First Bug Hunting Session for LibreOffice 5.4

LibreOffice 5.4 is due to be announced at the end of July 2017, with many new features (those already implemented are summarized on the release notes page – https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/5.4 – with much more to come).

In order to find, report and triage bugs, the QA team is organizing the first Bug Hunting Session on Friday, April 28, 2017. All details are available on the specific wiki page: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/BugHuntingSession/5.4.0Alpha.

Tests will be performed on the first Alpha version of LibreOffice 5.4, which will be available on the pre-releases server (http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/pre-releases/) a few days before the event. Builds will be available for Linux (DEB and RPM), macOS and Windows – and they will run in parallel with the production version, so you don’t have to install the version of LibreOffice you’re using.

Mentors to help you report and confirm bugs will be available on April 28, 2017, from 8AM UTC to 10PM UTC. Of course, hunting bugs will be possible also on other days, as the builds of this particular Alpha release (LibreOffice 5.4.0 Alpha1) will be available until the middle of May.

During the day there will be two dedicated sessions: the first to chase bugs on the main LibreOffice modules between 3PM UTC and 5PM UTC, and the second to test a set of the top 7 features between 5PM UTC and 7PM UTC.

During the dedicated sessions, we will concentrate all efforts on chasing and reproducing bugs, in order to confirm and file them in a more comprehensive way. Of course, the more comprehensive will be the bug report, the easier will be for the developers to solve the bugs in time for the final release.

We hope to see you there, and if you take part, thanks for helping to make LibreOffice more robust for everyone!

Video interview: Xisco Fauli, QA engineer for LibreOffice

Xisco Fauli works for The Document Foundation as a quality assurance engineer, helping the QA community handle bug reports, triaging and bibisecting. We talked to him about projects he’s working on, and how everyone can get involved:

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Third Bug Hunting Session for LibreOffice 5.3

bhs_5-3-0-beta2_largeLibreOffice 5.3 will be announced at the end of January 2017, with a large number of new features which are summarized on the release notes page: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/5.3. In order to find, report and triage bugs, the QA team is organizing a third bug hunting session on Friday, December 9, and Saturday, December 10, 2016.

Tests will be performed on LibreOffice 5.3 Beta 2, which will be available on the pre-releases server (http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/pre-releases/) in time for the event. Builds will be available for Linux (DEB and RPM), MacOS and Windows, and will run in parallel with the production version.

Mentors will be available on December 9 and December 10, 2016, from 8AM UTC to 10PM UTC. Of course, hunting bugs will be possible also on other days, as the builds of LibreOffice 5.3.0 Beta 2 will be available until mid December.

We would like to see the new font layout engine tested on MacOS in particular. Please drag all your MacOS friends and relatives into the testing effort! All details of the third bug hunting session are available on the specific wiki page: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/BugHuntingSession/5.3.0Beta2.

During the dedicated sessions, we will concentrate all efforts to chase and reproduce the bugs, in order to confirm and file them in a more comprehensive way. Of course, the more comprehensive the bug report, the easier it will be for the developers to solve the bugs in time for the final release.

Second Bug Hunting Session for LibreOffice 5.3

noun_83830_ccLibreOffice 5.3 will be announced at the end of January 2017, with a large number of new features which are summarized on the release notes page: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/5.3. In order to find, report and triage bugs, the QA team is organizing a second bug hunting session on Friday, November 25, 2016. Tests will be performed on the Beta version of LibreOffice 5.3, which will be available on the pre-releases server (http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/pre-releases/) a few days before the event. Builds will be available for Linux (DEB and RPM), MacOS and Windows, and will run in parallel with the production version.

Mentors will be available on November 25, 2016, from 8AM UTC to 10PM UTC. Of course, hunting bugs will be possible also on other days, as the builds of this particular Beta release (LibreOffice 5.3.0 Beta1) will be available until mid December.

During the day there will be two dedicated sessions: the first to chase bugs on the main LibreOffice modules between 3PM UTC and 5PM UTC, and the second to test a set of the top 7 features between 5PM UTC and 7PM UTC. All details of the second bug hunting session are available on the specific wiki page: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/BugHuntingSession/5.3.0Beta1.

