Ubuntu Server papercuts project overview
 

Hello everyone,

At UDS Lucid in Dallas, we had a session on how to take the opportunity
of the LTS release to concentrate on fixing highly-annoying, low-hanging
fruit bugs. This effort was named "Server papercuts", as a tribute to
the famous "One hundred papercuts" project from the Desktop experience team.

The idea is to spend time during this less-featureful development cycle
to fix server usability issues that make Ubuntu Server less
sysadmin-friendly. The first part of this work involves identifying such
issues, and for that we need the help of the Ubuntu Server user
community, which experiences those issues every day. Server papercuts
are also a great way to start being involved in bug fixing and
development, since they should all be relatively easy-to-fix bugs.

The idea is presented in more detail at:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerPapercutsSpec

The detailed process will be discussed during our team meetings in
January (on Wednesdays at 1400 UTC on Freenode's #ubuntu-meetings IRC
channel), so that we can start the effort early in February. The agenda
is as follows:

Jan 13: Project announcement, discussion of the nomination mechanism
Jan 20: Discuss acceptance criteria, project publicity plan
Jan 27: Define measurable goals

For the nomination mechanism, there are two options. One is to use a
separate project in Launchpad (like for the "One hundred papercuts"
project), the other is to use a set of tags.

LP project approach:
* Nominate by marking Also affects project
* Accept by marking bug Confirmed for the project
* Reject by marking bug Invalid for the project
* Find bugs by looking at project bugs
* Fix-release in both Ubuntu and project

LP tag approach:
* Nominate by tagging server-papercut-proposed
* Accept by tagging server-papercut
* Reject by marking server-papercut-refused
* Find bugs by searching for tags
* Fix-release in Ubuntu

We'd like to hear from you ! Please join us if you're interested, or
reply to this thread if you unfortunately can't join us this time !

--
Thierry Carrez
Ubuntu server team

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Ubuntu Server papercuts project overview
 

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Hash: SHA1

Unless I am missing some feature of launchpad, I think the project option
may be better. There is a simple URL to remember as well as the ability
to join the project team. When/If one joins, it will show up on a user's
home page for gurther easy access. I just now had some trouble attempting
to find the tags on a reported bug, for they are not obviously places in
the reports.

I do not see anywhere (like I said, I may be missing out on a feature) the
ability to "subscribe" to tags.

My two cents, not as a developer, but one who wishes to assist in bug
triage/resolution.

On Mon, 11 Jan 2010, Thierry Carrez wrote:

> Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 10:43:50 +0100
> From: Thierry Carrez <thierry.carrez@ubuntu.com>
> To: Ubuntu Server Team <ubuntu-server@lists.ubuntu.com>
> Subject: Ubuntu Server papercuts project overview
>
> Hello everyone,
>
> At UDS Lucid in Dallas, we had a session on how to take the opportunity
> of the LTS release to concentrate on fixing highly-annoying, low-hanging
> fruit bugs. This effort was named "Server papercuts", as a tribute to
> the famous "One hundred papercuts" project from the Desktop experience team.
>
> The idea is to spend time during this less-featureful development cycle
> to fix server usability issues that make Ubuntu Server less
> sysadmin-friendly. The first part of this work involves identifying such
> issues, and for that we need the help of the Ubuntu Server user
> community, which experiences those issues every day. Server papercuts
> are also a great way to start being involved in bug fixing and
> development, since they should all be relatively easy-to-fix bugs.
>
> The idea is presented in more detail at:
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerPapercutsSpec
>
> The detailed process will be discussed during our team meetings in
> January (on Wednesdays at 1400 UTC on Freenode's #ubuntu-meetings IRC
> channel), so that we can start the effort early in February. The agenda
> is as follows:
>
> Jan 13: Project announcement, discussion of the nomination mechanism
> Jan 20: Discuss acceptance criteria, project publicity plan
> Jan 27: Define measurable goals
>
> For the nomination mechanism, there are two options. One is to use a
> separate project in Launchpad (like for the "One hundred papercuts"
> project), the other is to use a set of tags.
>
> LP project approach:
> * Nominate by marking Also affects project
> * Accept by marking bug Confirmed for the project
> * Reject by marking bug Invalid for the project
> * Find bugs by looking at project bugs
> * Fix-release in both Ubuntu and project
>
> LP tag approach:
> * Nominate by tagging server-papercut-proposed
> * Accept by tagging server-papercut
> * Reject by marking server-papercut-refused
> * Find bugs by searching for tags
> * Fix-release in Ubuntu
>
> We'd like to hear from you ! Please join us if you're interested, or
> reply to this thread if you unfortunately can't join us this time !
>
> --
> Thierry Carrez
> Ubuntu server team
>
> --
> ubuntu-server mailing list
> ubuntu-server@lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server
> More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam
>

