Archive for January, 2010

Posted on January 30, 2010 - by jono

Connecting The Opportunistic Dots

Something I have talked about extensively recently has been my passion to see opportunistic developers served well on the Linux desktop. These kinds of programmers are people who want to write small, focused, fun little applications that scratch an itch, even if that itch is to have fun. These kinds of developers are having a whale of a time filling the iPhone App Store with scratch-your-itch type of applications, and I am really keen to see more of these kinds of applications on the Linux desktop, and making Ubuntu the perfect platform to develop them on.

We have been seeing a growing movement inside the Ubuntu community in helping to make Ubuntu a rocking platform for opportunistic developers. While all the components are Open Source and can be shipped on any distribution, I am really keen for Ubuntu to really optimize and integrate around the needs of opportunistic programmers and I just wanted to highlight some of the work that has happened here.

In much the same way that Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP (LAMP) became a popular arrangement of tools for web development, we have been seeing a similar scenario in Ubuntu too, in which a set of tools work well together and are often preferred by developers. These are:

• Python – a simple, easy to learn, flexible and efficient high-level language.
• GTK – a simple, comprehensive and powerful graphical toolkit for creating applications.
• GNOME – the desktop environment that ships with Ubuntu, offering many integration facilities.
• GStreamer – a powerful but deliciously simple framework for playing back and creating audio, video and other multimedia content.
• Glade – an application for creating user interfaces quickly and easily, which can then be loaded right into your Python programs.
• DesktopCouch – a framework for saving content in a database that is fast and efficient, hooks neatly into Ubuntu One and is awesome for replication.

In Ubuntu land we love this framwork. Many of our applications are written using them and this helped make it simple for others to get involved and contribute patches and bug fixes. It has been interesting seeing many folks settle on the same set of tools.

There are of course may other tools and facilities that can augment this list, but this is a common foundation in many applications. Fortunately, all of these ship with an Ubuntu system except Glade, but you can install Glade 3 by using Applications->Ubuntu Software Center.

Many of you will have heard of Quickly which provides a devilishly simple way of generating a new application, hacking on the code, changing the GUI and saving it to bazaar. Quickly also provides some awesome features for uploading the code to Launchpad and releasing your program to others in a Personal Package Archive.

What I like about Quickly is that it automates much of repetition surrounding software development and it ultimately allows you to deploy software to a PPA which people can then download and use. Now, PPAs are a little more complicated to install right now: you need to know what a PPA is, know where to find it, and click a few things or enter some commands to switch it on. Fortunately, the rather awesome Ubuntu Software Center which everyone’s favourite Vogt…Michael Vogt…is developing, is going to be extended with functionality to better support PPAs. This, combined with the ratings and review features coming to the Ubuntu Software Center is pretty rocking. I am not sure of the specifics of how PPAs will be supported, but I believe they will first begin on visibility and then follow up with integration features later. If you want to get started with quickly take a look at this entry.

With Quickly able to get folks up and running with development, I wanted to make it easier for opportunistic developers to get their hands on code snippets and examples to learn from. As such, I created the Acire and Python Snippets projects. These projects provide a simple means in which you get access to a freely available regularly updated library of examples, across a range of different areas. With Acire you will always have a growing knowledge base of real code that you can read, run and share, and the community works together to regularly add to and support that knowledge base. The response so far has been great and you can read more about this in my previous blog post.

So, at this point we have all the tools needed to build applications, learn from code examples, and publish packages that ultimately will be visible in the Ubuntu Software Center. The one area that neither Quickly nor Acire has particularly served well is improving on how we collaborate together on software. Few Open Source projects have one sole developer, so we really want developers work well together, in conjunction with translators, documentation writers, bug triagers and more.

To do this we have the rather awesome Launchpad and Bazaar which are a doddle to use. Launchpad provides everything you need to work together on a software project and I have become a bit of a Launchpad fan as I have got used to using it. In my earlier days I tried Sourceforge, Trac and other systems, but Launchpad is rocking it for me.

