Martin Albisetti's blog » 2008

Loggerhead 1.10 released!

beuno — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 21:50:00 +0000

The 1.10 release is mostly a bug fix release. There has been some effort to improve performance, we've updated the code to work with bzr 1.10, URLs are now much more user-friendly and permanent and breadcrumbs have been added to make navigation easier.

As part of the release, I have also uploaded packages to the bzr PPA: https://launchpad.net/~bzr/+archive
My intention is to keep doing that in releases from now on

It has also been rolled out to Launchpad, so you will see nicer URLs like: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~loggerhead-team/loggerhead/trunk/annotate/head:/serve-branches
Quick changelog:

- Fixed some performance issues (Robert Collins, James Westby, Martin Albisetti)
- Update loggerhead to work with bzr 1.10 and the latest bzr-search (Robert Collins)
- Add startup deamon script for Linux (Marius Kruger)
- Switch navigation from file_ids to paths. Fixes bugs #260363, #269365 and #128926. (Martin Albisetti)
- Fix bug #258710 ("the /files page explodes in an empty branch"). Also minor improvements to the /files and /changes pages. (Marius Kruger)
- Added --port, --host and --prefix options to serve-branches script. (Martin Albisetti)
- Fixed broken template for project browsing with start-loggerhead (Martin Albisetti)
- Added --reload options to restart the application when a python file change. (Guillermo Gonzalez)
- Added error handling middleware. (Guillermo Gonzalez)
- Fix bug #243415 ("Tracebacks go to console but not log file"). Also minor improvements to logging in serve-branches and start-loggerhead. (Guillermo Gonzalez)

Serverbeach now offering Ubuntu Servers

beuno — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:01:53 +0000

I've been using Serverbeach for a few years now, so I was quite excited when I saw they're now offering Ubuntu Server on their dedicated servers!

Now, if only they'd get cpanel working on Debian-based servers...

Launchpad and stacked branches

beuno — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 12:06:46 +0000

For those of you who heavily use Launchpad for code hosting, Jonathan Lange has a very good post about an optimization that has been rolled out in Launchpad a while ago. Check it out.

Do you use bazaar? Let us know!

beuno — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 23:32:40 +0000

I bumped into the Who uses bzr page today again, and I'm impressed on how fast it grows, just a few examples:

- APT
- Drupal
- iPython
- GNU Mailman
- MySQL

Are you using it? Add yourself to the wiki!

Gmail now has themes!

beuno — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:17:18 +0000

I suddenly opened up gmail, and saw a new theme.
It turns out, you can now choose from over 30 themes!
Screenshot of my spam:

Theme options:

Usabilty report on Empathy and Pidgin

beuno — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 01:06:56 +0000

I just realized that Matthew Paul Thomas' blog isn't on the planet, so for the people who aren't yet subscribed to his blog, he's been doing a lot of usability work on Ubuntu, and did a very interesting evaluation on Empathy's and Pidgin's usability, helping the desktop team decide with all the facts on the table, whether it Empathy is mature enough to be the default choice in Ubuntu (he concluded that Empathy just wasn't there yet).
What's even more interesting, is the fact the he reported bugs based on his findings, to both projects, to help improve free software in general.

Personally, I look forward to seeing more of his insightful evaluations, and I'm thrilled to see usability getting more and more attention in open source!

Jaunty Jackalope

beuno — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:20:19 +0000

Fresh off the ubuntu-devel mailing list, Mark Shuttleworth has announced the code name for the next Ubuntu release, "Jaunty Jackalope".
The highlights for that release, to me, are:
- Start pushing the user experience to a higher level, to match and exceed what Apple is providing today
- Cut down on boot and resume time
- Blur the line between the desktop and the web
- Move all Ubuntu packages to bazaar
- Enhance the way developers currently participate

Exciting times!

Streaming at DebConf

beuno — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:12:24 +0000

The awesome Video Team at DebConf have set up, like every year, streaming video and audio for the talks and BoFs, so if you're work allows it, you may want to watch some of the talks: http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf8/Streams

In about an hour (13hs UTC), Mark Shuttleworth is giving a talk on Debian and Ubuntu collaboration, which I'm sure is worth watching.

If you miss any of the talks, a few weeks after the event is over, the videos are provided for download, so keep an eye out for them if you missed any talks you wanted to watch.

bzr-upload, now with automatic transmission!

beuno — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 18:30:10 +0000

A few days ago, James Westby worked on a branch of bzr-upload, that added the upload-on-commit feature to bzr-upload. It's now part of trunk!

This means that now you can use the --auto switch, and from now on, your commits will automagically get uploaded.

To start uploading automatically:
bzr upload --auto

To stop:
bzr upload --no-auto

In other news, bzr-upload is now packaged and waiting in the Debian NEW queue to be uploaded, thanks to Jelmer Vernooij's packaging, and Marcela Tiznado's sponsoring.

Working at Canonical

beuno — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 20:44:20 +0000

So, some of you already know, and some of you, including myself, will be a bit surprised.
Starting Monday, I'm going to start working full time for Canonical.
I've been active in the Ubuntu community since very close to the beginning, then jumped to working on Bazaar and surrounding projects, which, btw, has one of the greatest community ever. So, working for Canonical is like going to Disneyland
I've been doing some contracting work on my free time (mostly for Loggerhead, which turned out great, and some UI in Launchpad), and things just got more exciting every day, until at some point things just started speeding up, and I got offered to work full time a few weeks ago. Having sorted out the remaining details yesterday, Monday is officially my first day.
I'm going to stop working actively as a lead developer at my company, have found some very qualified people to take over the work I've been doing, and I'm going to fully focus on making user interfaces mind-blowingly good.
I'll also get to continue working on Loggerhead as part of my job, so expect to see the improvements to keep on landing regularly.

I'm really excited to start working full time with the smartest people in the world, doing a job that has the word revolution in it's description!

Update: see what happened 5 months later