Planet Debian

My FOSS activities for August & September 2017

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I am writing this from my hotel room in Bologna, Italy before going out for a pizza. After a successful Factory Acceptance Test today, I might also allow myself to celebrate with a beer. But anyway, here is what I have been up to in the FLOSS world for the last month and a bit.

Debian

  • Uploaded gramps (4.2.6) to stretch-backports & jessie-backports-sloppy.
  • Started working on the latest release of node-tmp. It needs further work due to new documentation being included etc.
  • Started working on packaging the latest goocanvas-2.0 package. Everything is ready except for producing some autopkgtests.
  • Moved node-coffeeify experimental to unstable.
  • Updated the Multimedia Blends Tasks with all the latest ITPs etc.
  • Reviewed doris for Antonio Valentino, and sponsored it for him.
  • Reviewed pyresample for Antonio Valentino, and sponsored it for him.
  • Reviewed a new parlatype package for Gabor Karsay, and sponsored it for him.

Ubuntu

  • Successfully did my first merge using git-ubuntu for the Qjackctl package. Thanks to Nish for patiently answering my questions, reviewing my work, and sponsoring the upload.
  • Refreshed the gramps backport request to 4.2.6. Still no willing sponsor.
  • Tested Len’s rewrite of ubuntustudio-controls, adding a CPU governor option in particular. There are a couple of minor things to tidy up, but we have probably missed the chance to get it finalised for Artful.
  • Tested the First Beta release of Ubuntu Studio 17.10 Artful and wrote the release notes. Also drafted my first release announcement on the Ubunti Studio website which Eylul reviewed and published.
  • Refreshed the ubuntustudio-meta package and requested sponsorship. This was done by Steve Langasek. Thanks Steve.
  • Tested the Final Beta release of Ubuntu Studio 17.10 Artful and wrote the release notes.
  • Started working on a new Carla package, starting from where VĂ­ctor Cuadrado Juan left it (ITP in Debian).

My Debian & Ubuntu work from April to mid-August 2017

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Okay, so I have been slack with my blogging again. I have been travelling around Europe with work quite a bit, had a short holiday over Easter in Denmark, and also had 3 weeks of Summer Holiday in Germany.

Debian

  • Tidied up the packaging and tried building the latest version of libdrumstick, but tests had been added to the package by upstream which were failing. I still need to get back and investigate that.
  • Updated node-seq (targeted at experimental due to the Debian Stretch release freeze) and asked for sponsorship (as I did not have DM rights for it yet).
  • Uploaded the latest version of abcmidi (also to experimental), and again.
  • Updated node-tmp to the latest version and uploaded to experimental.
  • Worked some more on bluebird RFP, but getting errors when running tests. I still haven’t gone back to investigate that.
  • Updated node-coffeeify to the latest version and uploaded to experimental.
  • Uploaded the latest version of node-os-tmpdir (also to experimental).
  • Uploaded the latest version of node-concat-stream (also to experimental).
  • After encouragement from several Debian Developers, I applied to become a full Debian Developer. Over the summer months I worked with Santiago as my Application Manager and answered questions about working in the Debian Project.
  • A web vulnerability was identified in node-concat-stream, so I prepared a fix to the version in unstable, uploaded it to unstable, and submitted a unblock request bug so that it would be fixed in the coming Debian Stretch release.
  • Debian 10 (Stretch) was released! Yay!
  • Moved abcmidi from experimental to unstable, adding an autopkgtest at the same time.
  • Moved node-concat-stream from experimental to unstable. During the process I had to take care of the intermediate upload to stretch (on a separate branch) because of the freeze.
  • Moved node-tmp to unstable from experimental.
  • Moved node-os-tmpdir from experimental to unstable.
  • Filed a removal bug for creepy, which seems to be unmaintained upstream these days. Sent my unfinished Qt4 to Qt5 porting patches upstream just in case!
  • Uploaded node-object-inspect to experimental to check the reverse dependencies, then moved it to unstable. Then a new upstream version came out which is now in experimental waiting for a retest of reverse dependencies.
  • Uploaded the latest version of gramps (4.2.6).
  • Uploaded a new version of node-cross-spawn to experimental.
  • Discovered that I had successfully completed the DD application process and I was now a Debian Developer. I celebrated by uploading the Debian Multimedia Blends package to the NEW queue, which I was not able to do before!
  • Tweaked and uploaded the node-seq package (with an RC fix) which had been sitting there because I did not have DM rights to the package. It is not an important package anyhow, as it is just one of the many dependencies that need to be packaged for Browserify.
  • Packaged and uploaded the latest node-isarray directly to unstable, as the changes seemed harmless.
  • Prepared and uploaded the latest node-js-yaml to experimental.
  • Did an update to the Node packaging Manual now that we are allowed to use “node” as the executable in Debian instead of “nodejs” which caused us to do a lot of patching in the past to get node packages working in Debian.

