ulc-devs team mailing list archive

[Patrick Seemann <patsee14@xxxxxxxxx>]

Good evening,
I am also in GMT +1.


> initial source structure
> ------------------------
>
> I had very good experiences with quickly[1] in other projects. It takes
> away much of the pain of software development, especially the boring
> things like packaging, PPA uploading, and the like. I know there are
> plans to create a unity lens template for quickly, and I am just trying
> to find out if any steps in that direction were already made.
>
> If not, we could probably just use the cli template of quickly and adopt
> it to form an initial unity lens skeleton. If all works out, we should
> get packaging from the start, making it easy to install and uninstall
> our preliminary work. Many python projects can be run from their source
> directories, but for the lens to work we need to install some files. But
> I think once the base files are in place, we should be able to run the
> lens daemon from the source directory, so we can test our work without
> installing it.
>
> [1] https://launchpad.net/quickly


Quickly is a very cool tool (ha, that rhymes ;)) I have used it before to
create a gtk app. But I've not yet played with the command line template.

blueprints
> ----------
>
> Before coding all details, we should probably make a round of design
> proposals and discussion. We need to decide on the categories and
> filters we want to support in the lens. We also need to decide on the
> actions we want to be able to perform on contacts. (For details on the
> lens architecture, see [2].)
>

I assume we are discussing the features on this list. What about
documenting what we come up with? Should we create a wiki or something like
this? I'm really new to all this, so don't exactly know what would be best.


> version control
> ---------------
>
> When using launchpad, bzr is set. bzr allows for a centralized
> (SVN-like) and a decentralized (git-like) approach. So we could either
> set up a group branch and commit all to it, or we could work on personal
> branches and merge them into master once they are ready for inclusion.
>
> I personally like the decentralized approach better. So I would suggest
> to create a team branch as trunk, but do the work on personal branches
> and merge them into trunk from time to time.
>

+1 on the decentralized approach. Again, something which I've never done
before, so I have some questions ;)
Where do we keep the local branches? Does it local literally mean, that we
keep them only on our hard disk and once we are done with our changes, we
commit them to the main branch? Or do we keep them somewhere on launchpad
(probably in a branch related to our launchpad account, e.g.
~launchpad_id/+junk/branchname)?


Once the basic structure is in place, maybe someone with more
> experiences with lenses can start to implement a rudimentary lens.
> (Patrick, maybe that is a job for you, since you already wrote a python
> lens? Pablo might help you with libfolks.)
>

I'm already working on the lens daemon... Unfortunately, I can't use my old
lens as a reference because they've changed the lens api a lot. But there
are enough python lenses on launchpad which are helpful. What I'm still
missing though, is a more detailed documentation on the lenses api (for
python)... The Ubuntu wiki only has vala examples:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity/Lenses<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity/Lenses#Creating_a_Lens>
(these
are still helpful sometimes).



> These are my current suggestions. Feel free to speak out if you disagree
> or have different ideas.
>

Thanks again for your detailed emails!! I think you are making a very good
leader for this project !

regards,
-- 
Patrick Seemann

launchpad: ~patrickseemann
irc.freenode.net: patsee14