Launchpad improvements

Launchpad, the development framework created by Canonical, is under constant development. If you have never used it, have a look at Jay's getting started and code management articles about it. If you know it already, you may be pleased to know that Launchpad has a countinuous edge beta testing program that anyone can try.

If you are getting curious, then let me tell you that there are actually three testing environments:
edge, which is the beta testing environment. You get into if by adding edge before launchpad.net in every URL. If you subscribe to the beta testing program and are accepted, every time you connect to launchpad you are redirected to the edge environment, which uses the latest beta interface and the production database. Every change you make with the edge interface is permanent.
staging, which is a non permanent testing environment. It uses the beta interface, and a copy of the production environment, which is replaced at regular intervals. Here you can try daring operations, without risking your valuable production data.
dogfood has rules similar to staging, but the level of experimental is even higher. Its contents may change without notice.
Using the edge environment, you will notice an enhanced interface (a detail here) and some hidden improvements.

One of the recent improvements is a bug that I asked the Canonical developers to fix, because it was affecting the usability of Launchpad as a development framework. Bug#66344 is about the graphical display of a blueprint dependency tree. In the old application, when you had more than a dozen dependencies, you got a cramped display like this one.

Absolutely unreadable. But if you get the same page through edge, you get this one:

The resolution of this bug is very important for my team campaign of promoting Launchpad. At MySQL developers meeting, which will start in Riga in the next days, we will show the goodies of Launchpad to anyone willing to listen, and since blueprint management are a vital component in every development effort, this recent improvement will make things look better for Launchpad beginners. Thanks to Joey Stanford and Christian Reis for speeding up matters with this bug!
Happy coding!

The database hacker glossary and other (funny) stories

Every year, MySQL engineers gather together for the developers meeting. It's the time of the highest productivity and fun at the same time. It starts usually by performing an old play, Guess who I am, featuring 100 employees who know each other by name but not by face. At every new entrance, a flurry of introductions is acknowledged and promptly forgotten, leaving the unfamiliar faces deprived of the familiar names. So a few minutes later the same people run around each other again, staring nonchalantly at the name tags, trying to avoid a gaffe. Despite the fierce fight for a name, nobody gets hurt, and in the end the leading actors and support roles go back to the script of exchanging geeky thoughts in person, as confidently as if they were doing that through the IRC. During these meetings, the following glossary was developed. Its origins lost in the fumes of beer. This blog post is a cherry picking collection from the daily newsletter (Heidelberg NachtRichten) distributed during the latest developers meeting.

(Warning! Dangerous silly humor ahead!)

database hacker glossary

• Primary key. The key that you get first from your keyring when trying to open the door. Unfortunately, it's usually the wrong one.
• Table. A piece of furniture that contains records instead of cutlery.
• Cursor. Someone who curses, especially after noticing how slow cursors are.
• Buffer overflow. Drinking more beer than your stomach can hold.
• Morning. Start of the work day for managers.
• Afternoon. Time of day expressly invented to make conversation difficult.
• Evening. Time for honest developers to wake up.
• Night. Time to do serious work.
• Specifications. Things that developers will eventually write after seeing how their own application works.
• User requirements. Unnecessary burdens to developers creativity.
• Test suite. A useful invention created to give you time to drink coffee.
• Weekly report. The output of a clever Perl script, producing random text that managers pretend to understand.
• Developers meeting. The funniest time of the year, and getting paid for it!
• Line manager. A former developer suffering from ERS (Early Rising Syndrome)
• Vice President. A former manager too lazy to go back to developing duties.
• Keyboard. Natural extension of the hands for real people.

An ancient legend

When Sir Geoffrey Hawks went to fight the First Crusade, in A.D. 1096, he left a gift to his young wife, a chastity belt chiseled by the finest artisans in Spain, a jewel of efficiency, as beautiful as robust, able to protect her honor while he was abroad. The belt was kept closed by two engraved keys, also work of the same Spanish craftsmen. He made sure that she wore the belt, locked both locks, put the keys in his purse, and went to war. Three years passed, without any news. The lady was restless and bored, and she welcomed the arrival of a minstrel from the South as a much needed distraction. The minstrel was skilled in his arts, and soon he managed to be in close intimacy with the lady. He managed to overcome all her defenses, but he found the disappointing obstacle of the chastity belt. He then applied his skills to the locks, to no avail. He had a set of keys, built by a blacksmith in London, but every attempt at violating the locks fail. With a sad and defeated sigh, the lady acknowledged that she would never achieve her pleasure without the precious keys made by the Spanish craftsmen. She admitted defeat. "I will never be happy - she told her lover - without those foreign keys!"

Final item of the hacker glossary

• Foreign key. A key to open a foreign lock.

Developers bowing protocol

You may have seen this scene several times during any open source meeting. Two people approach each other cautiously, stop at a short distance, and bow curtly to each other for a few seconds. After what seems a very formal kind of greetings, they break in broad smiles and exclamations, and shake hands vigorously. That is not a new policy from the HR department. What looks like a bow is in fact the reading of the name tag, and the subsequent explosion of joy is just the recognition of a name that until now had been only a signature under an email message. Once the association between the known name and the unknown person has been established, they can start being friendly as if they had known each other faces for years.

Meetup mashup in Paris -Milan - Hamburg - Berlin

More user group meetings in the coming days.
The meetup/mashup tour are events where the Sun and MySQL communities will meet, merge, discuss technology, socialize, and drink together.
On April 2nd the meetup is in a pub in Paris, where I expect that the drinking will overcome the technology, but I will let you know if things turn out different.
Milan will follow on April 3rd, in a more conservative venue (Sun conference hall), but the drinking doesn't have to be underestimated.
Hamburg on April 7th and Berlin on 8th will be definitely technical. The technical drink will start after the geeky stuff.

Logs of IRC Meetup session with Ian Murdock

As Kaj announced, there was a IRC session with Ian Murdock on March 5.
Since I have been working in a virtual company for 18 months, I should not be surprised about this kind of events. Actually, IRC has become part of my life. I could not conceive working efficiently without it. When some new colleague asks me to have a simple phone call, without any IRC or other char facilities, I start shaking at the idea of such poor and antiquate way of communicating.
Even for one with experience, though, a public IRC meeting in a crowded #room is quite an experience. The "location" for the meeting is room #mysql on irc.freenode.net, a room that normally contains 400~500 people, where the level of noise is quite high.

Having a public interview in such room is like crashing a party of bikers and start talking philosophy. The beauty of the system is that nobody seem to care. The bikers continue talking about their stuff, and our interview on philosophy went quite smoothly, albeit intermingled with requests of help (promptly answered by a bunch of MySQL geeks) and some trollish shouting that added color to the picture.
For the curious ones, here is the full session logs.

Munich-Orlando with special outfit

My world tour includes mostly warm places (Orlando, Los Angeles, Australia, Singapore), but to cover the first leg, Munich, I needed warm clothes (cover is the operative word here).
Thus, when I saw a skilled craftsman creating customized hats and scarfs, I couldn't resist.
The weather in Orlando does not require such gear. This is a view form my hotel room.
. We are going to have MySQL company meeting in this beautiful place. For now, I am just nursing my jet lag and preparing to meet a few hundred colleagues.