The roads I take...
KaiRo's weBlog
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28. Februar 2011
Weekly Status Report, W08/2011
- Mozilla work / Socorro:
In my work for Mozilla, I finished going though all open Socorro bugs and categorize them (in Bugzilla tags for now), also adding some additional categories where it made sense to create an extra bucket to highlight a certain group of issues or requests.
As a first spec for implementations of crash-stats features, I started work on an algorithm to identify "explosive" crashes in the system, i.e. ones with a significant increase in volume. - Search Bar and OpenSearch Engine Manager:
I didn't come around to actually do any more work on my optional search bar patch but I got the first round of review, as expected with a significant list of things I need to look into before doing another patch. - Themes:
Next to some sync-with-trunk work on LCARStrek and EarlyBlue, I also got around to doing some testing of the work-in-progress LCARStrek support for Firefox 4 and get some patches in to start making it usable. Still significantly more work to do there, but it's starting to move in the right direction. - Various Discussions/Topics:
SeaMonkey planning, Firefox moving to RC stage, getting used to a desktop touchscreen, deciding to upgrade desktop system and finding components, etc.
I currently find that my usual communications flow (bugmail, newsgroup and planet reading, etc.) and the fixed-time Mozilla work are taking up almost all time I have for doing work, so not very much is left over to care about real SeaMonkey tasks right now. I'll need to see if I can trim down the communication/information part to squeeze out more time - but then, a good part of that is info I need to coordinate what's going on in SeaMonkey, so some part of that counts for this, I guess.
The upside is that the SeaMonkey developer community makes good progress on fixing things without me really looking at its code, and we already have almost 50 fixed bugs for 2.1 Beta 3, even though Beta 2 has just been released a short time ago.
Von KaiRo, um 22:01 | Tags: L10n, Mozilla, SeaMonkey, Status | keine Kommentare | TrackBack: 0
21. Februar 2011
Weekly Status Report, W07/2011
- Build Infrastructure:
Supported Callek with his finally pushing out the SeaMonkey 2.1 Beta 2 release and InvisibleSmiley with doing some steps for the website on the way towards a 2.0.12 security update.
I did some review and commenting on the better cleanup on updates patches, which ewong thankfully has been working on. - Mozilla work / Socorro:
As I blogged about a few days ago, I started contracting for Mozilla and for this project, I am engaged in finding a roadmap for getting better results out of the crash stats system (Socorro).
I had a few conversations and phone meetings with the people I'm working with in this project, including an interesting phone conferencce with the Socorro team on finding "duplicate" crash reports in our system.
In addition, I worked though roughly half of the ~400 open Socorro bugs and tried to categorize them - for now in private Bugzilla tags to not generate a lot of bugmail, but I'll get this into public data when I'm done with all of them and after coordination with the team. - Search Bar and OpenSearch Engine Manager:
As I saw that nobody else will pick this one up, I did some updates to my optional search bar patch and did put it up for review, as esp. the included OpenSearch engine manager is something we're really missing in SeaMonkey 2.1 at this moment. I hope I'll be able to address the review comments in time to get this into Beta 3 still, but I have no idea how much time I'll have left for this, as the Socorro work has priority. - Themes:
I finished my work to sync up my LCARStrek and EarlyBlue themes with SeaMonkey 2.1 Beta 2 and released fitting versions on the AMO beta channel. - German L10n:
I synched up the SeaMonkey L10n with trunk once more.
On the add-ons site, I cared to submit the versions for 2.1 Beta 2 and 2.0.12 of the German SeaMonkey language pack, so that users should be able to get updates from there. - Various Discussions/Topics:
More Fennec testing on the N900, Firefox 4 endgame, Nokia and MeeGo, drumbeat and walled-garden services, local FSFE group meeting, etc.