While I love Launchpad and Bazaar, their integration in Ubuntu could have been better. As an example, to get code in and out of Launchpad so you can contribute to a project, you use the bzr command and the process typically works like this:

• You download some code from the Launchpad project with bzr.
• You branch the code: this effectively means making a duplicate directory of the code.
• In that duplicate directory you add a feature, fix a bug or make some other kind of improvement.
• You then commit your changes to your local branch: this effectively tells Bazaar of the changes you have made.
• You then upload your branch to Launchpad (this is called pushing a branch).
• The final step is to propose a merge. This is when you offer your branch and it’s changes to the project maintainer to merge into the main codebase. Launchpad ties together nicely with bzr to handle this process and has a web front end for doing code review.

Now, understanding how all this works and doing it a few times takes a little getting used to, and much of it is learning how to use the different bzr commands and how they hook in with Launchpad. Well, very recently my friend and yours Martin ‘doctormo’ Owens has released his Ground Control project which provides a graphical interface to the whole process by building it into the file manager in Ubuntu. I cannot tell you how bloody cool this is. It works a little like this:

• You create a Projects directory in your home directory.
• Click Places->Home Folder and go to the new Projects folder.
• In there you can see a button to login to Launchpad. Click the button, enter your username and password. Job done.
• You now see a a button where you can select a project to work on. Click on it, enter a project name, select it and it creates a new folder.
• Now go into the folder and there is a button to download the code. Click it, select a branch and the code is downloaded.
• You can now hack on your feature and a button will appear to commit your changes.
• Finally, you will then see a button to propose a merge. You enter some text to describe your change, and it is uploaded.

No commands. None. What I love about Ground Control is that it is highly contextual: it is built into the file manager and it only ever shows you a button for what you can do at that time. It is simple, quick and Martin has done a wonderful job with it. Go and see a video demo of Martin showing Ground Control here.

Ground Control is still very very new so expect bugs, but do give it a go, report bugs, and importantly, he is looking for help to make sure it has full translations support. If you have done this before, drop him a line. The Ground Control Launchpad project is here.

With each of these components we are seeing more and more gaps in the integration and ease of the development process getting filled. I am hugely excited about this and I am excited about it bringing more and more people to Ubuntu as a development platform and it ultimately generating more and more Free Software for us all to use. We still have a long road ahead though and plenty of good work yet to do. If you think there is a gap you can fill, come and help us rock it.

Posted on January 28, 2010 - by jono

Passing On The Lernid Torch

This week has been a big week for Lernid in which it has received some comprehensive testing, feedback and exposure because of the always awesome Ubuntu Developer Week. It has been fantastic to see Ubuntu Developer Week session leaders using slides and the features in Lernid to get the most out of their sessions. Lernid is in great shape with a solid 0.5 release and a tonne of bug fixes already ready for 0.6 as well some new features.

I wrote Lernid because I just wanted to JFDI a solution to something that I thought could squeeze a huge amount of extra value out of online learning events. I am proud of where the project stands now, but I think now is the time to move stewardship of the project over to hands with more time and oversight to keep up to date with a growing Lernid development community. With this in mind I am proud to announce that the new leader of the Lernid project is Michael Budde.

Michael has taken a phenomenal amount of initiative with Lernid and has been keeping on top of the many merge requests and bugs while I have been busy cavorting around the Internet with work. I had a call with Michael today to talk through the transition, and you good folks can expect Lernid to bring in a session leader mode, easier question asking features and other awesome features. I am excited to see where Michael takes the project. I am also excited to see how other distributions and projects use Lernid now that it supports user-specified server configurations.

So, folks, please join me in welcoming Michael as the new Lernid Leader and a continued healthy future for our new e-learning tool!