- ---Robert Freeman-Day
- ---------------
I would really like you to be on my side,
but the side you show me isn't what I had in mind.

- -Judybats
GPG Public Key:
http:keyserver.ubuntu.com:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xBA9DF9ED3E4C7D36

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Ubuntu Server papercuts project overview
 

Robert Freeman-Day wrote:
> Unless I am missing some feature of launchpad, I think the project
> option may be better. There is a simple URL to remember as well as the
> ability to join the project team. When/If one joins, it will show up on
> a user's home page for gurther easy access. I just now had some trouble
> attempting to find the tags on a reported bug, for they are not
> obviously places in the reports.
>
> I do not see anywhere (like I said, I may be missing out on a feature)
> the ability to "subscribe" to tags.

Thanks very much for your feedback, and based on it (and others) we
decided during the meeting to follow the project route.

Project is at: https://launchpad.net/server-papercuts
Bug supervisor team is: https://launchpad.net/~server-papercutters

> My two cents, not as a developer, but one who wishes to assist in bug
> triage/resolution.

Please feel free to apply to the server-papercutters team !

Next meeting (Wednesday at 1400 UTC) we'll discuss the nomination
criteria. What makes an acceptable Server papercut ? What bugs should
this effort concentrate on fixing ?

My initial take on this was that we should concentrate on easy-to-fix
server experience issues. I have identified the following categories:

* Out-of-the-box readiness (bad default configs, package requiring
manual steps to go from installed to running)
* Teamplay (packages not working well together, while making sense to be
used together)
* Smooth operation (anything requiring tedious or repetitive manual work)
* Missing documentation (missing man pages, missing inline comments in
default configs)
* Upgrade issues (init scripts failures blowing up maintainer scripts)
* Cruft (broken symlinks, residue of purge)
* Consistency (upstartification ?)

Anything missing from the list ?

I would define "easy to fix" by (1) having an obvious fix and (2)
requiring less than 2 hours of work.

A few examples of what would *not* make server papercuts:
* Making the right software to install easier to find on servers: good
idea, but project is too large
* Upgrade X to version Y: we should improve existing packages rather
than adding new features
* Make file sharing work in all cases: too vague, no obvious fix

Time permitting, we'll also discuss the timing and contents of the
project publicity plan. Please join us at the meeting if you're
interested, or reply to this thread if you unfortunately can't join us
this time !

--
Thierry Carrez
Ubuntu server team

--
ubuntu-server mailing list
ubuntu-server@lists.ubuntu.com
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Ubuntu Server papercuts project overview
 

Thierry Carrez wrote:
> Next meeting (Wednesday at 1400 UTC) we'll discuss the nomination
> criteria. What makes an acceptable Server papercut ? What bugs should
> this effort concentrate on fixing ?

This was discussed at the meeting, and the agreed criteria are now
described in the spec document:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerPapercutsSpec

It's mostly the proposal + a few precisions about which packages are
appropriate (server packages, universe/multiverse is alright).

> Time permitting, we'll also discuss the timing and contents of the
> project publicity plan. Please join us at the meeting if you're
> interested, or reply to this thread if you unfortunately can't join us
> this time !

The nomination effort will be announced on blogs, a specific ML post,
and we'll ping the UWN team to see if they can talk about it in the next
issue.

--
Thierry Carrez
Ubuntu Server team

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