Published by Matthew Revell July 19th, 2007
in Releases.
The past four weeks have flown by in a flurry of activity here in the
Launchpad team, resulting in the most improvements of any 2007 release
so far! 1.1.7 brings bug fixes and new features right across Launchpad.
What’s new in 1.1.7?
Highlights in Launchpad 1.1.7 include:
- Larger font size: visit launchpad.net and you’ll see that we’ve increased the size of the text used on the site, making it easier to read Launchpad’s default text size.
- New remote bug tracker support: Launchpad can now track bugs in the Mantis bug tracker. (Find out more)
- Improved duplicate bug handling: if someone has already reported the bug you’ve encountered it’s now much easier to select that report rather than create a duplicate.
- Frequently Asked Questions in the Answer Tracker: answer contacts can now mark frequently asked questions and create a canonical answer that is available to anyone using the Answer Tracker. (Quick-start guide)
- Teams can now set their default language: teams can become an answer contact for a specific language.
- Branch associations: you can now see all bugs, blueprints and subscribers associated with a branch on its branch associations page.
For full details of Launchpad 1.1.7, take a look at the release notes.
I’ll also be blogging here soon in more details about the new features in 1.1.7!
Published by Matthew Revell July 13th, 2007
in Storm.
This week, our colleagues in Canonical’s Storm team announced the release of their work as an open source project.
I caught up with Gustavo Niemeyer, who leads the Storm team, and asked him to describe what Storm is about.
Gustavo: Storm is an object-relation mapper (ORM) for the Python language. In simple terms, it allows rows from a relational database to be seen as objects in an object-oriented language like Python.
Matthew: How is Storm different to other similar open source ORMs?
Gustavo: The story behind Storm is that some of the projects developed by Canonical are being built in a way that the same kind of data may be partitioned on multiple databases. We’ve tried to use existing Python ORMs in that model for some time, and even tried to collaborate with upstream projects, but the result wasn’t satisfactory, considering the timeframe available. This led to Storm being started as a prototype, and when it eventually proved to be a feasible solution for the problem, it replaced the ORM in use up to that point.
Matthew: So how can people work on Storm?
Gustavo: The first step is getting in touch with us via the mailing list or the IRC channel. There’s more information about them at the Storm website.
Published by Matthew Revell July 3rd, 2007
in Bazaar.
The release of Bazaar 0.17, a couple of weeks ago, got me thinking.
Before I joined the Launchpad team, I knew that version control was important but it wasn’t something I thought about a great deal.
In previous jobs, I’d used Subversion to manage documentation and, although I could see the benefits, it often seemed more hassle than it was worth, particularly to my colleagues.
Then I started looking more closely at Bazaar. I saw that it didn’t need a central server, so getting set-up was pain-free and I could work anywhere. It also allowed me to just get on with organising my work the way I wanted to: if I decided that, after all, I didn’t need a directory called “drafts” but instead wanted two directories called “in-progress” and “awaiting-review”, then Bazaar was happy to accommodate me.
But as a non-developer, I rarely even take Bazaar out of second gear. I’d love to hear your stories of using Bazaar. What one thing about Bazaar really makes your life easier? What five, ten, twenty things about Bazaar get you excited? Post your comments here or mail me - feedback@launchpad.net.
