Show and Tell: Xenial Edition

It's show and tell time again. Yes, yes, remember my story about growing up in school? It's time for us to gather together as a community again and talk, plan, and share with each other about what's happening in Ubuntu.

UOS is the Ubuntu Online Summit we hold each cycle to talk about what's happening in ubuntu. The next summit is called UOS 15.11 and will be on November 3rd - 5th, 2015. That's coming up very soon!

So what should I do?
First, plan to attend. Register to do so even. Second, consider proposing a session for the 'Show and Tell' track. Sessions are open to everyone as a platform for sharing interesting and unique things with the rest of the community. A typical session may last 5-15 minutes, with time for questions. It's a great way to spend a few minutes talking about something you made, work on, or find interesting.

What type of things can I show off?

Demos, quick talks, and 'show and tell' type things.  Your demo can be unscripted, and informal. This does not have to be a technical talk or demo, though those are certainly welcomed. Please feel free to show off design work, documentation, translation, interesting user tricks or anything else that tickles your fancy!

Got an example?
Yes, we do. Last cycle we had developers talking about new APIs, flavors teams doing Q and A sessions and demos, users sharing tricks, and even a live hacking session where we collectively worked on an application for the phone. Check them out. I'd love to see an even greater representation this time around.

Ok, I'm convinced
Great. Propose the session here. If you need help, check out the wiki page. If you are still stuck, feel free to simply contact me for help.


I'm afraid I don't have a demo, but I'd like to see them!
Awesome, sessions need an audience as well. Mark your calendar for November 3rd - 5th and watch the 'Show and Tell' track page for sessions as they appear.

Thanks for your help making UOS amazing. I'll see you there!

Wily Final Image Testing!

Wily is almost here! The summer has past us by (or is arriving for our Southern hemisphere friends). Thus, with the change of the seasons, it's time for another release of ubuntu. Wily will release the final image this Thursday, 22 Oct 2015. It's time to find and squash and last minute bugs in the the installer.

How can I help? 

To help test, visit the iso tracker milestone page for final beta.  The goal is to verify the images in preparation for the release. Find those bugs! The information at the top of the page will help you if you need help reporting a bug or understanding how to test. 

Isotracker? 

There's a first time for everything! Check out the handy links on top of the isotracker page detailing how to perform an image test, as well as a little about how the qatracker itself works. If you still aren't sure or get stuck, feel free to contact the qa community or myself for help.

How long is this going on?
The testing runs through Thursday, 22 Oct 2015, when the the images for Wily will be released. 

Thanks and happy testing everyone!

Introducing Pilot

It's finally here! We've been working on a way to allow those who have a ubuntu phone to participate more directly in testing the software that runs on their device. This includes things like helping test OTA updates before they are shipped and to verify and look for bugs in applications like the core apps and system services.

Introducing Pilot, a new application you can find today in the ubuntu store. The application utilizes checkbox as a way of distributing tests to you on the phone. This first round of testing includes tests from 4 of your favorite core applications including dekko, clock, music, and weather.

To help test, search for Pilot in the store and install it.

Start the app, and click the Start Testing button once it's loaded.



Select a test plan to run. Right now you can choose to test specific features of the different core apps.



Select the tests to run. You can choose to run all of tests for that feature, or just one if you wish.



Run through the test, following each step. If everything works as listed in the test, press the Pass button. Otherwise press Fail.



You can also add comments about the test or skip the test using the buttons at the top of this page.


Finally, submit your results back to the QA team by pressing the Submit Results to Community Practitest button. You'll need to supply your ubuntu SSO information to do so. You may also view your submitted results on this screen by pressing the corresponding button.



It's that easy. Over time, we'll push new tests via application updates, so you can help test new things as they are developed. As the number of devices grows, we want to ensure every device has the same level of quality. With your help, we can make sure ubuntu gets better with each update. Thanks for your help!

