Published by Matthew Revell March 28th, 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.
Published by Matthew Revell March 28th, 2008
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!
Published by Matthew Revell March 28th, 2008
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.
Published by Matthew Revell March 28th, 2008
in Cool new stuff.
After all the work that’s gone into a release, you want to get your software out to users.
One way is to use Launchpad to make your release files available for download. Now, Launchpad makes it even easier for users to get the files from your latest release, by listing them on your project’s overview page.
Let’s take a look at the Bazaar project, as an example:
Here you can see files from Bazaar’s recent 1.3 release.
To distribute your project’s files through Launchpad, first you need to register a series and then register a release on the series overview page.
Once you’re on the release page, in Launchpad, there’s a link to upload files.
There are a few things to bear in mind when uploading files. They should be:
- code release tarball
- installer files
- README or other documentation
- changelog file
- release notes
- no more than 60MB per file.
Let us know how you get on using Launchpad to distribute your project files.
Published by Matthew Revell March 28th, 2008
in Cool new stuff.
We’ve given branch listing pages a major overhaul, giving you more information about each commit.
In particular, the start of the commit message is quoted in the Last commit column, with the full thing available when you hover your mouse over it. If the author’s email address is registered in Launchpad, their name is hyperlinked to their Launchpad profile page.
Take a look at the Bazaar branch list page for an example.
Published by Matthew Revell March 27th, 2008
in Notifications.
We’re releasing Launchpad 1.2.3 in the early hours, UTC, of the 28th March 2008.
Offline from: 00.00 UTC
Expected back: 02.00 UTC
Published by kiko March 22nd, 2008
in General.
Glyph posted an interesting script to the launchpad-users mailing list that I thought was definitely worth sharing:
Quite often, I’ve discovered that I want to add someone (who already has an account on launchpad) to my system so they can log in and attach to my ’screen’ session; however, I will inevitably screw up typing in the finger information, setting permissions on their .ssh directory, assigning them a bogus password, etc. Here’s a simple Python script that will add a user to your system with the same username as on Launchpad, and with their SSH keys already set up so they can log in, but no system password.
You can download the script from http://people.ubuntu.com/~kiko/launchpadduser.py.
It requires adduser, wget and python. You’re expected to run this as root, so the usual warnings apply, but it’s simple enough for you to audit on your own. And there is no error handling! A usage example:
root@beetle:~# python launchpadduser.py kiko
Adding user `kiko' ...
Adding new user `kiko' (1012) with group `users' ...
Creating home directory `/home/kiko' ...
Copying files from `/etc/skel' ...
--09:43:36-- https://launchpad.net/~kiko/+sshkeys
=> `/home/kiko/.ssh/authorized_keys'
Resolving launchpad.net... 91.189.90.211
Connecting to launchpad.net|91.189.90.211|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 Ok
Length: 860 [text/plain]
100%[=============================================>] 860 --.--K/s
09:43:38 (9.49 MB/s) - `/home/kiko/.ssh/authorized_keys' saved [860/860]
And presto:
kiko@anthem:~$ ssh beetle
Linux beetle 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Tue Feb 12 07:42:25 UTC 2008 i686
kiko@beetle:~$
Published by Matthew Revell March 17th, 2008
in General.
This past few weeks, we’ve had a whole load of high quality entries to our logo competition. We’re heading fast towards the 31st March deadline, so if you want to take part you’d best fire up Inkscape pretty sharpish!
Back in January I shared a couple of the entries we’d had at that time. As a bit of inspiration, in case your arty side is twitching, here are some of the proposed logos we’ve had since.
Donn Ingle’s sixth entry to the competition introduces a touch of the natural world:
Siim Sindonen’s stylised blue rockets show the community support between projects, people and teams in Launchpad:
Thorsten Wilms offers this shiny green rocket:
And Marco Tessarotto’s entry puts me in mind of Marvin the Martian but I’m not sure why:
See all the entries on our submissions page!
Published by Matthew Revell March 6th, 2008
in Bazaar and Podcast.
Here on the Launchpad team we work pretty closely with the Bazaar community.
This week, Canonical’s London HQ has been host to a Bazaar sprint. It’s been great to meet up with members of the Bazaar community from Australia, the USA, Argentina, France, the Netherlands, Hungary and the UK. I’ve been working with them on plans for a new Bazaar administrator’s guide.
I’ve also recorded a short chat with Martin Albisetti who is leading the new Bazaar IDE integration team. Martin talks about the technical and advocacy approaches they plan to take.
Listen to the interview with Martin.
