Tag: ubuntu

LibreOffice 5.2.3 as snap from Day One

bmichaelsen

Meist scheint manches auf den ersten Blick unmöglich.
Manches ist es auch, doch es wäre tödlich, das selbst zu glauben solange noch nichts feststeht
und die Party zu verlassen, bevor sie losgeht.

— Die Sterne, Stell die Verbindung her

Yesterday, two nice things happened: For one, LibreOffice 5.2.3 has been released and secondly Ubuntu Core 16 has been released. But beyond that, something in the middle between these two has happened: LibreOffice 5.2.3 has been released to the stable channel of the snap store at the same day. Now LibreOffice has been in the snap store for some time — and has also been on the stable channel since the Ubuntu 16.10 release. But this is the first time the LibreOffice snap is released in sync with The Document Foundation announcing the general availability of the final downloads. This was possible even though I was on vacation yesterday: LibreOffice snap packages are now being build on launchpad, which simplifies a lot, and launchpad can be asked to populate the edge channel of the store. This is making life very easy. Having smoketested the amd64 build from that channel before, to release LibreOffice 5.2.3 to the beta/candidate/stable channels too all I had to do was push three buttons on a web interface and it was available to all.

Building on launchpad, I also had the opportunity to create builds for armhf and i386 along with the usual amd64 builds with little extra effort. If you are adventurous you are encouraged to test these builds too: Be aware though that these so far aren’t even smoketested, I havent looked at them at all yet, so use them at your own risk.

All in all, this is great progress: LibreOffice 5.2.3 is available to users of Ubuntu 16.10 and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS as a snap on the day of the upstream release. And beyond that on all other distributions where snap is available — quite a few these days.

Update: ICYMI here is how to get the LibreOffice snap: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/snap/ — although strictly speaking you dont need the --channel=beta option anymore now. I will fix that soon.

Auld Lang Syne

bmichaelsen2 Comments

we’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

— Die Roten Rosen, Auld Lang Syne

Eike already greeted the Year of Our Lady of Discord 3181 four days ago, but I’d like to take this opportunity to have a look at the state of the LibreOffice project — the bug tracker status that is.

By the end of 2014:

unconfirmed

And a special “Thank You!” goes out to everyone who created one of the over 100 Easy Hacks written for LibreOffice in 2014, and everyone who helped, mentored or reviewed patches by new contributors to the LibreOffice project. Easy Hacks are a good way someone curious about the code of LibreOffice to get started in the project with the help of more experienced developers. If you are interested in that, you find more information on Easy Hacks on the TDF wiki. Note that there are also Easy Hacks about Design related topics and on topics related to QA.

If “I should contribute to LibreOffice once in 2015” wasnt part of your new years resolutions yet, you are invited to add this as Easy Hacks might convince you that its worthwhile and … easy.

Brothers in Arms

bmichaelsen4 Comments

But it’s written in the starlight
And every line on your palm
We’re fools to make war
On our brothers in arms

— Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms

As the LibreOffice project grows, the distance between teams and subprojects also grows. This makes it increasingly important to keep our efforts united and not tolerate behaviour that makes members feel attacked,
even if the originators believe they are simply being direct or mischievous. We’re a diverse, multi-cultural and multi-lingual community, and it’s easy to unintentionally offend through choices of expression that differ from what’s anticipated.

We’re a single community, and creating the concept of others – and the  promotion of a “them vs. us” mentality — in our team is dangerous and will hurt us in the long run. Some basic guidelines to this regard are set out in the statutes of the Document Foundation. If something more explicit is needed the Ubuntu code of conduct gives a good overview of what to take care of in the project.

Unfortunately, there recently have been repeated incidents on bugzilla which violate this principle. Joel has thus been given permissions to suspend users on bugzilla temporarily if it proves necessary. We hope that friendly corrections to tone and messaging, then warnings and finally the threat of such suspension will be enough, and there will be no need for action to be taken.