[12:59] <dholbach> Hello everybody and welcome to another MOTU Q&A session
[13:00] <dholbach> who do we have here for the session today? :)
[13:00]  * Iulian waves
[13:00] <dholbach> hi Iulian - how are you doing? :)
[13:01] <man-di> dholbach: hello
[13:01] <Iulian> I am good, thanks :-)
[13:01] <dholbach> hey man-di
[13:01] <dholbach> great
[13:01] <dholbach> so did anybody bring a few questions for today? :)
[13:02] <Iulian> Uhmm, I don't have any, not yet.
[13:02] <dholbach> anything you've been working on? anything you wondered?
[13:04] <dholbach> hi allee_
[13:04] <dholbach> allee_: here for the MOTU Q&A session too? :)
[13:04] <Iulian> No, not really, I've been working with the bugsquad in the past few months.
[13:04] <man-di> dholbach: I would have some questions, but all are probably out of the scope of this session
[13:04] <dholbach> Iulian: sounds good :)
[13:04] <dholbach> man-di: you can try :)
[13:05] <Iulian> I'm thinking to start working with the MOTU too but I still have a lot to learn.
[13:05] <allee_> dholbach: no directly.  reconnect after forced disconnect by telecom
[13:05] <dholbach> allee_: ahhh, I see
[13:05] <man-di> dholbach: I dont wanna crash this session with this, its more about working together of Ubuntu and Debian on Q&A
[13:05] <allee_> dholbach: but as I'm here, I can stay for a while and ponder about Q&A :)
[13:06] <dholbach> Iulian: I think the best way is to start with some bitesize bug you're interested and see where it takes you - there's always somebody in #ubuntu-motu who can help you out if you get stuck
[13:06] <dholbach> man-di: is there anything particular you wonder or do you have any idea what could improve?
[13:08] <dholbach> man-di: did you get in touch with heno or liw about it already?
[13:09] <Iulian> dholbach: Yeah, that too but now I am looking to start packaging from source but I can't find an easy one.
[13:10] <dholbach> Iulian: I personally liked it better to start work on an existing package and learn more and more by working on existing packages
[13:11] <dholbach> also the thing is: we're past Feature Freeze and can't accept NEW packages (only with special exception) right now
[13:11] <Iulian> Yes, indeed but I thought that if I make a new package I will learn more.
[13:12] <Iulian> And someone from MOTU channel can help with.
[13:13] <allee_> Iulian: what helped me a lot was reading/following commit msgs of debian/* changes.
[13:13] <dholbach> Iulian: in the end it's your call :-)
[13:13] <Iulian> allee_: That too.
[13:14] <Iulian> dholbach: Yes but I will take your advice and start working with the bitesize bugs first.
[13:14] <dholbach> just try it and see where it takes you :)
[13:15] <man-di> dholbach: nope, not yet. I more and more wonder how many people seem to work on Java packages in Ubuntu, doing one fix and then never appear again
[13:15] <man-di> dholbach: for many packages its important to understand how the package works and that cant be learnt at one first look, doing a fix and gone
[13:16] <man-di> this often leads to wrong fixes
[13:16] <dholbach> man-di: maybe it needs more team structures to better keep track of what happens - also to try to bind people more to the matter
[13:16]  * txwikinger apologises for being late
[13:16] <dholbach> man-di: I absolutely agree
[13:16] <man-di> dholbach: I have given up on this personally
[13:16] <man-di> dholbach: I'm not able to keep people in a team it seems
[13:16] <dholbach> man-di: why if I may ask?
[13:17] <man-di> dholbach: people too often get other interest
[13:17] <man-di> like non-java packages
[13:17] <dholbach> man-di: sure, you can't prevent that from happening
[13:17] <dholbach> I just found that a team with set goals works much better than a bunch of people fixing a bug here and another one there
[13:17] <man-di> and java is not that popular among maintainers anyway
[13:17] <dholbach> and java is important enough for that
[13:18] <man-di> dholbach: problem is get the right people that can do the needed work probably
[13:18] <dholbach> of course that requires leaders who takes matters in their own hands and set up structures in the beginning
[13:19] <man-di> dholbach: we better stop here for now, otherwise we kill your session
[13:19] <dholbach> man-di: do you think there are people from upstream communities who are interested enough to see their stuff in a good shape in a distribution?
[13:19] <dholbach> man-di: I think it's educational and interesting to everybody in here - not sure if there are any other questions right now? are there?
[13:20] <Iulian> I don't have any questions, go ahead.
[13:20] <man-di> moist upstreams are not interested in distros. they say: we have bundled all needed third party software, just unpack that zip file
[13:21] <dholbach> *nod* that's particularly problematic in the java world
[13:21]  * dholbach has seen this already
[13:21] <allee_> man-di: about java, isn't there an active debian-java group?
