News from the Launchpad team
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 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:
The full details on creating and joining mailing lists in Launchpad are available in our guide.
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:
Let us know how you get on using Launchpad to distribute your project files.
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.
A few years back, I switched from Red Hat to Debian for one main reason: apt. I loved the ease with which I could install and remove software that had been packaged specifically for my operating system.
Now I use Ubuntu and I still think apt rocks. I can’t even remember the last time I thought about dependencies.
Recently, we’ve been working on a new Launchpad feature: Personal Package Archives. With PPAs, you can build Ubuntu packages and make them available to other Ubuntu users in your own apt repository. Whether you’re packaging brand new stuff or creating your own versions of existing Ubuntu packages, PPA takes care of the building and hosting.
It works like this:
sources.list.Your apt repository is hosted by Launchpad and works just like any other. For example: if you upload a newer version of one of your packages, your users will automatically get the update.
Teams can also have their own PPAs. MythBuntu is one of the teams that have started using their PPA. You can view the overview of their PPA and the archive itself is at:
http://ppa.launchpad.net/mythbuntu/ubuntu/
If you want to start building and distributing Ubuntu packages using your own PPA, the first step is to make sure you’re familiar with packaging for Ubuntu. Other than that, you simply need to join the Launchpad Beta Testers team and then follow our PPA quick-start guide.
Let us know how you get on - post a comment here and join us on the launchpad-users list.
You are currently browsing the Launchpad blog weblog archives for the Cool new stuff category.
Longer entries are truncated. Click the headline of an entry to read it in its entirety.
© 2007 Canonical Limited.