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Ubuntu 12.04 Development Update

Only seven weeks until release. If you are excited, you’re not the only one. We still have two weeks until Beta 2 Freeze and three weeks until Beta 2 Release and if you have a look at the release list of the Beta 2 milestone, you can see that a huge number of bugs for this milestone are already resolved.

Afterwards the documentation, the kernel, the translations and everything else will be frozen, but for bug fixes there is still some time. The bug list for the release milestone looks fairly promising too.

This is shaping up to be one of the best releases ever.

Letting developers speak for themselves

This week we found these interesting nuggets by Ubuntu developers for you:

• Mathieu Poirier, a developer at Linaro, showcases Linaro and Ubuntu work on a ST-Ericcson ST 8500 Snowball board at MWC.
• Martin Pool shows a nice way to test kernel packages.
• Victor Tuson Palau explains how hardware support is improved in Ubuntu.
• Kees Cook seems to have fixed an important bug. :-)
• It seems there is a bug fixing competition going on in the Desktop Team. Martin Pitt and Sébastien Bacher seem to have a lot of fun.
• Clint Byrum has a look at what the Server team has been working on from the 10.04 to 12.04 (LTS to LTS).

Fix-It Friday
Today is another Fix-It Friday, where Ubuntu developers will help you get started with Ubuntu development. Read more below.


Things which need to get done

If you want to get involved in packaging and bug fixing, there’s still a lot of bugs that need to get fixed:

• There are Merges which need to be done (main, restricted, universe,multiverse).
• Also the Ubuntu Mozilla team is looking for help, so if you’re excited about Mozilla and what’s happening there, join IRC, talk to the guys on #ubuntu-mozillateam on irc.freenode.net.
• And then there are Security bugs you can take a look at, the team is a friendly bunch and they’re incredibly helpful in getting your patch reviewed.
• There are bitesize bugs.

• Also did John Lea from the Ubuntu Design team talk to us and mentioned that there are bugs up for grabs, where the design has been decided on and the implementation might need YOUR help. If you want to help improve Ubuntu’s UI, have a look at these!

First timers!

A number of people contributed to Ubuntu in terms of development last week, here are new heroes who got their first upload into Ubuntu: Barneedhar who brought a package in sync between Ubuntu and Debian again, Julien Yann Dutheil who updated a bunch of C++ bioinformatics libraries, Benji York who added some functionality to LXC, Nathan Williams who fixed bugs in inkscape and ubuntu-mono and Jan Simon who fixed a problem in ibus. Thanks a lot everyone. You rock!

We have two developers applying for upload rights: Adam Gandelman is applyingfor MOTU and Server upload rights and Marcin Juszkiewicz for MOTU upload rights. Good luck to the two of you!

Spotlight: Joining the release rush

Two weeks ago we announced our first Fix-It Fridays. We are obviously interested in bug fixes all the time, but we wanted to create an environment where new contributors can join in and we would focus on answering questions and fixing bugs together. Thus Fix-It Fridays were born. It was great to see how many folks jumped in to help out. Still we had the feeling that some were still a bit intimidated or didn’t feel comfortable to ask their questions. That’s why we started a number ofpublic Google+ hangouts where everyone could just join in and we hang out together a bit and resolve issues they found while getting involved. These hangouts were super interesting and we had (among some small microphone hiccups) a lot of fun. We will continue in this tradition for a while. Follow the @ubuntudev account on twitter.com, facebook.com, identi.ca or gplus.to to find out the next dates.

Tomorrow is another great opportunity to join the release rush. By now it’s fairly safe to upgrade to 12.04 (precise) and play around with the system for developing Ubuntu. All you need to do is:

1. Read the first few chapters of the Ubuntu Development Guide.
2. Join us on #ubuntu-motu on irc.freenode.net or join one of our ubuntu-dev hangouts.

For tomorrow we will have a number of easy tasks put together, so you can jump right in and help out. If you get stuck or are confused, please let us know and we’ll help you out.

Find something to work on

Pick a bitesize bug. These are the bugs we think should be easy to fix. Another option is to help out in one of our initiatives.

• Help out with fixing packages which don’t build anymore.
• Help out with security bugs.

In addition to that there are loads more opportunities over at Harvest.

Getting in touch

There are many different ways to contact Ubuntu developers and get your questions answered.

• Be interactive and reach us immediately: talk to us in #ubuntu-motu on irc.freenode.net.
• Follow mailing lists and get involved in the discussions: ubuntu-devel-announce (announce only, low traffic), ubuntu-devel (high-level discussions),ubuntu-devel-discuss (fairly general developer discussions).
• Stay up to date and follow the ubuntudev account on Facebook, Google+,Identi.ca or Twitter.