Ubuntu

  • Did a freeze exception bug for ubuntustudio-controls, but we did not manage to get it sponsored before the Ubuntu Studio Zesty 17.04 release.
  • Investigated why Ardour was not migrating from zesty-proposed, but I couldn’t be sure of what was holding it up. After getting some help from the Developer’s mailing list, I prepared “no change rebuild” of pd-aubio which was sponsored by Steve Langasek after a little tweak. This did the trick.
  • Wrote to the Ubuntu Studio list asking for support for testing the Ubuntu Studio Zesty release, as I would be on holiday in the lead up to the release. When I got back, I found the release had gone smoothly. Thanks team!
  • Worked on some blueprints for the next Ubuntu Studio Artful release.
  • As Set no longer has enough spare time to work on Ubuntu Studio, we had a meeting on IRC to decide what to do. We decided that we should set up a Council like Xubuntu have. I drafted an announcement, but we still have not gone live with it yet. Maybe someone will have read this far and give us a push (or help). 🙂
  • Did a quick test of Len’s ubuntustudio-controls re-write (at least the GUI bits). We better get a move on if we want this to be part of Artful!
  • Tested ISO for Ubuntu Studio Xenial 16.04.3 point release, and updated the release notes.
  • Started working on a merge of Qjackctl using git-ubuntu for the first time. Had some issues getting going, so I asked the authors for some advice.

My March 2017 Activities

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March was a busy month, so this monthly report is a little late. I worked two weekends, and I was planning my Easter holiday, so there wasn’t a lot of spare time.

Debian

  •  Updated Dominate to the latest version and uploaded to experimental (due to the Debian Stretch release freeze).
  • Uploaded the latest version of abcmidi (also to experimental).
  • Pinged the bugs for reverse dependencies of pygoocanvas and goocanvas with a view to getting them removed from the archive during the Buster cycle.
  • Asked for help on the Ubuntu Studio developers and users mailing lists to test the coming Ubuntu Studio 17.04 release ISO, because I would be away on holiday for most of it.

Ubuntu

  • Worked on ubuntustudio-controls, reverting it back to an earlier revision that Len said was working fine. Unfortunately, when I built and installed it from my ppa, it crashed. Eventually found my mistake with the bzr reversion, fixed it and prepared an upload ready for sponsorship. Submitted a Freeze Exception bug in the hope that the Release Team would accept it even though we had missed the Final Beta.
  • Put a new power supply in an old computer that was kaput, and got it working again. Set up Ubuntu Server 16.04 on it so that I could get a bit more experience with running a server. It won’t last very long, because it is a 32 bit machine, and Ubuntu will probably drop support for that architecture eventually. I used two small spare drives to set up RAID 1 & LVM (so that I can add more space to it later). I set up some Samba shares, so that my wife will be able to get at them from her Windows machine. For music streaming, I set up Emby Server. I wold be great to see this packaged for Debian. I uploaded all of my photos and music for Emby to serve around the home (and remotely as well). Set up Obnam to back up the server to an external USB stick (temporarily until I set up something remote). Set LetsEncrypt with the wonderful Certbot program.
  • Did the Release Notes for Ubuntu Studio 17.04 Final Beta. As I was in Brussels for two days, I was not able to do any ISO testing myself.

