launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Martin Pool <mbp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Matthew Revell and I did a survey of Ubuntu developers before and during
UDS.

I've posted the main analysis of the results, and a link to the data, on the
UDD list here:


https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-distributed-devel/2010-November/000645.html

I want to call out a few themes that touch on Launchpad, for this important
customer sector and to encourage you to click through to the whole survey.
 Maybe none are totally new but it's worth seeing what people see as most
important.  I didn't attempt to cover every aspect of Launchpad, so
attention here focus mostly on code hosting, soyuz, registry, and
foundations.

The top 3 themes:

 * speed, in many aspects
 * reducing downtime
 * confusing ui and discoverability of features

I know great progress is being made on the first two.  Perhaps the new UI
designer being recruited will help bend the curve on the third?


> Criticisms mostly of Launchpad:

* Slow, in various ways, especially from APAC.

* Hard to navigate: finding specific branches; understanding what to

do; hard to find the cool features.

* Confusion/annoyance from old branch formats.

* Bad that the launchpad-side setup of stacked branches is

inconsistent with the client side repository directory.

* When something goes wrong, errors can be confusing.

* "My biggest gripes are with the lp:ubuntu/<pkgname> full source

branches. They have some nice features and traits, but a lot of

problems still: - They are way too easy to break for new upstream

versions from maintainers who aren't used to it yet. - It's impossible

(at least for me) to convert an already existing branch (derived from

upstream bzr) into the "official" lp:ubuntu/<pkgname> branch (ask me

(pitti) for details) - Because of the above, people keep sending MPs

against the wrong branch."

* Not as slick as github.

* "Too clicky", maybe meaning more things should be able to be done

from the command line, or with fewer page loads?

* "Excruciatingly slow" to get feedback from a dput into a ppa.


>
> --
Martin