Launchpad offline 00.00 – 02.00 UTC 1st July
Published by Matthew Revell June 30, 2008 in Notifications
We’re rolling out the code for Launchpad 1.2.6 in the early hours of July 1st. This means we’ll have to take Launchpad offline for a couple of hours.
Launchpad goes offline: 00.00 UTC 1st July
Expected back online: 02.00 UTC 1st July.
To get email notification of future service-affecting issues, join our new ultra-low traffic mailing list, launchpad-announce.
Launchpod episode 5: GnomeDo and Launchpad sysadmins
Published by Matthew Revell June 25, 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 and Elliot Murphy.
Theme: Obscurity by Barry Warsaw.
- 04.25: The Launchpad Operational Sys Admins – Tom Haddon and Herb McNew – talk about their work keeping Launchpad online.
- 09.10: Joey’s numbers of the week – this time it’s Translations!
- 11.08: Elliot interviews GnomeDo project leader David Siegel.
- 18.20: It’s goodbye from us! Including some listener feedback.
Send us your ideas and questions to feedback@launchpad.net!
Launchpad service interruptions 17th, 18th and 19th June
Published by Matthew Revell June 12, 2008 in Notifications
On June 17th, Launchpad will be unavailable for five hours from 22.00 UTC. Following that, there will be service interruptions on June 18th and 19th.
Downtime details
- June 17th 22.00 UTC – 03.00 UTC: all of Launchpad will be offline.
- June 18th 22.00 UTC – 00.00 UTC: code browse and pushing and pulling to code branches hosted on Launchpad will be unavailable.
- June 19th 22.00 UTC – 03.00 UTC: uploading to, building and publishing in package archives – both distribution archives and PPAs – will be unavailable.
Why this is happening
We’re upgrading the servers that host Launchpad to use the latest version of Ubuntu, 8.04 LTS (also known as Hardy Heron). This will give us an improved platform on which to develop new Launchpad services. Specifically, we’ll get Python 2.5 and PostgreSQL 8.3, along with updates to several libraries that Launchpad relies on.
We’re sorry for the down-time and service interruptions that these upgrades will cause.
If you have any questions, please post them to the launchpad-users.
Please note: we have a new ultra-low traffic list for Launchpad service announcements. Subscribe to launchpad-announce.
Launchpod episode 4: BeeSeek open source search engine
Published by Matthew Revell June 9, 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 and Elliot Murphy.
Theme: Obscurity by Barry Warsaw.
- 01.35: Matthew interviews Andrea Colangelo, Community Manager of the BeeSeek open source search engine project.
- 20.47: Joey previews his OSCON talk about Launchpad.
- 22.25: Joey talks about the QA opening in the Launchpad team.
- 27.09: Elliot talks about Twisted’s umbrella Launchpad project for community code.
- 28.10: Joey replies to Philip Newborough’s comments about Launchpod.
- 30.08: Joey’s numbers of the week! This time it’s all about the bug tracker.
Send us your ideas and questions to feedback@launchpad.net!
Review branch merge proposals in Launchpad
Published by Matthew Revell May 30, 2008 in Cool new stuff
For some time now, you’ve been able to use Launchpad to propose that a branch of code should be merged with another. This is great if you’ve uploaded a branch that includes a new feature or bug fix and you want to bring it to the attention of the trunk branch’s maintainer.
However, actually discussing the merits of the merger had to take place elsewhere, such as by email or even using a bug tracker to record the conversation.
We’ve now brought that discussion right into Launchpad. Anyone logged into Launchpad can comment and vote on proposed mergers. Take a look at one of the first comments.
There’s more about this new feature in our latest podcast.
Launchpod episode 3: new Launchpad release and Terminator
Published by Matthew Revell 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 and Elliot Murphy.
Theme: Obscurity by Barry Warsaw.
- 01.33: Interview with Aaron Bentley, of the Launchpad Bazaar integration team, talking about Launchpad’s new code merger proposal review system.
- 07.05: Interview with Danilo Segan, of the the Launchpad Translations team, talking about the new translations search feature.
- 10.21: Interview with Chris Jones, leader of the Terminator terminal project..
- 16.18: Joey’s number of the week! How many projects are registered in Launchpad?
Send us your ideas and questions to feedback@launchpad.net!
Launchpad 1.2.5: code merger reviews and translations search
Published by Matthew Revell in Releases
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!
Translations searching
Published by Matthew Revell May 29, 2008 in Cool new stuff, Translations
If you translate using Launchpad, you’ll almost certainly be delighted to read that you can now search for translations!
Take a look at the English (UK) translations for WordPress. There are two search boxes. One at the very top-right of the page: that’s Launchpad’s new site-wide search. Below that, still on the right, is the translation search box.
Using the translations search box, you can search for a word or phrase as it appears in either the original English template or the language you’re currently viewing.
I had a chat with Jeroen Vermuelen, leader of the Launchpad Translations team, to ask about the work that has gone into the feature. He told me:
“This is something that people have wanted for a long time and the new translations search is the result of work we’ve been doing for the past year. We could have done it sooner but we wanted to do it right.
“When you’re searching as much data as we have in Launchpad Translations – around 16 million strings – you have to take the right approach to ensure results are accurate and timely.
“So, this is just what the doctor ordered for translators who are managing a particular translation and want to be able to tweak a specific message quickly.”
Package diffs
Published by Matthew Revell in Cool new stuff
You can now view diffs for source packages in boths PPAs and Ubuntu’s primary archive.
Celso Providelo, the Launchpad developer who’s been working on this, told me a bit more about it:
“This is a really easy way for anyone to see what changes have been made in a package. Rather than having to download a source package and then manually run a diff, diffs are available directly from Launchpad.
“So, if you want to double-check a source package’s changelog, this is a great way to do it. Whether it’s in a PPA or the primary Ubuntu archive, it allows anyone to check for mistakes. Another really cool thing is that if somebody uploads a package to their PPA and it is derived from something already in Ubuntu, Launchpad provides a diff between the published Ubuntu package and the version in the PPA.
“Ppackage diffs are available for packages uploaded since 01.30 UTC on 29th May.”
Global search
Published by Matthew Revell in Cool new stuff
No matter how good a website’s interface, when you’re dealing with as much data as there is in Launchpad, search can be the simplest way to get what you need.
Thanks to work by my colleagues Francis Lacoste, Curtis Hovey and Maris Fogels, you can now search through all of Launchpad from a single search box.
This new site-wide search goes into people profiles, code branch information, bug reports, questions, blueprints, project information and more.
Try it: you’ll find the search box at the top right of most Launchpad pages and on its own dedicated page too.
It works just as you’d expect: wrap words in quotes to search for an exact phrase, discount a word by placing a minus sign in front of it, and so on.
Let us know how you get on.
Update: Search links now fixed.