I found out in the last few days how time constraints, in this case, setting aside the specific amount of time I get paid for my Mozilla contract, enables me to operate more efficiently. That's not to say that I don't allow myself to get sidetracked on occasion, but I very soon get back to doing what I intended to - and of course, I try to get away from any sidetracking whatsoever in the paid time. Reducing chances to get distracted is quite helpful in getting more measurable stuff done, after all, and that works well. Of course, being motivated on a new job always helps increasing efficiency in all areas of life.
Von KaiRo, um 17:34 | Tags: L10n, Mozilla, SeaMonkey, Status | keine Kommentare | TrackBack: 0
16. Februar 2011
Auftragsarbeit für Mozilla!
Aus diesen Gründen habe ich auch bereits begonnen, einige meiner Verantwortungsbereiche im SeaMonkey-Projekt an andere zu übergeben - wie das Release-Engineering an Callek, zum Beispiel - und ich arbeite an weiteren derartigen Schritten. Im Endeffekt möchte ich, dass mir nur mehr die deutsche Übersetzung und der "Owner"-Status im comm-central Build-System übrig bleibt, sowie einer der Mitglieder im SeaMonkey-Council zu sein - zumindest im Moment. Aber bis dorthin ist noch einiges zu tun, und ich möchste, dass dies ein sanfter, schrittweiser Übergang wird, sodass das SeaMonkey-Projekt aus dieser Zeit mindestens gleich stark, wenn nicht stärker als vorher, herausgehen kann.
Gleichzeitig - und das ist der Kern dieses Beitrags und etwas, das sich schon seit einiger Zeit zusammenbraut - beginne ich, woanders Erfahrungen zu sammeln. Ab dem heutigen Tag beginne ich einen Teil meiner Zeit offiziell für Mozilla zu arbeiten - derzeit heißt das, auf Auftragsbasis halbzeit ca. 3 Monate lang an einem Projekt zu arbeiten, aber ich hoffe, dass daraus ein fruchtbares Verhältnis wird, das in der Zukunft noch große Zeiten erleben wird.
Meine Arbeit bei Mozilla ist dabei generell im Bereich des "Program Management" angesiedelt - das konkrete Projekt, an dem ich in den nächsten Monate arbeiten werden, ist dabei, eine Strategie für Socorro (unser Absturz-Statistik-System) aufzustellen. Ich werde nicht an Code arbeiten, sondern mit dem Socorro-Team und den anderen Mozilla-Managern und -Entwicklern zusammenarbeiten, um einen Plan zu finden, woran die Entwickler in den nächsten Monaten arbeiten werden, um eine zusätzliche Perspektive zu finden, wie das Absturz-System verwendet werden kann, um als Hilfe für Release-Entscheidungen zu dienen, und sich nicht nur um die Analyse spezifischer Bugs dreht. Eine Menge Arbeit steht bevor, die über 400 Änderungswünsche und Bugs zu konsolidieren, die sich um das Socorro-System aufgestaut haben und um einige detailliertere Spezifikationen für etwas komplexe Gebiete aufzustellen, sodass wir Systeme bauen können, mit denen wir Absturzdaten besser verstehen und effektiver nutzen können. Ich kann jedenfalls aus der gesamten Community Vorschläge gut gebrauchen, wie wir dieses Ziel möglichst gut erreichen können.
Die positive Seite an einem Übergang in dieser Art für mich liegt darin, dass Socorro für alle Mozilla-Anwendungen zur Anwendung kommt und ich etwas Erfahrung (wenn auch nicht allzu viel) mit der Verwendung dieses Systems habe. Da ich ebenfalls Erfahrungen mit dem Release-Management von Mozilla-Produkten habe und den Diskussionen von Firefox-Release-Managern sowie der Security-Gruppe schon länger folge, sollten mir Einschätzungen leichter fallen, wo der Fokus für Absturz-Berichte und -Statistiken liegen kann.
Für mich persönlich habe ich dem Projekt den Spitznamen "Veridian 3" (eine fiktionelle Absturzstelle) aufgesetzt, und in einem ersten Klassifizierungslauf werden meine internen Tags auf Bugzilla daher mit "V3" beginnen - aber diese Name sollte nicht aus meiner privaten Verwendung anderswo hin durchschlagen, um andere nicht verrückt zu machen.