Ubuntu Font Testing: Arabic

Some of you may remember the birth of the ubuntu font family during the 10.10 cycle. The time has come to finish that work as well as fix a few issues with the current font set. To start with, the design team has been working on Arabic, and is ready for some feedback on how the font looks and interacts.

To help gather your feedback, we've made a simple survey. It contains the information you need to get the font, as well as the opportunity to leave feedback.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ubuntuarabicfonttesting

We would love to hear from you! If you encounter any issues trying to test or use the survey, feel free to get in touch, but otherwise leave your feedback on the font in the survey. Thanks again for your help!

For those of you who don't happen to speak Arabic or a related language, an opportunity to test the full ubuntu font family is coming up soon. Get ready!

Final Beta Testing for Wily

Another cycle draws to a close, and it's time to test our images and make sure Wily is in good shape. We're entering crunch time.

How can I help? 

To help test, visit the iso tracker milestone page for final beta.  The goal is to verify the images in preparation for the release. Find those bugs! The information at the top of the page will help you if you need help reporting a bug or understanding how to test. 

Isotracker? 

There's a first time for everything! Check out the handy links on top of the isotracker page detailing how to perform an image test, as well as a little about how the qatracker itself works. If you still aren't sure or get stuck, feel free to contact the qa community or myself for help.

How long is this going on?
The testing runs through tomorrow, Thursday September 24th, when the the images for final beta will be released. If you miss the deadline we still love getting result Test against the daily image milestone instead.

Thanks and happy testing everyone!

Opportunity: Automated Installer Testing

I wanted to share a unique opportunity to get invovled with ubuntu and testing. Last cycle, as part of a datacenter shuffle, the automated installer testing that was occurring for ubuntu flavors stopped running. The images were being test automatically via a series of autopilot tests, written originally by the community (Thanks Dan et la!). These tests are vital in helping reduce the burden of manual testing required for images by running through the base manual test cases for each image automatically each day.

When it was noticed the tests didn't run this cycle, wxl from Lubuntu accordingly filed an RT to discover what happened. Unfortunately, it seems the CI team within Canonical can no longer run these tests. The good news however is that we as a community can run them ourselves instead.

To start exploring the idea of self-hosting and running the tests, I initially asked Daniel Chapman to take a look. Given the impending landing of dekko in the default ubuntu image, Daniel certainly has his hands full. As such Daniel Kessel has offered to help out and begun some initial investigations into the tests and server needs. A big thanks to Daniel and Daniel!

But they need your help! The autopilot tests for ubiquity have a few bugs that need solving. And a server and jenkins need to be setup, installed, and maintained. Finally, we need to think about reporting these results to places like the isotracker. For more information, you can read more about how to run the tests locally to give you a better idea of how they work.

The needed skillsets are diverse. Are you interested in helping make flavors better? Do you have some technical skills in writing tests, the web, python, or running a jenkins server? Or perhaps you are willing to learn? If so, please get in touch!

Ubuntu SDK Autopilot Plugin

Those of you who have developed an application using the Ubuntu SDK understand how nice it is to have a tool to support your workflow for writing an application. You can code, build, run and iterate on your code easily right from inside the SDK. However, to test your application, it was necessary to open a terminal and execute some commands. Leaving the Ubuntu SDK is an interruption to your workflow! It's even enough to throw you off your coding zen! It certainly may have dissuaded you from running tests. Seeing as testing should be a positive experience, this certainly won't do!

Thankfully Akiva thought the same thing. Thus he created a new plugin for the SDK. I'd like to celebrate and thank him for making all of our lives easier. Thanks Akiva! A big thank you to Benjamin from the SDK team as well for reviewing and helping get the plugin in shape.

The plugin scans your project for autopilot tests, and then creates a run configuration for them. From there, it's as easy as hitting the run button to run the application. See for yourself!

To learn more about how to install the plugin, or how it works, checkout the documentation on running autopilot tests found on developer.ubuntu.com. 

Go forth and test all the things! Try out using the plugin in your existing workflow. I'd love to hear feedback. If you are interested in making the plugin better, or expanding it to include other things, get in touch. As always, code is welcome!