The Program
And with the final code submission uploaded at Google Code, Summer of Code 2010 officially draws to a close. What a ride it has been!
My first post on Inspirated regarding Summer of Code took place all the way back in March 07 when I submitted a proposal for Fedora. Three and a half years later, I finally appreciate the fact that GSoC is about much more than just the code. In fact, “Summer of Open-Source” would probably be a more suitable title for the program despite sounding half as sexy. When my proposals got rejected I had to learn, contribute and integrate more with the open-source crowd. When one of the applications finally made it beyond the selection process, I had to “bond” with the organization I was going to be working with. During the coding weeks, I had to communicate regularly with my mentor and Ubuntu community in order to ensure that I was progressing in the right direction. To summarize, becoming a part of the open-source universe is as important an aspect of GSoC as producing open-source code.
The Code
Here’s a quick rundown of the code produced for the program (without including the intermediate branches and patches):
Attachment Search
- Merge Revision: Expot API call for listing the source packages a team has subscribed to.
- Branch: Search attachment files using Horspool’s algorithm. The branch eventually didn’t make it upstream as it was decided that with the existing implementation the searches would be too expensive for Launchpad, essentially requiring a solution with a different design approach.
Arsenal and python-launchpadlib-toolkit Modifications
- Package, Package, Package: These libraries had to be modified extensively in order to provide support for the Arsenal scripts developed during GSoC. Classes like
LaunchpadApplication, LaunchpadBugzillaApplication and BugzillaAdapter perform regular chores for these applications e.g., authentication, web-scraping and keyring manipulation.
Attachment Upstreamer
- Script: Command-line script for upstreaming attachments from a Launchpad bug to a remote Bugzilla.
- Script, Template: CGI script for demonstrating the capabilities of Arsenal library and python-launchpadlib-toolkit.
Bug Matchmaker
“Incompatibility: In matrimony, a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.” — Ambrose Bierce
Fortunately, matchmaking across different bug trackers was easier.
- Script: Command-line script for searching a remote Bugzilla for similar entries to a given Launchpad bug.
Automatic Patcher
- Script: Command-line script for automatically generating patched Debian packages for a given Launchpad bug using diff files found in its attachments.
The Nutshell
The processes of collaborating, getting code reviewed and improving accordingly has gone a long way in instilling more confidence in me as a FLOSS developer. On the technological side of things I’ve had to deal with REST APIs, Zope Interfaces, OAuth procedures, web-scrapers based on Curl, Debian patch systems, a plethora of Python and a good-bit doze of different development paradigms.
It has been awesome working with the Ubuntu community and Bryce’s guidance has been absolutely crucial for ensuring that something useful was produced by my project. I’d like to thank everyone involved in the program for making it so much fun. I Know What I Did This Summer.
Tags:
AJAX,
API,
Arsenal,
Bugzilla,
Code,
Curl,
Debian,
GSoC,
Launchpad,
Open Source,
Python,
REST,
Ubuntu,
XML-RPC
As eleven weeks of the-best-summer-ever draw to an end, here’s the final coding report for GSoC 2010.
Related Links
Time Spent
60 hours.
Highlights
The week was spent mostly cleaning and packaging the code accumulated over the summer. To demonstrate some of the aspects of the Arsenal library, I also created a proof-of-concept CGI script which upstreams Launchpad attachments for a bug to a remote Bugzilla. The task was fun, as the efforts put into refactoring things into launchpadlib-toolkit and BugzillaAdapter finally paid off and it took only a few hours to get the script working (that too with most of the time spent learning AJAX).
Concerns
None.
Waiting Items
None.
Stalled Items
None.
Accomplishments
- Branch, Merge Revision:
- Revision: Added support for quilt.
- Revision: Added support for using patch utility for quilt packages where the diff files update debian/* stuff themselves.
- Revision: Cleaned up the library to provide
LaunchpadApplication and LaunchpadBugzillaApplication.
- Revision: Fixed
BugPatcher to use LaunchpadApplication as base class.
- Revision: Cleaned up
LaunchpadBugzillaApplication to take username password as arguments instead of modifiers.
- Branch, Merge Revision: Fixed packaging issues to release
debs for Karmic and Lucid.
- Branch: Implemented a CGI script demonstrating the upstreaming capabilities of Arsenal library. An example run can be seen in this screencast.
Minor Tasks
- Revision: Some more code cleanup.
- Revision: Check
launchpadlib version before appending ‘/beta‘ during API URL detection.
Actions for the Following Report
- Fill the final evaluation.
