[ubuntu-studio-devel] Development for 14.04 - Planning

[Kaj Ailomaa]

Contents:

1. About development planning for this cycle
  1.2. About the "ubuntu" project
2. Create your own blueprints (who, me? - Yes you!),  or add your
workitems to existing blueprints
  2.1. Core Topic
  2.2. Applications Topic
  2.3. Testing Topic
  2.4. Art Topic
  2.5. Website and Social Topic
  2.6. Documentation Topic
3. Next Step - Attracting Contributors

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# 1. About development planning for this cycle #

I finally got around to preparing planning for this cycle of
development. There are a few changes since laste couple of cycles.
Preparing for this, I've done some reorganization on our Launchpad
projects previously, making sure there is a project for every package
and a team for every purpose, and so on.

Documentation about Ubuntu Studio planning is somewhat updated, and can
be found here https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio/CoreTeamDocumentation

Blueprints structure is reorganized. How it works now is:

 * Each launchpad project will have its own blueprints
 * the launchpad project called "ubuntustudio" has topic blueprints that
 depend on other Ubuntu Studio projects
 * Any number of bluieprints can be dependencies of one topic blueprint.
 The topics make it easier to separate the different types of blueprints
 (most people will only be dealing with 1-3 topics at most)

As stated here http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio/Blueprints, the
topics for this cycle are:

ubuntustudio-t (main topic)
 - core-t (core packages)
 - applications-t (our own applications)
 - testing-t (testing, and development of testing tools)
 - art-t
 - website-social-t (our website and social channels)
 - documentation-t (user and developer docs, on DVD, wikis, video and
 our website)

## 1.2. About the "ubuntu" project

I think Ubuntu folks would rather we do some of our blueprints within
the "ubuntu" launchpad project, as that makes it possible to keep an eye
on what we are up to, and enables the usage of the
http://status.ubuntu.com page, but I think we should just make sure to
get feedback from ubuntu devs when that might be required (as we
recently learned from our GRUB customizations).
Also, I'm looking into the possibility of creating our own status page
from the tools that are used for the Ubuntu one.

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# 2. Create your own blueprints (who, me? Yes, you!), or add your
workitems to existing blueprints #

We're drafting blueprints now, so please look through any blueprints
that might interest you, and suggest new ones, or edit the ones that
exist.
Before you do any editing, make sure that you are apart the relevant
Ubuntu Studio launchpad team, and that our team is aware of your
efforts. Just answer this mail if you're interested in helping out.

## 2.1. Core Topic ##

These two topics are fairly well figured out so far. What is missing is
a clear specification for how to solve the problem of having multiple
DEs.
Some of the things I'm looking forward to us getting done is doing some
jack plumbing (either starting jack, if not running, when opening any
jack app, or informing the user that they need to start jack first), as
well as making realtime privilege a normality on any Debian derived
distro. Not all can be done from our core packages though.

## 2.2. Applications Topic ##

The major goal for this cycle is developing ubuntustudio-controls from
scratch, which is long overdue, and there are a massive amount of things
we could use if for, so if you are into any kind of scripting or coding,
and would like to help with this, please join us in doing that.
We also have our custom menu (ubuntustudio-menu), which is strictly not
an applications, but it's installable without Ubuntu Studio and sort of
works as a standalone application.
Then there's ubuntustudio-installer, which is fairly basic now, but if
someone would like to, it could be enhanced so as to simplify finding
and installing studio applications on any Ubuntu derived distribution
(and why not making it generic, and upload it into Debian?)

## 2.3. Testing Topic ##

This is a topic that no one has really done anything significant with
yet, so if someone is interested, please consider contributing to this
area of our development.
We need to:
 * Figure out what tools to use, and perhaps develope some small tools
 of our own (could result in a package that we upload to Ubuntu repos)
 * Organize our testing and make sure everything that needs testing gets
 tested

## 2.4. Art Topic ##

I've prepared blueprints for existing launchpad projects, that deal with
art. The ambition is probably to revamp art completely for 14.04. I've
also prepared a blueprint for how to organize user contribution of
wallpapers.

Art plays a very significant role in communicating with users, so I'm
putting a special significance to what we decide on this for 14.04. 

## 2.5. Website and Social Topic ##

We should think about redoing our Website theme, and doing some updates
to art and documentation.

## 2.6. Documentation Topic ##

As always, user documentation is lacking. If we can find someone willing
to work on this, that would be great. 

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# Next step - Attracting Contributors #

There is a structure for how we do things, all though the work continues
on that. We need to set some rules on how we work with our sources among
other things.
But, for non coding work, we should really try getting people involved
as quickly as possible. 
I started a blueprint about that as well, within the Ubuntu Studio
project (which suits well for any kind of miscellaneous planning that
does not fit a specific topic)
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntustudio/+spec/get-contributors.

/Kaj Ailomaa - Ubuntu Studio project lead