During the dedicated sessions, we will concentrate all efforts to chase and reproduce the bugs, in order to confirm and file them in a more comprehensive way. Of course, the more comprehensive will be the bug report, the easier will be for the developers to solve the bugs in time for the final release.

FOSDEM Call for Papers: Open Document Editors DevRoom

fosdemFOSDEM is one of the largest gatherings of Free Software contributors in the world and happens each year in Brussels (Belgium) at the ULB Campus Solbosch. In 2017, it will be held on Saturday, February 4, and Sunday, February 5.

As usual, the Open Document Editors DevRoom will be jointly organized by Apache OpenOffice and LibreOffice, on Saturday, February 4, in room 4.401 in Building K (from 10:30AM to 6:30PM). The shared devroom gives every project in this area a chance to present ODF related developments and innovations.

We are now inviting proposals for talks about Open Document Editors or the ODF document format, on topics such as code, extensions, localization, QA, UX, tools and adoption related cases. This is a unique opportunity to show new ideas and developments to a wide technical audience.

Length of talks should be limited to a maximum of 30 minutes, as we would like to have questions after each presentation, and to fit as many presenters as possible in the schedule. Exceptions must be explicitly requested and justified. You may be assigned LESS time than you request.

All submissions have to be made in the Pentabarf event planning tool: https://penta.fosdem.org/submission/FOSDEM17.

While filing your proposal, please provide the title of your talk, a short abstract (one or two paragraphs), some information about yourself (name, bio and photo, but please do remember that your profile might be already stored at Pentabarf).

To submit your talk, click on “Create Event”, then make sure to select the “Open Document Editors” devroom as the “Track”. Otherwise, your talk will not be even considered for any devroom at all.

If you already have a Pentabarf account from a previous year, even if your talk was not accepted, please reuse it. Create an account if, and only if, you don’t have one from a previous year. If you have any issues with Pentabarf, please contact ode-devroom-manager@fosdem.org.

The deadline is Monday, December 5th, 2016. Accepted speakers will be notified by Sunday, December 11th, 2016. The DevRoom schedule will be published on the same day.

Recording Permission

The talks in the Open Document Editors DevRoom will be audio and video recorded, and possibly streamed live too.

In the “Submission notes” field, please indicate that you agree that your presentation will be licensed under the CC-BY-SA-4.0 or CC-BY-4.0 license and that you agree to have your presentation recorded. For example: “If my speech is accepted for FOSDEM, I hereby agree to license all recordings, slides, and other associated materials under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License. Sincerely, Name”.

LibreOffice Community Weeks: Wrapping up

LibreOffice Community Weeks

We’re already in to a new Month of LibreOffice, but in October we ran a series of Community Weeks, looking at what different teams in the LibreOffice project do, and how you can help them. So firstly, here’s a reminder of the articles, and then we’ll find out what effect they had…

Documentation

Development

Quality Assurance (QA)

Design

 

Feedback from the teams

So what effect did the Community Weeks have on the projects? Here’s what each team had to say:

Olivier Hallot (documentation): “The Community Weeks brought more people to the realm we are working in, and I had 3 new people showing up. One is a PhD professor from a university in India, who wrote a page on a set of Calc functions, and asked for more work. Another is a New Zealand national, involved in migrations and support, who is updating our books. I also got someone on IRC, but he did not came back. So overall, the week is positive, but we need people to return after their first contributions.”

Jan Iversen (development): “The week worked well – during the last period 15 people have got their first patch merged, and will appear by name in the 5.4 release notes. I often hear “but I cannot work full-time”, so it is important to realize that while roughly 50% of the changes are done by 20-30 people, the other 50% is done by hundreds of people making 1-10 patches a year. Every change counts and is very welcome! We arrange developers days, when a group wants help, so please contact us at mentor@documentfoundation.org if you need help.”

Xisco Fauli (QA): “There were 4-5 new users who showed up on IRC during the Bug Hunting Session, who may have joined from reading the Community Week posts. Also, we hope both posts from that week will help readers to report better bugs in the future (attaching simpler samples, adding clearer steps, and so forth).”

Heiko Tietze (design): “The campaign was interesting and encouraged readers to follow links to the Design Team Blog. Even if we didn’t get more active people showing up in the design project, comments are always welcome.”

Thanks to everyone who took part. We’ll do more Community Weeks next year, so if there’s something you want us to focus on, just let us know!