I started to collect some easy PyGObject bugs which are appropriate for the PyGObject hackfest at GUADEC on July 30th. These are bugs which do not need a lot of previous knowlege and are excellent starters for new contributors, such as adding overrides, fixing build system issues, etc. I also created an initial idea pool/agenda/coordination page, where participants can add or signup for things to work on. Feel free to add your own topics! ... Read More

I released PyGObject 3.3.4. This is mostly a bug fix only release to fix existing API. Highlights are that lists of GVariants and other corner cases are now working correctly when being passed from C to Python, and that calling help() on a GI module now does something sensible. Thanks to all contributors! Complete list of changes: pygi-convert.sh: Drop bogus filter_new() conversion (Martin Pitt) (#679999) Fix help() for GI modules (Martin Pitt) (#679804) Skip gi. ... Read More

I just received confirmation that my request for a PyGObject hackfest has been approved by the GUADEC organizers. If you are developing GObject-introspection based Python applications and have some problems with PyGObject, this is the time and place to get to know each other, getting bugs fixed, learn about pygobject’s innards, or update libraries to become introspectable. I will prepare a list of easy things to look into if you are interested in learning about and getting involved in PyGObject’s development. ... Read More

I released PyGObject 3.3.3. The most notable changes are that you can now access methods (and other identifiers) which are Python keywords, PyGObject automatically escapes them now by appending a ‘_’. For example, you can now call myGdkWindow.raise_() or GLib.Thread.yield_() instead of having to resort to the previous workaround getattr(myGdkWindow, 'raise')(). This version also restores the deprecated get_data() and set_data() methods. They were never really meant to be used from Python programs, they can potentially mess up your program and cause crashes, and do not give you anything that regular Python object properties would not already provide in a much safer way (i. ... Read More

A few weeks ago I wrote about my new role as an upstream QA engineer. I have now officially been in that role since June. Quite expectedly I had (and still have) some backlog from my previous Desktop engineer role, but I have had plenty of time to work on automatic tests and some test technology now. If you are interested in the daily details, you can look at the ramblings on my G+ page; in a nutshell I worked on integration tests for udisks2 (mostly upstream now), a mock polkit API, and a small enhancement of the scsi_debug kernel module. ... Read More

I just released PyGObject 3.3.2, (almost) in time for tomorrow’s GNOME 3.5.2 release. No API breaks or new features this time, just lots of bug fixes and some minor API completions. My personal favorite is making closure calls work with GVariant arguments, which I finally figured out after over half a year; this finally unblocks making GDBus fully introspectable with not too much additional work, only that in the meantime dbus-python was ported to Python 3 so that the need for it is actually a lot smaller now. ... Read More

New PostgreSQL microreleases with two security fixes and several bug fixes was just announced publically. I spent the morning with the packaging orgy for Debian unstable and experimental (now uploaded), Debian Wheezy (update sent to security team), Ubuntu hardy, lucid, natty, oneiric, precise (LP #1008317) and my backports PPA. I tested these fairly thoroughly, but please let me know if you encounter any problem with these.

I just uploaded Apport 2.1 to Quantal. A big change in that version is that the whole code now works with both Python 2 and 3, except for the launchpadlib crash database backend (as we do not yet have a python3-launchpadlib package). I took some care that apport report objects get along with both strings (unicode type in Python 2) and byte arrays (str type in Python 2) in values, so most package hooks should still work. ... Read More

As I wrote two weeks ago, I consider the QA related changes in Ubuntu 12.04 a great success. But while we will continue and even extend our efforts there, this is not where the ball stops: it’s great to have the feedback cycle between “break it” and “notice the bug” reduced from potentially a few months to one day in many cases, but wouldn’t it be cool to reduce that to a few minutes, and also put the machinery right at where stuff really happens — into the upstream trunks? ... Read More

The first Beta of the upcoming PostgreSQL 9.2 was released yesterday (see announcement). Your humble maintainer has now created packages for you to test. Please give them a whirl, and report any problems/regressions that you may see to the PostgreSQL developers, so that we can have a rock solid 9.2 release. Remember, with the postgresql-common infrastructure you can use pg_upgradecluster to create a 9.2 cluster from your existing 8.4⁄9.1 cluster and run them both in parallel without endangering your data. ... Read More