Posted on January 26, 2010 - by jono

Application Indicator Online Tutorial Today

Recently I have been talking about how stoked I am that we are solving the problems in the notification area with Application Indicators based on this spec from the KDE team. We are now shipping this functionality in Lucid with Rhythmbox, Nautilus, Empathy, XChat-GNOME, Lernid and other applications using it.

Application developers are pretty excited about the technology, and as such we have scheduled a tutorial session about how to make use of the application indicator framework as part of the awesome Ubuntu Developer Week. The session is today, the 26th Jan at 7pm UTC / 11am PST / 2pm EST lead by the always awesome Ted Gould. More info on joining the session is here or you can use Lernid to join really easily.

Posted on January 25, 2010 - by jono

Ubuntu Developer Week Begins and New Lernid Release To Enjoy It With

This week the always awesome Ubuntu Developer Week starts! I am hugely excited about this week, and I can’t wait to see the many fantastic sessions that will be taking place. Connecting to Ubuntu Developer Week has never been easier, with Lernid.

Just in time for Ubuntu Developer Week I have rolled out a new release of Lernid; a simple tool for connecting to our learning events. The new release fixes a bunch of bugs, makes the IRC Chatroom view a native widget (instead of the crusty web view), modularizes Lernid, adds a terminal for making playing with Linux commands simple, adds application indicator support on Lucid and fixes some daylight savings time issues. Thanks to the many contributions to this release from the Lernid team.

Quick screenie:

With a new release of Lernid out and an awesome week of Ubuntu developer learning events ahead, I wanted to explain how you can get all this goodness up and running. It is a doddle…

Step 1: Install Lernid

Installing Lernid is a piece of cake. There are packages available for Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala and Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx.

Alan Bell did a wonderful screencast showing how to install Lernid. You can see it by clicking here. Please note the screencast shows an older version (0.4) but the steps should be the same for the new Lernid 0.5 release.

Just click Applications->Accessories->Terminal and enter:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lernid-devs/lernid-releases
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install lernid

You can now load Lernid from Applications->Internet.

Step 2: Join Ubuntu Developer Week

Joining Ubuntu Developer Week is also deliciously simple:

1. First load Lernid by clicking Applications->Internet->Lernid.
2. When Lernid starts, select Ubuntu Developer Week and enter a nickname and click Connect.

You can then click on Schedule to see the list of events happening and the times (in your local timezone). The sessions will happen in the Classroom pane and you can discuss the session in the Chatroom pane.

NOTE: We have heard of a bug when clicking Edit->Preferences causing Lernid to crash. Right now the workaround is don’t click on preferences.

There we go! Having a rocking week and I look forward to many of you getting your first taste of Lernid.

Posted on January 15, 2010 - by jono

Amber Graner Is The New Leader Of Ubuntu Women

Just a quick note to offer my congratulations to the always affable Amber Graner for her appointment as leader of the Ubuntu Women project. All of the candidates (Melissa Draper, Penelope Stowe and Amber) did a wonderful job in articulating their vision for the project and engaging in the leadership process that we fleshed out at UDS.

I think Amber is a perfect fit for the role and I am excited about the future of the project. Thanks also to Elizabeth for keeping us up to date on the leadership process.

Posted on January 14, 2010 - by jono

Application Indicators Rocking The House

Something we have been spending some time working on in this cycle has been fixing the mess that is the system tray. This is based upon an awesome specification submitted to Freedesktop by KDE. The spec has been implemented by KDE, we have written an implementation for the GNOME panel and it will ship in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Alpha 2. We have also started adding application indicator support to many of the applications we ship in Ubuntu, and of course these patches are going upstream as they are written. I would to encourage GNOMErs to join the discussion on the XDG list regarding the spec.

I think the Application Indicator framework rocks. It solves a problem that has niggled me for years: with it system tray applets now have a consistent UI in terms of spacing, a unified left click to access the menu (no more confusing different left/right menus in different apps), you can scrub between icons, KDE applications render their application indicator menus in GNOME as GTK menus and vice versa and the whole shebang is a lot more accessible.

