Offline 01.00 – 03.00 UTC 29th May 2008
Published by Matthew Revell May 28, 2008 in Notifications
Launchpad will be offline for two hours from 01.00 UTC on 29th May 2008, while we roll out Launchpad 1.2.5.
Offline: 01.00 UTC
Expected back: 03.00 UTC
Subscribe to this blog to find out what’s new in 1.2.5.
Launchpod on last.fm
Published by Matthew Revell May 23, 2008 in General
Launchpod’s now up on the fantastic last.fm.
Help us look like we’re the cool kids in town by listening to Launchpod in a player that supports scrobbling 🙂
Take a look at the Launchpad team artist page.
Launchpod episode 2: UDS Prague
Published by Matthew Revell May 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 and Elliot Murphy.
Theme: Obscurity by Barry Warsaw.
- 01.20: Interview with Graham Binns, of the Launchpad Bug Tracker team, who is in Prague for the Ubuntu Developer Summit. Graham talks about working with the Ubuntu QA team to improve their experience of Launchpad.
- 08.45: Interview with Jono Lange, of the the Launchad-Bazaar integration team, also in Prague. He talks about what’s coming up in Launchpad for managing Ubuntu packages as Bazaar branches.
- 14.04: Best practice for registering a project in Launchpad.
- 15.35: Hosting branches on Launchpad without associating them with a particular project. Help page on +junk branches.
Send us your ideas and questions to feedback@launchpad.net!
Launchpod episode 1: RescueTime
Published by Matthew Revell May 19, 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.
- 02.30: The winner of the Launchpad logo contest!
- 07.38: Interview with Tony Wright, CEO of RescueTime, whose service helps you keep track of how you spend your time. The community around RescueTime’s Linux client uses Launchpad. Tony tells us about RescueTime and their Launchpad experience.
- 21.00: Your questions for the Launchpad team! Send questions for the next episode to feedback@launchpad.net.
- 33.16: Joey’s Number of the Week!
Send us your ideas and questions to feedback@launchpad.net! Thanks to gschaefr for suggesting the name Launchpod!
Launchpad Logo Contest Winner Announced
Published by Joey Stanford May 16, 2008 in General
We’re very pleased to announce the results of the Launchpad Logo Contest!
(See https://help.launchpad.net/logo)
The number and quality of submissions took all of us by surprise. We are
immensely pleased with the results and are in awe at what the community
has done. We had so many interesting designs that it was very difficult for
us to declare a single winner.
However, there was one design that we felt embodied what Launchpad is all
about. We were impressed by how it summarised so much about Launchpad and
yet remained beautifully simple.
So, we’re delighted to say that the winner is Eugene Tretyak!
You can view his design here: https://help.launchpad.net/logo/winning-entry
The center of the design represents how Launchpad makes it easy for
people to collaborate and connect with one another, while the surrounding
facets represent the different services that Launchpad provides.
Above all, it shows that all projects are themselves a gem and, when
combined with other gems, can turn into something brilliant.
Eugene is both an Ubuntu member and Kubuntu developer and will receive
an official Ubuntu Messenger Bag.
There are also two runners-up whose designs made the selection process very
challenging for us. Mariana Ravicole and Ambroise Coutand will each receive
a 25 GBP gift certificate to the Canonical Store in recognition of their
highly competitive and very popular designs.
Additionally, we would also like to give an honourable mention to Donn
Ingle for his contributions. Donn’s varied designs were a popular
favourite.
Finally, the Launchpad Team would like to thank everyone who participated
in the contest. We are humbled by the response and are deeply thankful to
all the participants.
Joey Stanford
Your questions for the Launchpad podcast
Published by Matthew Revell May 8, 2008 in General
Over the next couple of weeks we’re going to record a brand new Launchpad podcast.
In it we’ll talk to projects about how they’re using Launchpad and also to members of the Launchpad team.
Perhaps the most important part will be questions from you. Whatever you want to know about Launchpad, ask us on the podcast help wiki page.
Also, if you’ve got a suggestion for a name for the podcast or a Creative Commons licensed theme tune, send it over to feedback@launchpad.net! Best suggestion gets a hearty handshake.
