Server Bug Zapping Call for Participation!

In October 2009, just before the release of Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic), Mathias Gug, Dan Nurmi, and I holed up for a couple of very long days, working on the Ubuntu Eucalyptus package. Over the course of 72 hours, we uploaded Eucalyptus 7 times, fixing over 30 bugs! While Mathias, Dan, and I were co-located, we were also greatly assisted by Thierry Carrez (located +7 hours ahead) and community member Joseph Salisbury. Thierry and Joe helped tremendously with regression testing of the rapid fire uploads, triaging and squashing any new issues as they arose. This "push" was essential to delivering UEC for Ubuntu 9.10!

Well, the Server Team is going to do it again, for Ubuntu 10.04, and covering several other important server packages in addition to Eucalyptus, and we're hoping to get your help this time!

We're calling this effort Server Bug Zapping. The plans are detailed here:

• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerLucidBugZapping

The idea is that rather than waiting around for bugs to "get fixed" ...
We're going to take a more proactive approach ...

We're arming a platoon of Ubuntu Server Developers, Community Members, and Triagers, deploying them out on timed, coordinated missions, focusing our efforts on a particular packages for about a week at a time.

The first mission commences next week, March 1 - 5, 2010, targets our Virtualization stack, focusing on:

• qemu-kvm
• lxc
• libvirt

Anthony Liguori (upstream QEMU maintainer) will be helping us a bit next week, too.

If you have a particular interest in seeing these packages solid and successful in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server, then please lend a hand! Even if you're not a developer, we need quite a bit of help triaging the bugs, testing the new Lucid packages, confirming old bugs against the latest code, and verifying the the latest code fixes others!

Here's the plan:

• Monday - total bug triage
  • prioritize all bugs according to a defined formula
  • confirm/reproduce any bugs in the "new" state
  • triage any bugs in the confirmed state, ie, identify the problem, test workarounds or solutions
  • expire any bugs that are invalid
  • fix-release any bugs that cannot be reproduced on the latest code
  • assign yourself (or others) triaged bugs that they can fix
  • time permitting, start working on fixes
• Tuesday
  • bzr branch (or apt-get source) the latest lucid code
  • work on fixes, pushing to lp:~yourname/thepackage/bugnumber
  • build a package in your PPA for testing
  • get some else to verify your PPA build
  • uploader will roll all fixes into an upload for that day
• Wednesday
  • same as Tuesday
• Thursday
  • same as Tuesday, rolling toward a "final" release by the end of the day
• Friday
  • Comprehensive regression testing
  • Generate status report on total uploads, bugs triaged, bugs fixed, participation
  • Post to ubuntu-server@ mailing list and the ubuntu-server blog

If you would like to get involved, please:

1. Join the ~bug-zappers team in Launchpad.net
2. Subscribe to the specification and the blueprint
3. Communicate with us in #ubuntu-server on irc.freenode.net
4. Participate in the triage on Monday, and the bug fixing/testing Tuesday - Friday, from March 1st - April 8th

Finally, the schedule of targeted packages is not yet set in stone. The only two that are confirmed right now are March 1-5 (qemu-kvm, lxc, libvirt), and March 22-26 (eucalyptus, euca2ools). If you have suggestions of packages we should consider targeting, please let us know on the Ubuntu-Server mailing list. Please consider packages that meet the following criteria:

• heavily used, high value
  
• large number of (fixable or un-triaged) bugs
• active upstream
• and perhaps an upstream that's interested in participating in a week of bug triage/fixing
  

Cheers,
:-Dustin