The Application Indicator team have produced C, Mono and Python bindings and documented it all on this wiki page. I wanted to have a play with it with Python so I knocked together a simple little script that demos how it works:

#!/usr/bin/env python
#
# [SNIPPET_NAME: Create an Application Indicator]
# [SNIPPET_CATEGORIES: Application Indicator]
# [SNIPPET_DESCRIPTION: How to create an application indicator and add items to it]
# [SNIPPET_AUTHOR: Jono Bacon <jono@ubuntu.com>]
# [SNIPPET_LICENSE: GPL]

import pygtk
pygtk.require('2.0')
import gtk
import appindicator

class AppIndicatorExample:
    def __init__(self):
        self.ind = appindicator.Indicator ("example-simple-client", "indicator-messages", appindicator.CATEGORY_APPLICATION_STATUS)
        self.ind.set_status (appindicator.STATUS_ACTIVE)
        self.ind.set_attention_icon ("indicator-messages-new")
        self.ind.set_icon("distributor-logo")

        # create a menu
        self.menu = gtk.Menu()

        # create items for the menu - labels, checkboxes, radio buttons and images are supported:

        item = gtk.MenuItem("Regular Menu Item")
        self.menu.append(item)

        check = gtk.CheckMenuItem("Check Menu Item")
        self.menu.append(check)

        radio = gtk.RadioMenuItem(None, "Radio Menu Item")
        self.menu.append(radio)

        image = gtk.ImageMenuItem(gtk.STOCK_QUIT)
        image.connect("activate", self.quit)
        self.menu.append(image)

        self.menu.show()

        self.ind.set_menu(self.menu)

    def quit(self, widget, data=None):
        gtk.main_quit()


def main():
    gtk.main()
    return 0

if __name__ == "__main__":
    indicator = AppIndicatorExample()
    main()

To make this as helpful as possible for people I have added it to python-snippets which you can of course enjoy using my little Acire tool that I blogged about recently. If you want to give it a go, I recommend you use it with another app that uses Application Indicators, and then you can play with scrubbing between icons and using the arrows on your keyboard to move around. It is pretty awesome.

To continue playing with it I thought I would have a go at writing an application indicator plugin for the always awesome Getting Things GNOME. I only had time spend an hour or so on it last night, but my work in progress is available in this branch. Most of it is complete, but what I am missing from the framework is a signal when a user clicks on the indicator icon: I need this to re-generate the dynamic list of tasks in that menu. I spoke to Ted Gould about it and he said this is likely to be added in the future. When it is ready I will propose it to upstream GTG for inclusion.

Posted on January 13, 2010 - by jono

Two GNOME Contractors Required

We are currently looking for two paid home-based contractor positions in Europe or the USA to come and work at Canonical to write some upstream code to help GNOME applications fit into the full Ubuntu desktop experience. This is an awesome opportunity for talented GNOME developers and a a great way to dip your feet into the Ubuntu development team. The roles involve these elements:

Responsibilities

• Create patches for GNOME Desktop applications to provide complete integration with the Ubuntu desktop experience
• Work with upstreams on planning and creating packages
• Work with upstreams to get patches integrated upstream
• Fix integration related bugs and other bugs

Skills

• Ability to hack in C and Python
• Experience with bzr, git, and other concurrent versioning systems
• Experience with launchpad and bugzilla bug tracking
• Social skills needed to interact with upstreams and Ubuntu teams
• Ability to set work schedule and systematically report on status

If you are interested, we are looking to fill these roles ASAP, so email me at jono AT ubuntu DOT com ASAP and I will forward you on to the right people.