Einiges an konzentrierter Arbeit liegt vor mir und auch einige Dinge, die ich nicht gewohnt bin, wie einer spezifischen Person Bericht zu erstatten bzw. unterstellt zu sein oder Pläne zu erarbeitet, für deren Ausführung tatsächlich andere bezahlt werden, aber ich bin zuversichtlich, dies erfolgreich zu meistern und meinen Beitrag zu einem besseren Absturz-Statistik-System für uns alle zu leisten.
Also, seid darauf gefasst, dass ihr mich in naher Zukunft etwas weniger auf den üblichen Plätzen seht, aber dafür an einigen neuen Bereichen!
Von KaiRo, um 14:25 | Tags: Firefox, future, Mozilla, SeaMonkey, Socorro, Veridian 3 | keine Kommentare | TrackBack: 0
Contracting for Mozilla!
Given all that, I started to shift a number of my responsibilities in the SeaMonkey project over to other people - like Callek for release engineering, for example - and I'm working on more in that area. In the end, I probably want to end up only having the German localization and the comm-central build system ownership left, as well as being one of the members of the SeaMonkey Council - for now. But there's still some way to go there, and I'm trying to make this a smooth, step-by-step process so that the SeaMonkey project can come out as strong or even stronger than before from this period.
At the same time - and here's the meat of this post as well as something that has been brewing for a while - I'm starting to get my feet wet in different areas. Starting today, I'm officially working for Mozilla part of my time - for now, this means contracting on a roughly 3-month project I'm working on half-time, but I hope this proves to be a fruitful relationship that has some great times still to come.
My work within Mozilla is positioned in the general area of program management - the concrete project I will be working on in the upcoming months is putting together a strategy for Socorro (the crash stats system we're using). I will not work on the code, but rather work with the Socorro team and the other Mozilla managers and developers to find a roadmap for what the developers will work on in the following months that will bring some additional perspective of how to use the crash system to help enable people to make product release decisions, and not just around analyzing specific crash bugs. There is a lot of work here to consolidate the over 400 change requests and bugs that have built up around the Socorro system, and create some more details specs for some of the more intricate areas that will help us to build systems that help to understand our crash data better, and how to use it more effectively. I can definitely use suggestions across the entire community of how we can meet this goal more effectively.
The positive side in terms of a transition for myself is that Socorro affects all Mozilla applications and I have some experience (even if not too much) in looking at it and seeing what this system is actually about. Also, having release management experience for a Mozilla project and having been following discussions of Firefox release managers as well as the security group helps in having insights into what is in the focus when it comes to looking at crash reports and statistics.
For me personally, I have dubbed this project "Veridian 3" and in the first round of bug triage I'll be doing, my internal tags will start off with "V3" because of that - but this name will probably not leak outside my private use, for other people's sanity.
There's a good amount of intense work ahead and some things I'm not used to like reporting to a specific person or making plans other people are actually paid to work on, but I'm confident to master those and come out with having my part in helping us all to have a better crash stats system.
So be prepared to see me appearing somewhat less in the usual places but instead in some new areas in the near future!
Von KaiRo, um 14:24 | Tags: Firefox, future, Mozilla, SeaMonkey, Socorro, Veridian 3 | 7 Kommentare | TrackBack: 2
14. Februar 2011
Weekly Status Report, W06/2011
- Build Infrastructure:
Worked more with Callek on release system issues, reviewed the fix for the largest build 1 issue, and did some very in-deep update testing with 2.1 Beta 2 build 2 after we saw some strange results in update verification. This resulted in a bug for cleaning up better in future builds as well as on the large error with partial updates we have this time - which will end up in only shipping complete updates for this Beta.
I also added the new versions for current 2.1 builds in Socorro (crash-stats).
