Team +junk branches

Very, very recently, we changed Launchpad to support team +junk branches. So recently, in fact, I don't think the change has hit the servers yet. Anyway, after the 2.2.3 release on April 1, you'll be able to push up & create branches in lp:~your-team-here/+junk/some-branch.

I have to confess I'm not a huge fan of this feature. Almost all of the time, if you've got some code in a branch and you want others to collaborate on it you should create a new project. That way you can file bugs, do code reviews and get easy branch stacking support.

Still, the use case that Jordan mentions is a good one, and the fix fell out naturally from some of the work we've done for source package branches, so we decided to do it. You see, we actually do get a kick out of making our users happy. Really.

I guess the moral of the story, if there is one at all, is to file bug reports. We don't want to build a website with separate bubble domes and three horns that all play "La Cucaracha" so we aren't going to mindlessly say "yes" to everything. But we do want to make something that will help you rock the Free Software world even harder, and to do that, we need to know what you want.

Trips me every time

etrepum commented on how hash functions need to be idempotent. I pretty much always interpret things about functions and idempotence incorrectly.

When used in computing, saying a function is idempotent generally means you can call it a hozillion times and the state of the system (& thus the return value of the function) will be the same as if you called it once.

When used in mathematics, a function f is idempotent if f(f(x)) = f(x) for all x. The computing quality of idempotence isn't useful since f(x) = f(x).

I would greatly appreciate it if we could all find a way to communicate that didn't involve language.

brisbane-core

Up in Brisbane, while I was diligently working away on package branches in Launchpad, many of the Bazaar guys were working on their new "brisbane-core" format.

I overheard one of them say in this new format 'log -v' is up to twenty times faster.

Want more details? Well, perhaps someone else on Planet Bazaar can provide them.

Firefox Smart Bookmark for Branches

You might not know about Firefox smart bookmarks. They let you type something into your URL bar like "twisted 2345" and have Firefox load the Twisted bug page for bug #2345. Lifehacker explains how to create them.

Here's one to add for Launchpad branches:

Once you've added this, you can type 'lp twisted' or 'lp python' into your Firefox location bar and get redirected to the branch page for Firefox. Anything that works as part of an lp: URL will work here. Right now, this only works on edge.

Update: Firefox escapes any slashes you put into the URL bar, which makes this much less useful.