Posted on January 13, 2010 - by jono

Various Shot Of Jaq Tidbits

Shot Of Jaq is a ten minute, twice-weekly technology and Open Source podcast that is specifically designed to be the start of the conversation. We have taken care to build an environment optimized around conversation and discussion, and the Shot Of Jaq community is growing at a rate of knots. I just wanted to provide a few updates on the show.

If you want to check it out, here are the last three shows:

• Has Skype Won The War?
• Nexus Is Born
• Jaqback, Issue 2

Shows come out every Tuesday and Friday, with Jaqback shows (special community shows where read out your emails) coming out about once a month on a Wednesday.

Remember, each shot is just the beginning of the conversation, so do join in to the discussion. I look forward to seeing you there.

Shot Of Jaq Fan Goal

For the last half week we have been running a campaign to get our Shot Of Jaq Facebook Fan Page filled up to 1000 fans by Thursday. We are at 921 right now, so we are looking to you good people to get us up there. A great first step to help here is to join as a fan and then click the Suggest to friends link on the page and pass it on to your friends. The more fans, the more conversation, and the more fun for everyone involved.

Another great way of helping is to pop a badge on your website. Doing this is dead simple. First go to this Facebook page and you should see this:

Select Shot Of Jaq from the Select a Page drop down box and the second box will have code you can take to plonk on your website.

Don’t forget to join the Shot Of Jaq Facebook Fan Page here!

Shot Of Jaq Scratchpad Launched

The whole point of Shot Of Jaq is to build a conversation and collaboration driven community around the show. As we re-iterate in every shot, we are the start of the conversation: ten minutes of short, sharp and fun discussion that we hope leads to continued conversation on www.shotofjaq.org.

Since the show started, some community members have been looking to have a place in which they can work together on projects in and around Shot Of Jaq and we have not had such a resource available. We didn’t want to just throw up a wiki, disconnected and disjointed from the main Shot Of Jaq website…we wanted to re-think it. We now have a solution: the Shot Of Jaq Scratchpad.

The scratchpad works a little like this:

• You can go to the scratchpad and without having to register or login, type in a name for your page into a box and a page will be created for you.
• There, you and other Shot Of Jaq fans can work together to share information, collaborate an otherwise be fun community people. There are plenty of options for adding markup, tables, images and lots more to make your page as rocking as possible.
• Discussion about your project and page is integrated in a special way: when you create the page it will also generate a hashtag (e.g. #soj_h) which you can use on Twitter and identi.ca. All messages on Twitter and identi.ca containing the hashtag will appear in the sidebar on your scratchpad page. Sweet, eh.

The Shot Of Jaq Scratchpad provides a simple way in which you can create content, work together and projects and discuss said content and projects on Twitter and identi.ca and have it all integrated together, right here on www.shotofjaq.org, and none of it require frustrating user accounts, sign-ups and more.

So, with our new feature ready to roll, what kind of content and projects can you use it for? Here are just a few ideas:

• Spreading The Word – we are really keen to help share each shot far and wide. We want people to join us in the conversation, but we need you folks to help spread the word. A page on how to publicise each shot would be awesome, with tips and tricks for our community members to use.
• Transcriptions – for our deaf Shot Of Jaq fans, it would be fantastic to have transcriptions, and fortunately because shots are so short, they are not too much work.
• Outreach Project – we have talked in the Shot Of Jaq Chat Channel about coming up with some stunts and ideas to spread awareness of the show – the scratchpad is a great place to scheme about this kind of thing!
• Resources – want to create Shot Of Jaq website buttons, banners and other material? Add them to the scratchpad!
• Your ideas go here…!

So ladies and gents, rock out with your pad out.

Posted on January 12, 2010 - by jono

Call For Help: Convert Quickly Snippets To Python Snippets

As I have blogged about recently, I have been really getting into the idea of enabling opportunistic developers to get to grips with writing applications for the Open Source desktop as easily as possible. This has including raving about the awesome Quickly and I recently wrote Acire, a simple program for viewing a library of Python Snippets that can be used to read, learn from, run and help lower the barrier for making your own programs rock and roll.

