Launchpad

pygpgme 0.1 released

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Back in January I started working on a new Python wrapper for the GPGME library. I recently put out the first release:

http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/pygpgme/0.1

This library allows you to encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify messages in the OpenPGP format, using gpg as the backend. In general, it stays fairly close to the C API with the following changes:

  • Represent C structures as Python classes where appropriate (e.g. contexts, keys, etc). Operations on those data types are converted to methods.
  • The gpgme_data_t type is not exposed directly. Instead, any Python object that looks like a file object can be passed (including StringIO objects).
  • In cases where there are gpgme_op_XXXX() and gpgme_op_XXXX_result() function pairs, these have been replaced by a single gpgme.Context.XXXX() method. Errors are returned in the exception where appropriate.
  • No explicit memory management. As expected for a Python module, memory management is automatic.

The module also releases the global interpreter lock over calls that fork gpg subprocesses. This should make the module multithread friendly.

This code is being used inside Launchpad to verify incoming email and help manage users’ PGP public keys.

In other news, gnome-gpg 0.4 made it into dapper, so users of the next Ubuntu release can see the improvements.

London

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I’ve been in London for a bit over a week now at the Launchpad sprint. We’ve been staying in a hotel near the Excel exhibition centre in Docklands, which has a nice view of the docs and you can see the planes landing at the airport out the windows of the conference rooms.

I met up with James Bromberger (one of the two main organisers of linux.conf.au 2003) on Thursday, which is the first time I’ve seen him since he left for the UK after the conference.

There has been a lot of interesting stuff going on so far, some of which is already live on the production site now. Expect to see better integration with the bzr branch management features in the future.

Bugzilla to Malone Migration

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The Bugzilla migration on Friday went quite well, so we’ve now got all the old Ubuntu bug reports in Launchpad. Before the migration, we were up to bug #6760. Now that the migration is complete, there are more than 28000 bugs in the system. Here are some quick points to help with the transition:

  • All bugzilla.ubuntu.com accounts were migrated to Launchpad accounts with a few caveats:
    1. If you already had a Launchpad account with your bugzilla email address associated with it, then the existing Launchpad account was used.
    2. No passwords were migrated from Bugzilla, due to differences in the method of storing them. You can set the password on the account at https://launchpad.net/+forgottenpassword.
    3. If you had a Launchpad account but used a different email to the one on your Bugzilla account, then you now have two Launchpad accounts. You can merge the two accounts at https://launchpad.net/people/+requestmerge.
  • If you have a bugzilla.ubuntu.com bug number, you can find the corresponding Launchpad bug number with the following URL:

    http://launchpad.net/malone/bugtrackers/ubuntu-bugzilla/$BUGZILLA_ID

    This will redirect to the Launchpad bug watching that bugzilla bug. This URL can easily be used to make a Firefox keyword bookmark.

  • You can file bugs on Ubuntu at https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+filebug. Note that the form expects a source package name rather than a binary package name. If you only have a binary package name, you can use the following command to find the source package name:

    apt-cache show $packagename | grep ^Source:

    We’ll make it easier to enter bugs when you only know the binary package name in the future.

  • The Launchpad data model for bugs differs from Bugzilla in that a single bug can be targetted at multiple packages or products (internally, we call these bug tasks). To change information about a bug task (source package name, assignee, status, priority, severity, etc), you must first click on the bug target in the “fix requested in” table at the top of the bug page.

There are still a few issues that need to be ironed out. The mailing lists subscribed to most Ubuntu bugs are not yet properly configured to accept mail from Launchpad, so result in “held for moderation” messages. These issues should get fixed shortly.