Nose to the Grind

(Original Post)

From now until release it’s fix fix fix on the Unity team, all day every day.

Dylan McCall’s landed his first code contribution to Unity, though he is no stranger to contributing to Ubuntu, most people know him as the person who maintains the installer slideshow. His contribution is a series of fixes so the summation is “he made the maximized behavior between windows and the top menu bar suck less”. Here’s the commit log for the curious. “I am a student from Vancouver and I write too much. I’m amazed how software can create such vivid relationships with people and I’m excited about Ubuntu and the rest of the free software world using that power for good.”

We have 4 new people jockeying to be the next  new contributor to land code:

Bilal Akhtar, Ian Liu, Nico van der Walt, Friik, and Tom Jaeger all have pending branches, but as it would seem, code review can be a cruel mistress and some of the contributions remain in limbo and need to be fixed up. Great job working through the code, keep at it! The veterans this week stepped up to the plate. Andrea Azzarone landed fixes for bug 734018 and Marco Biscaro’s fixed it so your Launcher icons reload after you change the icon theme.

Other Unity Updates

  • Lot of bug fixes and enhancement:
    • Drag and drop from the dash
    • Better applications matching with kde apps
    • Software Center integration
    • Better “search” title in places
    • Some default keybindings and compiz refinement

For next week: release tomorrow or Thursday. Bug fixes mainly (with some rewrite) and multimonitor better support. New compiz upload today with an ABI break We need a multitouch FFe: https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/737601

Default session for a11y will be taken from beta’s unity state.

  • Tons of compiz fixes (more coming this week) (This should fix the big crasher people saw over the weekend)
  • Jason’s landed multitouch for Unity, so you can 4 finger swipe to open the Launcher, etc.

How to Get Involved

1. Get the Code

Follow the Step by Step Instructions and Wiki Page. This will get the code from Launchpad, set up your development environment, and getting you used to the Launchpad workflow.

2. Pick a bug

This week we want to focus on these bugs, pick one:

  • Bug 737538 – (NEW!) Alt+F2 xkill does nothing
  • Bug 728949 –  Bottom icon on launcher tilts when it maybe shouldn’t if icons fill launcher nearly exactly
  • Bug 718889 – Launcher does not hide/unhide on Expo
  • Bug 734133 – Transparency of Panel doesn’t fit to transparency of the Launcher.
  • Bug 727920 – Drag and drop auto-scroll should not fold the launcher at the end of the scroll range.
  • Bug 730273 – Search cursor in Unity’s Dash, File Places and Application Places search field should blink on focus
  • Bug 740178 – (NEW!) Update the INSTALL file (this one is soooooo easy)
Here’s the full list if you want to find more, feel free to just grab one, assign it to yourself, mark it in progress and get started. I’ll be picking a new selection for each blog post each week, but the list is always changing, so you can always just dive into the list and snag one.

3. Fix your bug and then get your code into Unity

Don’t worry we won’t leave you hanging, you can get a-hold of a Unity developer through many different ways:

  • #ayatana on freenode IRC during European and American workdays. Or you can post to the mailing list if you have a question.
  • We also have weekly IRC Q+A for any developer who wants to dive in and ask a Unity developer. 7pm-8pm UTC (That’s 2pm EST) every Friday!

Remember you can read all of Jorge’s previous Bitesize Bug Reports™ by following the Bitesize tag.