In addition, I did some testing on the new graphs server, which led to a couple of bug reports and fixes there. - Data Manager:
The work on adding a web storage panel could progress as far as having view and removal for all types of storage where I think I can support those for now. What's still missing is dynamic updates of the view and "forget" support.
When I stumbled over some support for cleaning Plugin storage (e.g. "Flash cookies") being added to NPAPI, I filed a bug on getting support for it into Data Manager as well. - Themes:
I did most of the routine work to make both my LCARStrek and EarlyBlue themes be up to date with 2.1 Beta 2, but some bug fixes still remain to be done. - Various Discussions/Topics:
Working around nouveau instabilities by turning acceleration off, more Fennec testing on the N900, fighting wiki spam, almost making the next step in my future official, Firefox 4 endgame, etc.
I sent some time this week recuperating from FOSDEM and getting back in sync with reality. Also, starting Friday, I followed the discussions around the "NoWin deal" following blog posts from me on "Hands off Nokia" (in German) and callings for device vendors to jump onto the MeeGo train right now as a reaction from that (next to amusing myself watching Nokia stock fall to the floor). In between, I did help a lot with Callek getting 2.1 Beta 2 on the road, and we should be very near to its release now - with a load of improvements over 2.1 Beta 1, and all the web-facing beauty that also lies within Firefox 4 Beta 11.
These are surely interesting times!
Von KaiRo, um 20:22 | Tags: L10n, Mozilla, SeaMonkey, Status | keine Kommentare | TrackBack: 0
7. Februar 2011
Weekly Status Report, W05/2011
- Build Infrastructure:
Worked with Callek on issues that came up with generating SeaMonkey 2.1 Beta 2 builds as well as some general cleanup/updates in our buildbot code.
For 2.0.x, I added the new versions in Socorro (crash-stats).
I also helped some more with investigating and fixing some omni.jar switch fallout, including a Mac menu problem I could fix with an easy patch. - Data Manager:
My IDN search fix landed on SeaMonkey in time for 2.1b2.
I also continued the work on adding a web storage panel. There's a few management functions missing in the global management services for some web storage stuff, for which I cared that bugs are filed, but so far it looks like I can deal with that by some workarounds at least. - German L10n:
After Sync landed, I updated German SeaMonkey once again to be in sync (yes!) with this and other current trunk changes in time for Beta 2. - SeaMonkey L10n:
Right in time for starting the Beta 2 builds, I went through more sign-off requests, so that this next milestone can ship in 15 languages including US English - and more should be coming for the next, as I still needed to reject a few sign-offs due to things that should not be too hard to fix. - FOSDEM:
The FOSDEM conference was taking up a lot of space this week, from creating the slides (might need FF4 or SM 2.1 to view) for my talk about In-tab UI via tarveling to and from Brussels to actually participating in the beer event, the conference, including the Mozilla DevRoom, and the Mozilla dinner and evening activities (I failed to come out last in bowling but we beat the blue team in laser tag!).
The event was as great as it was in the past, and I especially enjoyed coming into contact with people from other projects (including some KDE people, one of which was a prime example of female FLOSS coders, I hope those will be less of an exception in the future) - and giving a talk that was more mainstream than what I did in the past. - Various Discussions/Topics:
Ongoing nouveau driver instabilities, more Fennec testing on the N900, fighting wiki spam, getting SeaMonkey future moving, coming close to making the next step in my future official, Firefox 4 UI and Betas, etc.
I enjoy how things are moving quite a lot now in multiple places, be it on where SeaMonkey is going (I could finally publish the SeaMonkey Council changes, but we're working on even larger things), where I'm going personally (will blog more about that soon), or even the new betas and nearing releases of both Firefox 4 (desktop and mobile) and SeaMonkey 2.1, which both will be great products with really interesting functionality (and all of those will be able to sync data with each other seamlessly)! The more this year progresses, the more interesting it becomes!
Von KaiRo, um 22:29 | Tags: L10n, Mozilla, SeaMonkey, Status | keine Kommentare | TrackBack: 0