- Write a summary of the overall GSoC experience.
- Start waiting for the t-shirt.
Tags:
AJAX,
API,
Arsenal,
Bugzilla,
Code,
Curl,
Debian,
GSoC,
Launchpad,
Open Source,
Python,
REST,
Ubuntu,
XML-RPC
Related Links
Time Spent
60 hours.
Highlights
New features were added to Attachment Upstreamer in order to make it more suitable for issues encountered by Ubuntu maintainers (as suggested by Bryce from his experience as the X.org maintainer).
Concerns
None.
Waiting Items
None.
Stalled Items
None.
Accomplishments
- Branch, Merge Revision: Implemented caching of Bugzilla credentials using Gnome Keyring and
ConfigParser.
- Merge Revision:
- Branch: Added support for excluding attachments based on filename matching using glob patterns.
- Branch: Added support for extracting Tar and Zip archives when the number of files in them is below a specified limit.
- Branch: Added support for excluding attachments based on their sizes, optionally Gzipping them in an effort to make the size acceptable.
- Branch: Added support for enforcing content-types of attachments based on their filenames.
Minor Tasks
- Various bugfixes and code-cleanup for previously merged GSoC code.
Actions for the Following Report
The Launchpad and Bugzilla sides of the Upstreamer are to be cleaned up and made dependent on launchpadlib-toolkit and BugzillaAdapter respectively. This will help future scripts which rely on Bugzilla communication as well as make such things agnostic to the implementation lying beneath the adapter (e.g., whether we’re using Curl/XML-RPC/REST to talk to the server).
Tags:
API,
Arsenal,
Bugzilla,
Code,
Curl,
GSoC,
Launchpad,
Open Source,
Python,
REST,
Ubuntu,
XML-RPC
Related Links
Time Spent
50 hours.
Highlights
The send-attachments-upstream.py script was migrated from XML-RPC to Curl for communicating with Bugzilla. The script was the refactored in order to provide capabilities such as attachment filtering. Various bugfixes and improvements were catered to along the way.
Concerns
None.
Waiting Items
None.
Stalled Items
None.
Accomplishments
- Branch, Merge Revision: Reimplemented attachment sending using
pycurl.
- Branch, Merge Revision: Refactored the script in order to provide options such as
-o (copy only attachments uploaded by bug owner).
Minor Tasks
- Branch, Merge Revision: Fixed regular expressions for parsing results and handling of Unicode attachment titles.
Actions for the Following Report
Implement the following improvements in send-attachments.py:
- Caching Bugzilla credentials.
- Filename exclusion for attachments.
- Archive extraction.
- File size limits.
- A command-line switch to enforce MIME content-types based on file extensions.
Tags:
API,
Arsenal,
Bugzilla,
Code,
Curl,
GSoC,
Launchpad,
Open Source,
Python,
REST,
Ubuntu,
XML-RPC
Related Links
Time Spent
10 hours.
Highlights
Communicating with Bugzilla is done through the python-bugzilla wrapper library. This could have been achieved by using xmlrpclib directly but doing that would require reinventing a whole lot of wheels by handling Bugzilla specific XML-RPC eccentricities.
Concerns
None.
Waiting Items
None.
Stalled Items
None.
Accomplishments
- Branch: Added support for copying attachments to a remote bugzilla:
$ ./send-attachments-upstream.py --user=krkhan@inspirated.com --pass=xxx https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/223435 https://partner-bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=593603
Logging in Launchpad [Success <Logged in as Kamran Riaz Khan>]
Logging in Bugzilla [Success <Logged in as krkhan@inspirated.com>]
Uploading: Dependencies.txt [Success]
Uploading: Disassembly.txt [Success]
Uploading: ProcMaps.txt [Success]
Uploading: ProcStatus.txt [Success]
Uploading: Registers.txt [Success]
Uploading: Stacktrace.txt [Success]
Uploading: ThreadStacktrace.txt [Success]
Uploading: Stacktrace.txt (retraced) [Success]
Uploading: ThreadStacktrace.txt (retraced) [Success]
Minor Tasks
- Revision: Added python-bugzilla in lib and modified setup.py accordingly.
- Revision: Initial commit for sending attachments to a remote Bugzilla.
- Revision: Added error handling for API calls.
Actions for the Following Report
Add support for creating new bugs in a remote Bugzilla based on data from a Launchpad bug.
Tags:
API,
Arsenal,
Bugzilla,
Code,
GSoC,
Launchpad,
Open Source,
Python,
REST,
Ubuntu,
XML-RPC
