Launchpad rolls out version 1.2.5, and hardy-proposed

Launchpad, the bug tracker used by many Linux developers including the *Ubuntu family of distros, has upgraded their code with lots of great features for users.

You can now vote and comment on proposed branch mergers, or the combining of code from different versions. There’s already one branch merger comment so you can see the type of things this new ability give us.

One of the biggest pains in the arse has been the fact that searching across the various areas of Launchpad (bug reports, branch descriptions, projects just to name a few). Now you can use Launchpad’s new global search with the search box on most Launchpad pages or the dedicated search page and find what you’re looking for no matter where it is on Launchpad.

You can also seethe differences between source packages for not just the primary Ubuntu archive but also those wonderful PPAs (Personal Package Archives) thanks to the new Edge environment. The best description of what this means for us is given by Celso Providelo, the Launchpad dev who’s been working on it. You can find her description on the Launchpad blog post announcing this new feature.

In addition there’s an estimated build start time so if you’re waiting for something to get built you can see approximately when it’s going to start, translations search, and the ability to sign up for a team’s mailing list when you join the team rather than it being a separate step, and even more goodies. You can get the skinny on all the goodies in Launchpad 1.2.5 on the milestone page.

Hardy-proposed

No, our beloved heron isn’t getting married, but it does have some proposals. As an Long Term Support (RTS) release, Ubuntu 8.04 is going to get some updates, including some updates CD images. You can help test the updated packages that are in line for the new disk images by enabling the Proposed Updates box on the Updates  tab of Software Sources. More info, including a screenie to show you what has to be checked, is on Henrik Omma’s blog.