Back at UDS there was an awesome snippets party which resulted in many examples on this wiki page, but it is just a webpage and of course you can’t see them in Acire, you can’t run them and you can’t play with them right away. I started moving some of them over to the Python Snippets library but I need your help! This is as simple as putting together some example programs, adding some information at the top in the comments and submitting them for review.

If we can get these (and other!) snippets included, it will be another awesome resource to enable our awesome developer community to make fantastic apps that make our desktop rock that little bit more.

Interested? Intrigued? Want to help make the goodness happen? Well, read on…

Creating Snippets

Before you create your snippets, I recommend you install the nice and fresh Acire 0.2.

Here is how you go about creating the snippets.

Step 1: Grab the library

Just run:

bzr branch lp:python-snippets

Step 2: Create your snippet

A snippet should demonstrate a specific feature in a given module or in the Python language. This could include showing how to use a specific widget, a feature of that widget, or another function. The list of snippets in the Quickly Snippets page is ideal for porting over to snippets!

python-snippets is divided into sub-directories which outlines the theme of the snippets. You should pick the most appropriate directory to put your snippet it, and add it there. If a suitable directory does not exist already, create it and add it there.

Step 3: Add metadata

The way Acire pulls out the snippets is by detecting some specific metadata additions to comments at the top of the file You should now add the following meta data as comments to the top of the file:

# [SNIPPET_NAME: A Short Name For The Snippet]
# [SNIPPET_CATEGORIES: Category]  <-- see CATEGORIES file for existing categories
# [SNIPPET_DESCRIPTION: A single line description of the snippet]
# [SNIPPET_AUTHOR: Your Name <your@emailaddress.com>]
# [SNIPPET_LICENSE: An Open Source license (from the LICENSES file)]

Here is an example:

# [SNIPPET_NAME: Playing a Pipeline]
# [SNIPPET_CATEGORIES: GStreamer]
# [SNIPPET_DESCRIPTION: Construct and play a pipeline]
# [SNIPPET_AUTHOR: Jono Bacon <jono@ubuntu.com>]
# [SNIPPET_LICENSE: GPL]

You now need to add your file to your branch with:

bzr add your-snippet.py

Step 4: Propose it for merging

With your new snippet ready, it is time to propose it for inclusion in the main python-snippets library.

First, commit your changes to your local branch with:

bzr commit

Now push it to your own branch on Launchpad:

bzr push lp:~<your launchpad username>/python-snippets/<name of your branch>

As an example:

bzr push lp:~jonobacon/python-snippets/gstreamer-snippets

Now go to https://code.launchpad.net/python-snippets and you should see your branch listed there. Click on it and when the branch page information page loads click on the Propose for merging link. Add a short description of what you examples do in the Initial Comment box and then click the Propose Merge button.

We will then review the merge and if it looks good, add it to python-snippets and it will be delivered to Acire users in the next daily package upload.

I really appreciate any time you can spend in contributing snippets!

Posted on January 12, 2010 - by jono

Acire 0.2 Released

I am pleased to announce the second release of my little project to browse, read, run and learn from a library of Python examples. This release brings us:

• Examples now have syntax highlighting and use a better font for reading code.
• An awesome new icon designed by the ever-affable Martin Owens.
• Various bug fixes.

You can grab it from the Acire PPA by running these simple commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:acire-team/acire-releases
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install acire

For Acire to be in any way useful you will need to grab the Python Snippets library. Subscribe to the PPA and get a fresh batch of Python Snippets daily! Subscribe by just running these commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:python-snippets-drivers/python-snippets-daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python-snippets

Rock and roll!

UPDATE: It turns out we had a few dependencies missing. You can fix this with:

sudo apt-get install python-gtksourceview python-gnomeprint

We will get the packaged fixed soon, but this will get you up and running. Thanks for the feedback, folks!