Got Edge?

I mean Edgy. I mean Edgy Eft. Get it.

Update

I followed the EdgyUpgrades document from the Ubuntu Wiki and all it took to upgrade my Dell laptop from Dapper to Edgy was one command:

gksu "update-manager -c" 

I call this painless. Everything seems to be working just fine after the upgrade. Haven't had time to play with it at all -- in fact, I don't even know how long the upgrade process took, since I left after I started it.

Proposal for Testing Tools Panel at PyCon07

Following Titus's example with his Web Frameworks Panel proposal for PyCon07, I proposed a Testing Tools Panel. And yes, I expect the author of twill to participate and take questions :-)

I created a TestingToolsPanel page on the PyCon07 wiki. Please feel free to add your own testing-related topics of interest and/or questions for the authors. If you are a testing tool author, please consider participating in the panel. You can leave a comment here or send me an email (grig at gheorghiu.net) and let me know if you're interested in participating.

Here's what I have so far on the Wiki page:

I maintain a "Python Testing Tools Taxonomy" (PTTT) Wiki page.

Here are some of the tools listed on the PTTT page:

• unit testing tools (unittest/doctest/py.test/nose/Testoob/testosterone)
• mock/stub testing tools (python-mock/pmock/stubble)
• Web testing tools (twill/webunit/zope.testbrowser/Pamie/paste.test.fixture)
• acceptance testing tools (PyFit/texttest/FitLoader)
• GUI testing tools (pywinauto/WATSUP/winGuiAuto/guitest)
• source code checking tools (pylint/pychecker/pyflakes)
• code coverage tools (coverage/figleaf/Pester)
• other miscellaneous testing tools (pysizer/pymetrics/svnmock/testtools)

I propose to have a panel where authors of some of these tools would discuss and take questions on topics such as:

• what need prompted the creation of the testing tool
• what type of testing does the tool belong to (unit, functional, acceptance, system, performance)
• what specific features does the tool offer that other tools lack
• what are the most common testing scenarios you have seen in your user base
• are there any platform- or OS-specific gotchas related to the tool
• how extensible is the tool (plugins etc.)
• how easy to learn is the tool
• how well tested is the tool
• how well documented is the tool

"Agile in action" photostream

From a blog I read with pleasure, Simon Baker's "Agile in action", here's a link to a Flickr photostream that shows in my opinion what agile is all about: collaboration, camaraderie, storytelling....in short, having great fun and producing great software in the process. Stevey, I can tell you've never been part of an agile team in your life -- otherwise why would you be so bitter and cranky about it?

The 90-9-1 rule and building an open source community

Jakob Nielsen talks about the 90-9-1 rule in his latest Alertbox newsletter: "Participation inequality: encouraging more users to contribute". Simply put, the rule states that in a typical online community, 90% of the users are lurkers, 9% are occasional contributors, and only 1% are active contributors. This should be interesting for people trying to build and grow open source projects. Nielsen has some suggestions to offer on how to overcome this "participation inequality". Read the article for his suggestions.

Here are some of my own observations and lessons learned from various open source efforts I've been part of (many of them are things I've tried to do on the Pybots project):

How to build an open source community

* Blog, blog, blog
* Send messages to mailing lists related to the area of your project
* Write extensive documentation, make it easy for people to join
* Create a project repository (Google Code)
* Get help from early adopters, involve them in the project

How to sustain and grow an open source community

* Blog, blog, blog
* Send messages to individuals who might be interested in contributing
* Acknowledge contributions
* Respond quickly to issues on mailing list
* Demonstrate usefulness of the project, both to contributors, and to any organizations involved (e.g. the PSF)
* Market/promote/evangelize the project tirelessly
* Recommended reading: "Fearless change: Patterns for introducing new ideas" by Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising

Comments about your own experience in building an open source community are much appreciated.

Let's celebrate Roundup by turning it into the official Python bug tracker

Richard Jones just posted a note about Roundup turning 5. What better birthday gift than turning it into the official Python bug/issue tracker. Readers of Planet Python certainly know by now that there are 2 issue trackers in contention: JIRA and Roundup. Unless people step up to volunteer as admins for maintaining a Roundup-based Python issue tracker, the PSF will choose JIRA. I walked the walk and volunteered myself. I know there must be other people out there who would like to see a Python-based project be selected over a Java project. Any takers? Send an email by Oct. 16th to infrastructure at python.org stating your intention to volunteer. All it takes is 8 to 10 people.

Pybots news

I'm happy to report that the Pybots project continues to gain momentum. In raw numbers, we have 8 buildslaves running the automated tests for 17 projects, and also testing the installation of 18 other packages. Pretty impressive, if I may say so myself. This table is copied from the main pybots.org page and shows the current setup:

Builder name	Project(s) tested	Pre-requisites installed	Owner
x86 Red Hat 9	Twisted	setuptools, zope.interface, pycrypto, pyOpenSSL	Grig Gheorghiu
x86 Debian Unstable	docutils, roundup	N/A	Seo Sanghyeon
x86 Ubuntu Dapper	parsedatetime	setuptools	Mike Taylor (Bear)
x86 OSX	vobject, zanshin	setuptools, zope.interface, Twisted	Mike Taylor (Bear)
x86 Gentoo	pysqlite, Genshi, Trac, feedvalidator	clearsilver, pysqlite	Manuzhai
amd64 Ubuntu Dapper	MySQLdb, CherryPy	N/A	Elliot Murphy
x86 Windows 2003	lxml (dev, stable) Bazaar (dev, stable)	libxml2, libxslt, zlib, iconv	Sidnei da Silva
x86 Ubuntu Breezy	Cheesecake	setuptools, nose, logilab-astng, pylint	Grig Gheorghiu

Some more projects and buildslaves are in the pipeline, so I hope to be able to announce them soon. I'd like to thank all the contributors so far, in chronological order of their contributions: Seo Sanghyeon, Mike Taylor (Bear), Manuzhai, Elliot Murphy and Sidnei da Silva.

People interested in this project -- whether they'd like their project to be tested on an existing buildslave, or they'd like to contribute a buildslave -- are encouraged to peruse the documentation on the Pybots page, then send a message to the Pybots mailing list.