Other

  • Measured up the new model railway layout and documented it in xtrkcad.
  • Started learning Ansible some more by setting up ssh on all my machines so that I could access them with Ansible and manipulate them using a playbook.
  • Went to the Open Source Days conference just down the road in Copenhagen. Saw some good presentations. Of interest for my previous work in the Debian GIS Team, was a presentation from the Danish Municipalities on how they run projects using Open Source. I noted how their use of Proj 4 and OSGeo. I was also pleased to see a presentation from Ximin Luo on Reproducible Builds, and introduced myself briefly after his talk (during the break).
  • Started looking at creating a Django website to store and publish my One Name Study sources (indexes).  Started by creating a library to list some of my recently read Journals. I will eventually need to import all the others I have listed in a cvs spreadsheet that was originally exported from the commercial (Windows only) Custodian software.

Plan status from last month & update for next month

Debian

For the Debian Stretch release:

  • Keep an eye on the Release Critical bugs list, and see if I can help fix any. – In Progress

Generally:

  • Package all the latest upstream versions of my Debian packages, and upload them to Experimental to keep them out of the way of the Stretch release. – In Progress
  • Begin working again on all the new stuff I want packaged in Debian.

Ubuntu

  • Start working on an Ubuntu Studio package tracker website so that we can keep an eye on the status of the packages we are interested in. – Started
  • Start testing & bug triaging Ubuntu Studio packages. – In progress
  • Test Len’s work on ubuntustudio-controls – Done
  • Do the Ubuntu Studio Zesty 17.04 Final Beta release. – Done
  • Sort out the Blueprints for the coming Ubuntu Studio 17.10 release cycle.

Other

  • Give JMRI a good try out and look at what it would take to package it. – In progress
  • Also look at OpenPLC for simulating the relay logic of real railway interlockings (i.e. a little bit of the day job at home involving free software – fun!). – In progress

Resurrecting my old Drupal Site

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As I have previously blogged, I recently managed to resurrect my old Drupal site that ran in the Amazon AWS cloud, and get it working again on a new host. I have just written up a summary of how I battled through the process, which can be found here.

Unfortunately, I took a long time to write it up. So it is not as detailed as I originally intended. But if like me you run a Drupal site, or you did and it is also broken, then feel free to follow the link for a read. It may at least give some ideas to follow up. I made heavy use of DrupalVM. If you are just starting out with a Drupal website, and you have more than FTP access to your hosting, I recommend using  DrupalVM (which is built with Vagrant & Ansible) for local development and testing.

February 2017 – My Free Software activities summary

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When I sat down to write this blog, I thought I hadn’t got much done in February. But as it took  me quite a while to write up, there must have actually been a little bit of progress. With my wife starting a new job, there have been some adjustments in family life, and I have struggled just to keep up with all the Debian and Ubuntu emails. Anyway……..

Debian

Ubuntu

  • Tested Ubuntu Studio 16.02.2 point release, marked as ready, and updated the Release Notes.
  • Started updating my previous Gramps backport in Ubuntu to Gramps 4.2.5. The package builds fine, and I have tested that it installs and works. I just need to update the bug.
  • Prepared updates to the ubuntustudio-default-settings & ubuntustudio-meta packages. There were some deferred changes from before Yakkety was released, including moving the final bit of configuration left in the ubuntustudio-lightdm-theme package to ubuntustudio-default-settings. Jeremy Bicha sponsored the uploads after suggesting moving away from some transitional ttf font packages in ubuntustudio-meta.
  • Tested the Ubuntu Studio 17.04 First Beta release, marked as ready, and prepared the Release Notes.
  • Upgraded my music studio Ubuntu Studio computer to Yakkety 16.1o.
  • Got accepted as an Ubuntu Contributing Developer by the Developer Membership Board.

Other

  • After a merge of my Family Tree with the Family Tree of my wife in Gramps a long way back, I finally started working through the database merging duplicates and correcting import errors.
  • Worked some more on the model railway, connecting up the other end of the tunnel section with the rest of the railway.

Plan status from last month & update for next month

Debian

For the Debian Stretch release:

  • Keep an eye on the Release Critical bugs list, and see if I can help fix any. – In Progress

Generally:

  • Finish the Gramps 5.2.5 backport for Jessie. – Done
  • Package all the latest upstream versions of my Debian packages, and upload them to Experimental to keep them out of the way of the Stretch release.
  • Begin working again on all the new stuff I want packaged in Debian.

