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.
Launchpad Configuration Migration
Published by Joey Stanford April 18, 2008 in General
Hi,
Since the last Launchpad release you may have noticed a few emails and blog
posts referring to unexpected issues with Launchpad. I thought you might
like to know more about what was causing them, and how we are addressing them.
Launchpad’s operational environment is hosted on several machines in order to
provide adequate response times given our user load. Previously, we had to
maintain separate, and complex, configuration settings for each of the servers.
This was not very conducive to developing and deploying new features, nor
supporting the existing infrastructure. The situation was becoming
unmaintainable, and we had made careful plans to resolve these problems.
To address this limitation, we migrated the existing configuration settings
over to a standard, site-wide, hierarchical system. We’re confident that this
new configuration system will also provide us with a much more robust, stable
and maintainable operational environment. However, the rollout of this new
system has resulted in an undesirable level of shake-out due to the
complexities of the Launchpad services involved and the complexities of the
old configuration system.
On behalf of the entire Launchpad Development Team, I’d like to offer our
sincerest apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We ask you
for your continued understanding as we seek to improve the Launchpad service.
Joey Stanford
Launchpad Releases Team Manager
Mailing List Notifications have bad URLs
Published by Joey Stanford April 16, 2008 in Notifications
Hi Gang,
Just a quick heads up that we uncovered a problem today with Launchpad Mailing List notifications. You may have received a mailing list notification from Launchpad with a funny URL that looks like
https://xmlrpc.lp.internal/~rinchen/+editemails
These courtesy emails are normally sent out (with correct URLs) when a team you are a member of creates a new Launchpad Mailing List. The email is still valid despite the incorrect URL.
You should visit your Launchpad person page and view your email settings. At the bottom you will see “Mailing list subscriptions”. From here you can manage your Launchpad mailing list subscriptions.
Here’s a short cut to that page: https://launchpad.net/people/+me/+editemails
Sorry for the inconvenience. We should have this fixed by tomorrow.
Joey Stanford
Launchpad 1.2.3: mailing lists in Launchpad
Published by Matthew Revell March 28, 2008 in Releases
We’re proud to announce a much requested new feature as part of Launchpad 1.2.3: mailing lists in Launchpad!
If you run a team in Launchpad, you can request a mailing list straight away on your team’s overview page. Once the list is active, each team member will have the option to subscribe.
If you don’t yet run a team but you’d like to create a mailing list that wouldn’t be covered by an existing team, create a new team and then request a list.
There’s more in our guide.
And there’s plenty more going on in this release, including:
- Translations can now have up to six plural forms.
- Each project’s files are now available to download from its overview page.
- You can search for PPAs by name and keywords.
- We’ve revamped branch listing pages to give you quicker access to commit messages and author information.
As with all new software, there may still be some bugs in this new release. If you come across something that looks like a bug, please report it.
See the full Launchpad 1.2.3 release announcement.
Six plural forms in translations
Published by Matthew Revell in Cool new stuff
Up until this release (1.2.3), Launchpad Translations has supported only four plural forms. This works for many languages but has been a problem for Arabic, in particular, as it has six different plural forms.
I’m pleased to say that Launchpad now supports up to six plural forms in those languages that need them!
Mailing lists in Launchpad!
Published by Matthew Revell in Cool new stuff
Mailing lists are one of the main ways we communicate in the free software world. They’re crucial to the day to day work, as well as the planning and debate, of most projects.
Now, each Launchpad team can have its own mailing list hosted and managed by Launchpad. If you run a team in Launchpad, simply visit your team’s overview page to request your list. If you want to subscribe to a list, first join the team that owns it and then subscribe. Full details are in our guide.
Let’s look at some of what Launchpad brings to mailing lists:
- Simplified administration. As someone running a list, Launchpad does everything for you: you don’t need to manage a server and there’s no mailing list software for you to patch.
- Simplified subscription management. As a list subscriber, all you need are your Launchpad login details and your team memberships. Nothing more to it. Change your email address? Update it once in your Launchpad profile and it’s automatically effective for your mailing list subscriptions. To subscribe to a list, all you need is to be a member of the relevant team.
- Post from any email address. You can post to your Launchpad mailing lists from any email address registered in your Launchpad profile.
- Automatic archiving and distribution. Launchpad lists are automatically archived for history, in a format that is easily cataloged by search engines. Copies are also archived on mail-archive.com, a popular long-term list archive site.
The full details on creating and joining mailing lists in Launchpad are available in our guide.
