Ghost Bugs

Please consider the following hypothetical situation. gnome-screensaver keeps crashing for people on Jaunty, which is pretty annoying, so it sends lots of people to Launchpad to report a bug.

It's pretty quickly established by the amazing desktop team triagers that it's actually a problem in Gtk+, so they duly reassign …

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Fixing an Ubuntu bug with Bazaar

Yesterday as part of Ubuntu Developer Week I gave a session entitled "Bazaar for Packaging". At the last minute I decided to change the session somewhat, so that it would show how things would work if you were to use bzr to modify an Ubuntu package once Distributed Development is …

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ppamadison

After an idea from bigon on #launchpad today I threw together a tool using the Launchpad API. I've christened this tool ppamadison. It does the same thing as rmadison, but for PPAs. You tell it who's PPA to examine, and what source package to get the information for, and it …

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A small plea

I have a small request to make. When writing a changelog entry please remember you are writing it for other people to read as well. Please document why you are doing something in enough detail that I can work it out later on.

A changelog is not just for describing …

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Bazaar branches of Ubuntu

This morning I announced the availability of bzr branches for every source package in Ubuntu.

This is exciting, and I hope the first step in revolutionising the way we develop Ubuntu. I believe it will lead to an increase in efficiency, and give us interesting new ways to collaborate.

There's …

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REVU

Quality of packages not in Debian

While Ubuntu takes most of its packages from Debian, it does contain a few that are not in Debian, for one reason or another. One common reason is simply that someone wanted a package that wasn't in Debian, and packaged it and requested its …

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Some advantages of having packages in Bazaar

After some discussions in the last week or so I decided to finally get around to something that I have been promising for ages: making a screencast about what is good about having packages in bzr. It's basically just me rambling for almost 20 minutes, so don't expect anything slick …

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Making Intrepid Solid

Making Intrepid Solid

With feature freeze now in effect the bulk of the big changes in Intrepid should now be done. There will still be new features entering the archive with the appropriate exceptions, but the rate will slow as we move forward.

Now we really need to focus on …

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I love a bad book

Last night I finished reading "Exit A" by Anthony Swofford. I had decided a while ago that I didn't like it, but it wasn't so bad that I had to put it down, so I stuck with it to the end. It wasn't a bad book, it was just poor …

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Ups and Downs

I was thrilled this morning to finally come up with what I hope is a fix for a bug in ConsoleKit that has been plauging a lot of users, judging by the number of subscribers and duplicates on the Ubuntu bug

I was happy to get upload fixes for various …

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Help needed

The server team asked me to write a blog post to ask for help removing the use of "multiuser" as an argument to update-rc.d. This used to be the way that we sped up the shutdown time a little, but we've changed the approach now.

This is great, as …

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Does it just work?

I recently attended Lugradio Live in Wolverhampton. During the live recording of the show they were discussing how things have changed since the started the show. Aq was saying that things are less interesting nowadays, as everything just works. I disagree that it's less interesting, not spending time compiling drivers …

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MOTU School sessions for Ubuntu Developer Week wanted

Next month we have another Ubuntu Developer Week. It's still in the planning stage, and there will be a proper announcement later, so if you are interested in attending wait for that.

This post is for those who are in a position to give sessions. I want to get several …

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Tempted by a stage dive

Hello Planet Ubuntu.

This feels like I've just made it on stage with my favourite band.

Today I was accepted as an Ubuntu member through the Universe Contributors group. Thanks to all those that helped me achieve this. There's been a load of other people join this group recently. Hopefully …

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bzr-upload

On Friday bzr-upload was officialy announced. In the blog announcement Martin tells the story of how this plugin was born. I'm proud to say "I was there!". I was sat at the table with them that evening as they discussed what was wanted, and what was possible. This was just …

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Gutenberg's Revolution

I love Stephen Fry, everything he does is great, but also seems to come with a touch of quality as well. His documentaries are probably a lesser known part of his work, but they are equally fantastic; the two-part documentary on manic depression was particularly notable.

Last night a watched …

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A long anticipated release

Now that one important release is out the way it's time to look forward to another one. This has been long anticipated, and will probably decide whether they go on to great new heights, or are just remembered for their previous contributions, but aren't considered relevant any more.

No, I'm …

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Jerk Pork Burger with Green Apple Slaw

Thanks to richb I found this recipe for "Jerk Pork Burgers with Green Apple Slaw", and they are fantastic. The Slaw is particularly good, I'd really recommend you try it, even if it does sound a little weird.

Unfortunately, it appears as though "The Bell", a pub just round the …

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Revision numbers

Revision numbers vs. revision ids

One thing that Bazaar does a little different to the other distributed systems is to give every revision a revision number. Some people don't like this as the revision numbers are global, that means that the revision number of a revision in my branch does …

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