Ubuntu

  • Finish the ubuntustudio-lightdm-theme, ubuntustudio-default-settings transition including an update to the ubuntustudio-meta packages. – Done
  • Reapply to become a Contributing Developer. – Done
  • Start working on an Ubuntu Studio package tracker website so that we can keep an eye on the status of the packages we are interested in. – Started
  • Start testing & bug triaging Ubuntu Studio packages. – In progress
  • Test Len’s work on ubuntustudio-controls – In progress
  • Do the Ubuntu Studio Zesty 17.04 Final Beta release.

Other

  • Give JMRI a good try out and look at what it would take to package it. – In progress
  • Also look at OpenPLC for simulating the relay logic of real railway interlockings (i.e. a little bit of the day job at home involving free software – fun!). – In progress

My Monthly Update for January 2017

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It has been a quiet start to the year due to work keeping me very busy. Most of my spare time (when not sitting shattered on the sofa) was spent resurrecting my old website from backups. My son had plenty of visitors coming to visit as well, which prompted me to restart work on my model railway in the basement. Last year I received a whole heap of track, and also a tunnel formation from a friend at work. I managed to finish the supporting structure for the tunnel, and connect one end of it to the existing track layout. The next step (which will be a bit harder) is to connect the other end of the tunnel into the existing layout. The basement is one of the favourite things for me to keep my son and his friends occupied when there is a visit. The railway and music studio are very popular with the little guests.

Debian

  • Packaged latest Gramps 4.2.5 release for Debian so that it will be part of the Stretch release.
  • Package latest abcmidi release so it too would be part of Stretch. The upstream author had changed his website, so it took a while to locate a tarball.
  • Tested my latest patches to convert Cree.py to Qt5, but found another Qt4 – Qt5 change to take into account (SIGNAL function). I ran out of time to fully investigate that one, before Creepy was booted out of testing again. I am seriously considering the removal of Cree.py from Debian, as the upstream maintainer does not seem very active any more, and I am a little tired of being upstream for a project that I don’t actually use myself. It was only because it was a reverse dependency of osm-gps-map that I originally got involved.
  • Started preparing a Gramps 5.2.5 backport for Jessie, but found that the tests I enabled in unstable were failing in the Jessie build. I need to investigate this further.

Ubuntu

  • Announced the Ubuntu Studio 16.02.2 point release date on the Ubuntu Studio mailing lists asking for testers. The date subsequently got put back to February the 9th.
  • Upgraded my Ubuntu Studio machine from Wily to Xenial.

Other

  • Resurrected my old Drupal Gammon One Name Study website. I used Drupal VM to get the site going again, before transferring it to the new webhost. It was originally a Drupal 7 site, and I did not have the required versions of Ansible & Vagrant on my Ubuntu Xenial machine, so the process was quite involved. I will blog about that separately, as it may be a useful lesson for others. As part of that, I started on a backport of vagrant, but found a bug which I need to follow up on.
  • Also managed to extract my old WordPress blog posts from the same machine that had the failed Drupal instance, and import them into this blog. I also learnt some stuff in that process that I will blog about at some point.

Plan status from last month & update for next month

Debian

Before the 5th February 2017 Debian Stretch hard freeze I hope to:

For the Debian Stretch release:

Generally:

  • Finish the Gramps 5.2.5 backport for Jessie.
  • Package all the latest upstream versions of my Debian packages, and upload them to Experimental to keep them out of the way of the Stretch release.
  • Begin working again on all the new stuff I want packaged in Debian.

Ubuntu

  • Finish the ubuntustudio-lightdm-theme, ubuntustudio-default-settings transition including an update to the ubuntustudio-meta packages. – Still to do (actually started today)
  • Reapply to become a Contributing Developer. – Still to do
  • Start working on an Ubuntu Studio package tracker website so that we can keep an eye on the status of the packages we are interested in. – Started
  • Start testing & bug triaging Ubuntu Studio packages. – Still to do
  • Test Len’s work on ubuntustudio-controls – Still to do

Other

  • Try and resurrect my old Gammon one-name study Drupal website from a backup and push it to the new GoONS Website project. – Done
  • Give JMRI a good try out and look at what it would take to package it. – In progress
  • Also look at OpenPLC for simulating the relay logic of real railway interlockings (i.e. a little bit of the day job at home involving free software – fun!).

