openSUSE build service collaboration

One of the shortcomings of the openSUSE build service was, until recently, that it didn’t help outsiders (non-Novell employees) in contributing to the distribution’s packages. The build service team worked hard in the last few months, and now it is very easy for external people to send patches directly to be included in the main distribution.

First, you need to create a branch from the package you want to change:

osc branch GNOME:Factory gnome-utils

This creates a branch in your home project (home:$user:branches:GNOME:Factory), so just check it out:

osc co home:$user:branches:GNOME:Factory gnome-utils

Then, just work on changes, and when everything is ok and the package builds, just commit and submit a request

osc commit -m "Changed foo and bar"
osc submitreq create -m "Changed foo and bar"

Before submitting though, it might be wise to re-check your changes:

osc rdiff home:$user:branches:GNOME:Factory gnome-utils

which shows a diff of the changes in your branch.

osc commit/submitreq create will submit the changes to your branch and to the project you branched from (GNOME:Factory in this example), so that maintainers can review and accept (or reject) the submission. Maintainers just need to:

$ osc submitreq list GNOME:Factory

359   new         home:rodrigomoya:branches:GNOME:Factory/gtk2-engines  ->  GNOME:Factory/gtk2-engines    '-------------------------------------------------------------------\nFri Jul 18 17:16:38 CEST 2008 - rodrigo@suse.de\n\n- Tag and upstream patches'
360   new         home:vuntz:branches:GNOME:Factory/pango  ->  GNOME:Factory/pango    'Tag pango64.patch'
363   new         home:jproseve:branches:GNOME:Factory/glib2-branding-openSUSE  ->  GNOME:Factory/glib2-branding-openSUSE    'Fix bnc#406741'
364   new         home:rodrigomoya:branches:GNOME:Factory/fast-user-switch-applet  ->  GNOME:Factory/fast-user-switch-applet    'Tag patch correctly'
365   new         home:rodrigomoya:branches:GNOME:Factory/gnome-utils  ->  GNOME:Factory/gnome-utils    'Tag some patches'
366   new         home:jproseve:branches:GNOME:Factory/scrollkeeper  ->  GNOME:Factory/scrollkeeper    'Tag patches'
367   new         home:jproseve:branches:GNOME:Factory/icu  ->  GNOME:Factory/icu    'Tag patches'
368   new         home:jproseve:branches:GNOME:Factory/scrollkeeper  ->  GNOME:Factory/scrollkeeper    'Tag patches'

which lists all the submissions waiting in the queue, and then just needs to review it:

$ osc submitreq show -d $id

which shows the patch for the submission identified by $id. And then, just accept or reject:

osc submitreq accept $id
osc submitreq decline -m "Your patch is wrong, don't send me more" $id

Neat, isn’t it? This should help us a lot in getting users’ contributions quicker into the distro, as well as in a better patch reviewing system.

Syndicated 2008-07-18 22:43:40 from Rodrigo Moya

openSUSE 11.1 ideas

Just recovered from the success of the openSUSE 11.0 launch, the openSUSE-GNOME team is already working on the future 11.1 (expected in December), so we are starting to get feedback for new ideas from users. Anyone can add their own ideas to this page, so if you want something new in either GNOME or openSUSE, add your ideas to the wiki.

Syndicated 2008-07-03 14:46:08 from Rodrigo Moya

UEFA Euro 2008

I have been always a football fan (and player when I was much younger), but in the last couple of years or so, I stopped watching games because I usually just fell asleep while watching them. Compared to other sports I like (cycling, basketball, motor racing, etc), I find football very boring, except for a few games once in a while. But for this Euro 2008 that finished yesterday, I decided to try watching first only the Spanish team games, and, if I didn’t fall asleep, maybe try with others. So I just watched the 3 Spain’s games in the 1st round, the 1/4 finals against Italy, and then the 2 semifinals and, yesterday, the final. I have to confess I really enjoyed those games, specially the 2 semifinals in general and the 2nd half of the Spain-Russia in particular.

But, even though I might be back into watching more football games in the upcoming season (at least until I fall asleep again ), there are some things in football that I wanted changed many years ago and that, as I’ve witnessed during these last few weeks, haven’t changed yet:

• First of all is the referees. As in all sports, they make mistakes, that’s normal, what’s not normal is that such mistakes can have such a huge impact on the final result (media here in Spain usually even have an alternative standing with the points lost/won by each team from referee’s mistakes). So, why the UEFA/FIFA or whatever don’t do as in other sports, where video replays are used when referees are not sure? Of course, I’m not saying the referee should stop the game to watch the replay for every doubtful play, as is done in some sports, but there could be a group of judges watching the game on TV, with special cameras, and just communicate via radio with the referee. Also, there could be more referees on the field, like in basketball, for instance, where there are 3 in a much smaller playing field. I’m starting to think nothing is done to fix this so as to allow the media to talk after the games about the referee’s mistakes, which is what the media do most of the week while waiting for the next game, at least here.
• Lots of team play very deffensive, and that makes some games as boring as watching your hair grow. I used to like a lot football back in the days of Johann Cruyff’s FC Barcelona Dream Team. The best was Barcelona, playing very offensive, and so the rest of the teams copied the playing style, and it was very common to have very high results, like 7-3, 4-3, 5-4, etc, etc, which make the games, at least for me, very attractive to watch. So, why not do again like in other sports, where the rules are more dynamic, and are changed to cut the very defensive styles and make the game more offensive? That happened a few years ago, for instance, on the NBA, the scores were getting very low, so they added/changed a couple of rules to make the game more offensive. I would really like to have, in football, a much less restrictive off-side rule, there would be many more scores and make the games more attractive, since you can’t be too defensive if you are losing 2-0.
• Spanish people got totally crazy last night, with lots of injured people and even one death in Madrid, as I’ve heard on the radio this morning. 2 years ago, the basketball team won the world championship, and, AFAIR, there were no problems, people went to receive the team to the airport and just cheered at them while they were driven across the city, so, why does this always happen around football? I guess it’s got nothing to do with the sport, just that it’s the most popular one around here and it attracts all kinds of weird people.

Anyway, congratulations to the Spanish team for this win, specially because this is the only thing that unifies Spaniards, the football national team. Before and after this Euro Cup, people did/will complain about the other regions’ people, and some did/will even say they don’t feel Spanish at all, but these days, with an European champion team, everyone likes Spain, yay for football nationalism!

Syndicated 2008-06-30 12:03:26 from Rodrigo Moya

Google MapMapker

Since everything that Google does has a lot of impact, and since they just released MapMaker, the OpenSteerMap project counter-attacks with a Press Release, so please read it.

Summary is: don’t help Google making their maps, help OpenSteetMap instead!

Syndicated 2008-06-26 12:04:25 from Rodrigo Moya

openSUSE 11.0

Today’s release day for openSUSE 11.0, the best openSUSE distribution ever… yeah, that’s true for all new distributions, ok. But it is the release I feel more proud of, since it’s seen a lot of GNOME-related work, as Vincent explains in this interview. And this work will continue in the soon-to-come 11.1.

Syndicated 2008-06-19 12:03:53 from Rodrigo Moya