matthew Revell: Launchpad’s looking a bit different today! That’s because we’ve begun the roll-out of our next major version of Launchpad.

In fact, you may already have seen mention of Launchpad 2.0 in the press already, such as at The Register and Ars Technica.

There’ll be more from us next week, with a full run-down of what 2.0’s all about. Until then, I’ll hand back to Joey:

When designing the updated interface, many existing user interface bugs were taken into consideration as well as taking inspiration from some of the websites that we love to use. The interface updates are part of a larger effort to make Launchpad easier to use. The first noticeable changes deployed with our previous release, 1.2.6.

Matthew Paul Thomas, who looks after Launchpad’s UI, explained the changes:

“We realize that if you’ve been using Launchpad for a while, these changes may take a bit of getting used to. But we’re confident that the new designs will be more efficient once you’re familiar with them. We also expect they’ll be easier for people using Launchpad for the first time.

“They also pave the way for even simpler interfaces in future Launchpad releases, where you’ll be able to click on something and edit it in place.”

As Matthew said, we are working toward the ability to allow in-place editing where possible. These changes you see in Launchpad today are a step in that direction.

We will be making a few additional adjustments to the interface over the next few weeks as part of our polishing efforts.

Launchpad offline 01.00 – 03.00 UTC 17th July

Published by Tom Haddon July 16, 2008 in Notifications

We’re rolling out the code for Launchpad 1.99 on July 16th. This means we’ll have to take Launchpad offline for a couple of hours.

Launchpad goes offline: 01.00 UTC 17th July
Expected back online: 03.00 UTC 17th July.

To get email notification of future service-affecting issues, join our ultra-low traffic mailing list, launchpad-announce.

Edit: QA test failures have prevented us from deploying at the originally scheduled time. We’re working to correct these an deploy later.

Help test Launchpad’s new UI

Published by Joey Stanford July 14, 2008 in Coming changes

Hi,

As you hopefully have learned from various sources (blog posts, launchpad-users mailing list, Launchpad Announcement list, Launchpad podcast, beta testing on Staging and Edge, etc) Launchpad’s user interface has been updated based on input from our usability study conducted at UDS Boston and also existing UI bug reports. We plan to deploy these updates this week into production assuming no major issues are uncovered. With this in mind, I’m asking everyone who is willing to please help us test these changes.

If you want to play around with the new UI in our sandbox, head over to https://staging.launchpad.net. Changes here will not affect production.

If you want to use Launchpad with the new UI, head over to https://edge.launchpad.net. Changes here will affect production.

Please report all UI related bugs you find at https://launchpad.net/launchpad-project/+filebug. We will be committing UI updates daily to Staging and Edge until Wednesday and then polishing updates over the next few weeks to address any priority issues that might be uncovered.

UI changes are always rather disruptive and we thank you for your patience and understanding as we make this transition. We hope you will be pleased by the end result.

Thank you!

Joey Stanford

Launchpod episode 7: new Launchpad UI, community-agile

Published by Matthew Revell July 9, 2008 in Podcast