Happy New Year – My Free Software activities in December 2016

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So that was 2016! Here’s a summary of what I got up to on my computer(s) in December, a check of how I went against my plan, and the TODO list for the next month or so.

With a short holiday to Oslo, Christmas holidays, Christmas parties (at work and with Alexander at school, football etc.), travelling to Brussels with work, birthdays (Alexander & Antje), I missed a lot of deadlines, and failed to reach most of my Free Software goals (including my goals for new & updated packages in Debian Stretch – the soft freeze is in a couple of days). To top it all off, I lost my grandmother at the ripe old age of 93. Rest in peace Nana. I wish I could have made it to the funeral, but it is sometimes tough living on the other side of the world to your family.

Debian

Ubuntu

  • Added the Ubuntu Studio testsuites to the package tracker, and blogged about running the Manual Tests.

Other

Plan status & update for next month

Debian

Before the 5th January 2017 Debian Stretch soft freeze I hope to:

For the Debian Stretch release:

Ubuntu

  • Add the Ubuntu Studio Manual Testsuite to the package tracker, and try to encourage some testing of the newest versions of our priority packages. – Done
  • Finish the ubuntustudio-lightdm-theme, ubuntustudio-default-settings transition including an update to the ubuntustudio-meta packages. – Still to do
  • Reapply to become a Contributing Developer. – Still to do
  • Start working on an Ubuntu Studio package tracker website so that we can keep an eye on the status of the packages we are interested in. – Still to do
  • Start testing & bug triaging Ubuntu Studio packages.
  • Test Len’s work on ubuntustudio-controls

Other

  • Continue working to convert my Family History website to Jekyll – Done
  • Try and resurrect my old Gammon one-name study Drupal website from a backup and push it to the new GoONS Website project.
  • Give JMRI a good try out and look at what it would take to package it.

My Open Source Contributions June – November 2016

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So much for my monthly blogging! Here’s what I have been up to in the Open Source world over the last 6 months.

Debian

  • Uploaded a new version of the debian-multimedia blends metapackages
  • Uploaded the latest abcmidi
  • Uploaded the latest node-process-nextick-args
  • Prepared version 1.0.2 of libdrumstick for experimental, as a first step for the transition. It was sponsored by James Cowgill.
  • Prepared a new node-inline-source-map package, which was sponsored by Gianfranco Costamagna.
  • Uploaded kmetronome to experimental as part of the libdrumstick transition.
  • Prepared a new node-js-yaml package, which was sponsored by Gianfranco Costamagna.
  • Uploaded version 4.2.4 of Gramps.
  • Prepared a new version of vmpk which I am going to adopt, as part of the libdrumstick transition. I tried splitting the documentation into a separate package, but this proved difficult, and in the end I missed the transition freeze deadline for Debian Stretch.
  • Prepared a backport of Gramps 4.2.4, which was sponsored by IOhannes m zmölnig as Gramps is new for jessie-backports.
  • Began a final push to get kosmtik packaged and into the NEW queue before the impending Debian freeze for Stretch. Unfortunately, many dependencies need updating, which also depend on packages not yet in Debian. Also pushed to finish all the new packages for node-tape, which someone else has decided to take responsibility for.
  • Uploaded node-cross-spawn-async to fix a Release Critical bug.
  • Prepared  a new node-chroma-js package,  but this is unfortunately blocked by several out of date & missing dependencies.
  • Prepared a new node-husl package, which was sponsored by Gianfranco Costamagna.
  • Prepared a new node-resumer package, which was sponsored by Gianfranco Costamagna.
  • Prepared a new node-object-inspect package, which was sponsored by Gianfranco Costamagna.
  • Removed node-string-decoder from the archive, as it was broken and turned out not to be needed anymore.
  • Uploaded a fix for node-inline-source-map which was failing tests. This turned out to be due to node-tap being upgraded to version 8.0.0. JĂ©rĂ©my Lal very quickly provided a fix in the form of a Pull Request upstream, so I was able to apply the same patch in Debian.