[13:21] <dholbach> I know that people have an interest in Java, packaging new applications and so on - of course there are less people up for "getting the infrastructure" right
[13:21] <man-di> and most maintainers dont like Java....users like java but most of them dont want to take the hurdle to do bug fixing or whatever is needed
[13:22] <man-di> allee_: well some people are active but about 50% or more is done by me
[13:22]  * dholbach hugs man-di for his good work :)
[13:22]  * allee_ too
[13:22] <man-di> dholbach: I have to say I'm a bit bothered by this
[13:23] <dholbach> man-di: I can imagine
[13:23] <man-di> so my idea is to get people from Ubuntu and Debian together to get more work done
[13:23] <man-di> perhaps this works out somehow
[13:23] <dholbach> man-di: I can't promise you it will work, but why don't you and I, doko and jcastro sit together and think about energizing such a team?
[13:24] <dholbach> I'm happy to help brainstorming there
[13:24]  * txwikinger hugs dholbach for all his good work
[13:24] <man-di> two small groups combined make a bigger group
[13:24] <dholbach> absolutely
[13:24]  * dholbach hugs txwikinger back - thanks :)
[13:24] <man-di> dholbach: I'm all for it
[13:24] <dholbach> rock and roll :)
[13:25] <dholbach> are there good java "example packages"?
[13:25] <dholbach> or a java team TODO list?
[13:25] <man-di> dholbach: for libraries, yes: for apps: not really
[13:25] <txwikinger> or bytesize problems
[13:25] <txwikinger> I think bytesize problems are very good for new people trying if they like to do it
[13:25] <man-di> dholbach: my current TODO is: http://pkg-java.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/qareport.cgi
[13:26] <man-di> dholbach: this checks SVN, debian BTS and archive
[13:26] <dholbach> man-di: good work
[13:26] <man-di> dholbach: stolen from debian pkg-perl group
[13:26] <man-di> *g*
[13:26] <dholbach> :-)
[13:27] <dholbach> man-di: if you find the time, do you think you could add some "reference packages" to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PackagingGuide/Lists/ReferencePackages ?
[13:27] <dholbach> man-di: I don't know much about java, but I was asked a couple of times "how do I do java packaging" - just listing a few "good ones" would be a good start already
[13:28] <man-di> dholbach: not yet, still at work...
[13:28] <dholbach> OK
[13:29] <dholbach> man-di: do you know if there are a lot of Ubuntu Java related bugs?
[13:29] <dholbach> sorry I meant bug reports
[13:30] <man-di> I do a private daily multidistrotools run
[13:30] <man-di> there are currentl about 30 bugs in java packages that are maintained by pkg-java in debian
[13:31] <man-di> not all java packages are maintained by pkg-java in Debian
[13:31] <dholbach> right, my question was rather: are there a lot of java bugs reported in Launchpad?
[13:31] <man-di> some of them probably already fixed
[13:32] <man-di> I meant the bugs reported in Launchpad against packages pkg-java maintains in Debian
[13:32] <dholbach> ahhh ok
[13:32] <dholbach> gotcha
[13:32] <man-di> in Debian BTS we have some reports more
[13:32] <dholbach> were they of good quality?
[13:32] <man-di> some are, some not
[13:33] <man-di> sometimes I miss bugs because they are in launchpad and I never saw them
[13:33] <dholbach> I found that people who filed good bug reports sometimes could be dragged into helping out fixing them
[13:33] <dholbach> *nod*
[13:33] <man-di> so a first big help would be to always forward launchpad bugs to debian bts
[13:33] <dholbach> some of them to upstream to?
[13:33] <dholbach> too?
[13:33] <man-di> yes
[13:34] <man-di> tracking upstream bugs is another issue
[13:34] <man-di> when maintaining a lot of packages you cant follow all upstream mailing lists/bug trackers
[13:34] <dholbach> sounds like a bullet points on a good todo list :)
[13:34] <dholbach> of course not
[13:34] <man-di> so some bugs might be fixed upstream already
[13:35] <man-di> dholbach: yes
[13:35] <man-di> there are many tasks beginners could do
[13:35] <dholbach> in Launchpad you can add an upstream task to the bug report (and keep it empty) to indicate: this needs forwarding upstream
[13:35] <dholbach> absolutely
[13:35] <man-di> like creating watch files or so
[13:35] <dholbach> I think a wiki page indicating which tasks are suitable for whom might be a good start
[13:35] <dholbach> and maybe a kick-off event (like a IRC meeting) to get interested people into it
[13:36] <txwikinger> dholbach: for Kubuntu wie have agreed for three new tags
[13:36] <dholbach> txwikinger: which are those?
[13:36] <txwikinger> needs-upstream, upstream, needs-upstream-sync
[13:36] <man-di> dholbach: your ubuntu week idea was very good, if would have had time...