Offline 21.00 – 23.00 UTC 10th May 2008
Published by Matthew Revell in Notifications
We’re taking Launchpad offline for a couple of hours this Saturday (UTC) to upgrade our main database server to Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (also known as Hardy Heron).
Going offline: 21.00 UTC
Expected back: 23.00 UTC
If you want to see Launchpad service notifications, such as this, in your feed reader please subscribe to our notifications feed.
We’re sorry for the down time this database upgrade will cause.
Launchpad 1.2.4 released!
Published by Matthew Revell May 1, 2008 in Releases
The Launchpad team is proud to announce the release of Launchpad 1.2.4 on 1st May 2008!
New features this month include:
- the ability to build PPA packages for multiple series and copy packages from one PPA to another
- a new design for project code overview pages
- an easier way for casual contributors to post to mailing lists.
Read on for more about what’s new and how it affects you.
Copying PPA packages
Building on other people’s work and publishing packages for different Ubuntu releases are now easier. You can copy packages both:
- from other PPAs directly into any PPA you can upload to
- and to different distro-series within the same PPA.
For an example, take a look at the Ubuntu Mobile team’s PPA
package copy page.
There’s more in the PPA quick-start guide.
New project code overview page
Project code overview pages have an improved page layout. Tim Penhey, who created the design, explains the changes:
Usually, people want to know a couple of things from a project’s code page: how active it is and which are the important branches.
You can now see, at a glance, how many commits, branches and code contributors a project has. And there’s a new branch listing that highlights which branches are associated with a series.
Take a look at the Bazaar project’s code overview page for an example.
Contributing to mailing lists without subscribing
If you need to make a one-off post to a mailing list you may not want to subscribe. Now you can make a post and Launchpad will hold it for the list’s admins to moderate.
See the mailing list user guide for more.
Other changes this month
- Project bug contacts are now called bug supervisors. More about the change.
- Watches on bugs in Gforge and Savane based trackers are now supported.
- You can now subscribe to all the bugs affecting a project group, project series or distribution series. More about bug subscriptions.
- A distro’s PPA overview page now shows you recent uploads, most active archives and supported series.
For full details of the bug fixes and features that make up this release, take a look at the 1.2.4 milestone page.
Help us test Launchpad
If you want to help us test new features, we’d love to have you in our beta team.
Find out more about our beta programme.
Stay in touch!
Thanks for helping us make Launchpad a success! If you come across any bugs, please report them.
If you want to get in touch for any other reason, please do.
There’ll be more in Launchpad 1.2.5 at the end of this month.
Offline 00.00 – 02.00 1st May
Published by Matthew Revell April 28, 2008 in Notifications
We’re releasing Launchpad 1.2.4 in the early hours of 1st May 2008. To roll out the new code, we need to take Launchpad offline.
Going offline: 00.00 UTC 1st May 2008.
Coming back: 02.00 UTC 1st May 2008.
We’re sorry if you want to use Launchpad at that time.
Meet the bug supervisor
Published by Matthew Revell April 25, 2008 in Bug Tracking
If you’re involved in a project that uses Launchpad’s bug tracker, you’ll know that one of the most important roles is the bug contact.
Next week, when we release Launchpad 1.2.4, we’re changing the name of project and distribution bug contact to bug supervisor. The role stays the same but we think the new name better reflects what it has become.
This does not apply to package bug contacts who will be renamed to bug subscriber, as their role is quite different to bug supervisor for distros and projects
Bug contacts and bug mail
Originally, the main part of being a bug contact was dealing with bug notifications. Whoever was in the bug contact role – whether a team or individual – would receive email about new bugs and changes to existing bugs for their project, package or distribution.
Since our February release, bug mail is open to everyone. If you want to get email notifications about a particular project, package or distro’s bug activity, all you have to do is subscribe. Similarly, bug contacts can unsubscribe from those bug notifications.
So, the name “bug contact” no longer seems appropriate.
So, what is a bug supervisor?
Bug contacts – or bug supervisors after April 30th – are automatically subscribed to the relevant bug notifications. In addition, they can:
- target bugs to milestones
- set the importance of a bug
- set certain bug statuses.
The change is already in place on our Edge environment. Take a look at Launchpad’s bugs overview page on Edge to see it in place.
