Brian’s Blog

While at the last FOSSCamp, I learned that the Debian bug tracking system has a SOAP interface for executing remote procedure calls. I thought it would be useful to use it to search for Debian bug reports related to Ubuntu bugs.

Subsequently, I’ve written a script, part of the ubuntu-qa-tools project, that allows you to do just that. For example, python debian-bug-search.py xserver-xorg-core "Bad valuators" will search the package xserver-xorg-core for bugs with the string “Bad valuators” in them.  I find it much more convenient than opening a new tab in Firefox.  Most importantly, it has helped me find a fair number of related bugs and add upstream bug tasks in Launchpad.

My friend and coworker Pedro was interested in seeing something like Gnome’s Weekly Bug Summary for Ubuntu packages. The report basically contains information on the changes in quantity of bugs “Opened” and “Closed”.

I am already collecting raw data regarding every bug status, not just open and closed, for a wide variety of packages. From this I created a csv file with changes over periods of 1, 7 and 30 days. That’s a bit hard to read though! So I also created a simple html page that presents the information in a table. The “Total” is the sum of all the bugs about a package and “Closed” is the sum of “Invalid”, “Fix Released” and “Won’t Fix”.

Some packages have the “Total” count decrease - I believe this is due to the particular package no longer being affected by the bug. A good example of this is xorg which has bugs moved to specific driver packages. Some of the changes files may have ‘-’s written in them, this is due to the fact that there isn’t enough data for that time frame.

I’ve found some great information, for example looking at the top 5 “Total”s for the past thirty days.

firefox-3.0: +372
linux: +312
xorg: +142
openoffice.org: +95
nautilus: +85

The packages listed are close to what I had expected, but it is good to have numbers to back up that feeling.  Another stat that struck me as interesting is that the quantity of apport-bug tagged bug reports has increased by 681 over the past 30 days. This is fantastic since these bug reports contain lots of useful information collected automatically.

These csv and html files should exist for every package and bug tag I’m keeping stats on so check out your favorite package or bug tag!

Launchpad parses bug comments for links to other bug tracking systems and identifies these as bug watches in the “Remote bug watches” portlet.  However, bugs with upstream tasks that are linked to bug reports at other bug tracking systems are also referred to as bug watches.  So a report like the Debian bug tracker bug watches isn’t useful for finding these unlinked watches because it contains both kinds of watches.

Subsequently, I wrote a database query to find all the bug reports that have comments referring to another bug tracker but no upstream task.  The subsequent report contains the bug number and the name of the bug tracker mentioned.  It only includes Ubuntu bug reports that are New, Incomplete, Confirmed or Triaged and is updated daily.

What do you do if the remote bug mentioned in a comment is not related?  It is possible to delete these bug watches by clicking on the pencil in the “Remote bug watches” portlet for the relevant bug watch and then clicking the “Delete Bug Watch” button.  This will remove them from the next run of the report.

There are currently 1629 bugs listed in the report, but ideally the number should be close to zero.

Background: We were watching Young Indiana Jones and he was in Florence.

Sarah - “Your dad has been there he has travelled a lot of places.”

Twin B - “The place Dad travels the most is the Internet!”

I tend to look at a few Ubuntu bug reports on any given day.  Today I ran across one comment that I thought was quite funny and just had to share.

Yada yada … ‘BTW is there any chance that you can call the next release or so of UBUNTU “The Dog’s Bollocks?”- I assume you are in the States but just in case you think I’m being abusive - the Dog’s is Northern English slang for the best thing since sliced bread’

I actually run into lots of interesting things in bug reports.  If you haven’t already give bug triaging a shot to find out for yourself!

Every once in a while my kids say something that makes me laugh hysterically.  I thought it would be a good idea to record them and this seems like as good a place as any.  Background: I bought an HD-DVD player and we were watching the HD-DVD of Planet Earth.

Me - “My Dad has all of them [the Planet Earth Boxset] but they aren’t HD-DVDs”

Twin B - “Oh man, that would suck bad!”

I had actually stopped renting movies just to find Wilhelms.  I think I’d reached the bottom of the barrel and anything else I need to rent is really unappealing.  So it was a great surprise to find one in Juno of all places!

Juno isn’t the first film to include the Wilhelm in a movie within the movie.  I believe Poltergeist, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton, and an X-Files episode all use this trick to fit in a Wilhelm.  In Juno though the clip with the Wilhelm is actually named - The Wizard of Gore, which Netflix happens to have and is in my queue.  The scream occurs in Chapter 13 of Juno.

I’ve uploaded the photographs I took in Prague while at the Ubuntu Developer’s Summit for Intrepid Ibex - 8.10’s code name.

I find it technologically offensive when people take distant group shots with their cell phone.

The picture just isn’t going to look any good and they probably have to pay money to get it off their phone. Yet I saw half a dozen people taking cell phone pics at the boys’ school music performance. Makes me shudder.

Awhile ago I was out partying with a friend and noticed he had Batman Returns at his place. I borrowed it and finally got around to finding the Wilhelm clip. I initially tried to find it based of chapter titles but had no luck and while watching clips thought “I really want to watch this movie.” So Sarah and I started watching it a couple of nights ago and then stopped because it got late. We came back to it last night and did not finish nor will we.

I am a bit of a Batman fan and I thought I liked Batman and Batman Returns but after having watched part of Batman Returns I don’t think I really like either of them. One might think that Batman Begins spoiled it for me but I wasn’t entirely happy with that movie either. I’ve realized that Kevin Conroy is my Batman. He is the voice actor for Batman in Batman The Animated Series and Justice League both by Bruce Timm. Batman Returns and the Animated Series were both released in 1992, however the movie was in June and the series started in September. I believe that explains why I had thought Batman Returns was good - it was before my favorite Batman.

We did make it to Chapter 17 of Batman Returns which includes one Wilhelm.