[13:36] <txwikinger> first needs someone to forward the bug to upstream
[13:36] <txwikinger> second means there is a pending upstream bug
[13:36] <txwikinger> and the last the bug is fixed upstream
[13:37] <txwikinger> maybe we should make that a wider policy
[13:37] <man-di> txwikinger: in debian we have something similar with tags and some automatic tool which can track upstream bugzillas and so on
[13:37] <man-di> txwikinger: so tags get automatically set when upstream fixed a bug
[13:38] <dholbach> txwikinger: I can just tell you how the I did this when I worked together with seb128: for 1) we opened an upstream task (you can query LP for a list of those), 2) we didn't have a separate tag for that, 3) marked bugs as 'fix committed' once they were fixed upstream, so we could close them with the next upload
[13:38] <man-di> of course the forwarding task is manual
[13:38] <txwikinger> the tracking is already done by LP
[13:38] <txwikinger> what the tags help is to make lists of those bugs easily
[13:39] <dholbach> txwikinger: you can query those 'states' in LP too (without tags)
[13:40] <dholbach> that's what I tried to say
[13:40] <dholbach> best to ping kiko about it
[13:40] <txwikinger> well.. not the first
[13:40] <txwikinger> or you mean you just create an empty upstream one?
[13:40] <dholbach> yes
[13:40] <txwikinger> ah
[13:41] <dholbach> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bugs?advanced=1 - "Show bugs that need to be forwarded to an upstream bug tracker"
[13:41] <txwikinger> I will look inot this
[13:41] <dholbach> if there's anything missing that you need, kiko's your man
[13:41] <dholbach> ROCK
[13:42] <dholbach> man-di: I'll try to set up a mail with ideas I have and mail it out to you and others I think are interested
[13:43] <man-di> dholbach: cool, thanks for your help
[13:43] <dholbach> will likely be sometime next week
[13:43] <man-di> dholbach: take your time
[13:43] <dholbach> there are millions of java developers out there - there MUST be people who can help us out :)
[13:44] <dholbach> and millions of java developers who'd appreciate a great-working java world in Ubuntu and Debian
[13:44] <man-di> dholbach: the more I work with Java developers the more I think bad about them...
[13:44] <txwikinger> cool dholbach
[13:44] <man-di> dholbach: and I'm one of them...
[13:44] <txwikinger> depressingly I found work for myself again :)
[13:44] <dholbach> txwikinger: there's always work to do :)))
[13:44] <txwikinger> I know :)
[13:45] <dholbach> do we have any other questions? :)
[13:46] <txwikinger> Are there any urgent things to do for hardy?
[13:46] <dholbach> one of my pet peeves are unmet dependencies
[13:46] <dholbach> there are just too many of them
[13:46] <dholbach> apt-cache -i unmet    might give you an idea
[13:46] <txwikinger> ok.. I will resync and look into it
[13:47] <dholbach> but there are millions of other things to work on
[13:47] <dholbach> another pet peeve of mine are all the bugs that have patches attached but nobody had the time to check them out yet
[13:47] <txwikinger> sorry I fear I can't help out there :)
[13:47] <dholbach> or all the bugs that are fixed upstream or in a different distro (easily checkable in LP) and the fix hasn't been incorporated
[13:47] <dholbach> (I linked them from http://wiki.ubuntu.com/5-A-Day)
[13:48] <dholbach> a lot of them are really low-hanging fruit
[13:48] <txwikinger> ok.. I have a look there too
[13:48] <dholbach> especially with hardy being an LTS, we should try to get as many of those "nearly fixed bugs" fixed for good
[13:48] <txwikinger> true
[13:51] <dholbach> if that's all the questions we have right now, I'll tend after my dog and go for a walk outside
[13:51] <dholbach> the weather is gorgeous
[13:51] <txwikinger> have fun :)
[13:51] <man-di> dholbach: have fun
[13:51] <dholbach> ok... have a great day everybody, weekend too
[13:52] <txwikinger> thanks dholbach
[13:52] <dholbach> and thanks for showing up and your great questions
[13:52] <dholbach> see you around
[18:33] <crevette> Ksalut
[23:47] <Lokian> Oh a smaller room, yay!
[23:48] <Lokian> Anyone home?
[23:48] <Megaqwerty> Lokian: indeed.
[23:49] <Lokian> Oh wait, is this a help channel?
[23:49] <Megaqwerty> nope
[23:49] <Lokian> The wiki entry seems to suggest it's not, per say
[23:49] <Megaqwerty> #ubuntu
[23:49] <Lokian> dammit x_x
[23:49] <ompaul> no it really is not a help channel
[23:49] <Lokian> And there are over 9000 people in there =/
[23:49] <ompaul> it is an educational channel more so
[23:50] <ompaul> Lokian, wrong
[23:50] <ompaul> less than 1300
[23:50] <Lokian> O RLY?
[23:50] <Lokian> well bye anyhow
[23:50]  * ompaul scratches his head