Ubuntu

  • Prepared a merge of the latest blends package from Debian in order to be able to merge the multimedia-blends package later. This was sponsored by Daniel Holbach.
  • Prepared an application to become an Ubuntu Contributing Developer. Unfortunately, this was later declined. I was completely unprepared for the Developer Membership Board meeting on IRC after my holiday. I had had no time to chase for endorsements from previous sponsors, and the application was not really clear about the fact that I was not actually applying for upload permission yet. No matter, I intend to apply again later once I have more evidence & support on my application page.
  • Added my blog to Planet Ubuntu, and this will hopefully be the first post that appears there.
  • Prepared a merge of the latest debian-multimedia blends meta-package package from Debian. In Ubuntu Studio, we have the multimedia-puredata package seeded so that we get all the latest Puredata packages in one go. This was sponsored by Michael Terry.
  • Prepared a backport of Ardour as part of the Ubuntu Studio plan to do regular backports. This is still waiting for sponsorship if there is anyone reading this that can help with that.
  • Did a tweak to the Ubuntu Studio seeds and prepared an update of the Ubuntu Studio meta-packages. However, Adam Conrad did the work anyway as part of his cross-flavour release work without noticing my bug & request for sponsorship. So I closed the bug.
  • Updated the Ubuntu Studio wiki to expand on the process for updating our seeds and meta-packages. Hopefully, this will help new contributors to get involved in this area in the future.
  • Took part in the testing and release of the Ubuntu Studio Trusty 14.04.5 point release.
  • Took part in the testing and release of the Ubuntu Studio Yakkety Beta 1 release.
  • Prepared a backport of Ansible but before I could chase up what to do about the fact that ansible-fireball was no longer part of the Ansible package, some one else did the backport without noticing my bug. So I closed the bug.
  • Prepared an update of the Ubuntu Studio meta-packages. This was sponsored by Jeremy Bicha.
  • Prepared an update to the ubuntustudio-default-settings package. This switched the Ubuntu Studio desktop theme to Numix-Blue, and reverted some commits to drop the ubuntustudio-lightdm-theme package fom the archive. This had caused quite a bit of controversy and discussion on IRC due to the transition being a little too close to the release date for Yakkety. This was sponsored by Iain Lane (Laney).
  • Prepared the Numix Blue update for the ubuntustudio-lightdm-theme package. This was also sponsored by Iain Lane (Laney). I should thank Krytarik here for the initial Numix Blue theme work here (on the lightdm theme & default settings packages).
  • Provided a patch for gfxboot-theme-ubuntu which has a bug which is regularly reported during ISO testing, because the “Try Ubuntu Studio without installing” option was not a translatable string and always appeared in English. Colin Watson merged this, so hopefully it will be translated by the time of the next release.
  • Took part in the testing and release of the Ubuntu Studio Yakkety 16.10 release.
  • After a hint from Jeremy Bicha, I prepared a patch that adds a desktop file for Imagemagick to the ubuntustudio-default-settings package. This will give us a working menu item in Ubuntu Studio whilst we wait for the bug to be fixed upstream in Debian. Next month I plan to finish the ubuntustudio-lightdm-theme, ubuntustudio-default-settings transition, including dropping ubuntustudio-lightdm-theme from the Ubuntu Studio seeds. I will include this fix at the same time.

Other

  • At other times when I have had a spare moment, I have been working on resurrecting my old Family History website. It was originally produced in my Windows XP days, and I was no longer able to edit it in Linux. I decided to convert it to Jekyll. First I had to extract the old HTML from where the website is hosted using the HTTrack Website Copier. Now, I am in the process of switching the structure to the standard Jekyll template approach. I will need to switch to a nice Jekyll based theme, as as the old theming was pretty complex. I pushed the code to my Github repository for safe keeping.

Plan for December

Debian

Before the 5th January 2017 Debian Stretch soft freeze I hope to:

Ubuntu

  • Add the Ubuntu Studio Manual Testsuite to the package tracker, and try to encourage some testing of the newest versions of our priority packages.
  • Finish the ubuntustudio-lightdm-theme, ubuntustudio-default-settings transition including an update to the ubuntustudio-meta packages.
  • Reapply to become a Contributing Developer.
  • Start working on an Ubuntu Studio package tracker website so that we can keep an eye on the status of the packages we are interested in.

Other

  • Continue working to convert my Family History website to Jekyll.
  • Try and resurrect my old Gammon one-name study Drupal website from a backup and push it to the new GoONS Website project.