Unity Contributor Report: So long Feature Freeze!

Ubuntu hit feature freeze last week, which means for most intents and purposes the features for 11.10 and are now in place, and the remainder of the cycle is left for bug fixing and polish, as you can see the contributor team has been quite busy!

Unity Contributor Activity This Week

• Andrea Azzarone fixes a bug where window titles would fade for Windows that do not have menus created (like chrome). This was fixed a while ago for maximized windows, but is now fixed as well for unmaximized ones
• David Gomes fixes a bug where pressing the mouse over the window control buttons when in maximized state, did not cause the icon to appear in a pressed state. Now it’s working fine
• Haggai Eran has proposed a fix that would make the unity menu bar and in the indicators open to the left when using a right-to-left locale.
• Daniel van Nugt has proposed a fix to keep the Dash open while dragging apps into the launcher from the Dash.

Other branches for incoming fixes are in the review queue. Thanks to all the contributors who’ve spent time making Unity better. Want to dive in? Check out the big list below and dive in!

Things going on in Oneiric

• Everything’s landed for Feature Freeze. (Here’s two articles talking about it).
• There will be a bug fix release on Thursday, from now on there will be weekly bugfix releases of Unity in Oneiric.
• Compiz is still not sorted, they have a new candidate version out that needs testing and approval, other option is to roll back to the natty compiz
• More alt-tab fixes coming

You can check out the rest of the progress on the desktop from the desktop team’s report for the week.

The Big List

Here’s a list of targeted bugs that would make Unity better to use. Here’s the full list if you want to dig in.

• 709461 – Application windows can sometimes fail to display and will mask regions of the screen.
• 700757 – Unity aborts when you plug in an external monitor
• 700727 – When hiding the clock indicator, a gap appears
• 792201 – Launcher leaves focus nowhere after Alt+F1, Esc
• 795065 – Scrolling on top of a close animation switches viewports
• 816692 – Widget textures are loaded even though they may not be used

How to Get Involved

1. Get the Code

Follow the Step by Step Instructions and Wiki Page. This will get the code from Launchpad, set up your development environment, and getting you used to the Launchpad workflow.

2. Pick a Bug

Here’s the full list, or you can just join the team and watch them roll in and pick what you’d like.

3. Fix your bug and then get your code into Unity

Don’t worry we won’t leave you hanging, you can get a-hold of a Unity developer through many different ways:

• Join the ~unity-community-hackers team and start digging in.
• We now have a Weekly Meeting at 1800UTC on #ayatana on Freenode IRC if you feel like hanging with us and getting organized and ask questions
• #ayatana on freenode IRC during European and American workdays. Or you can post to the mailing list if you have a question.
• We also have weekly IRC Q+A for any developer who wants to dive in and ask a Unity developer. 7pm-8pm UTC (That’s 2pm EST) every Friday!