The Launchpad online development framework

Register on launchpad

Follow the instructions on ​https://launchpad.net/+login

The madgraph project homepage is ​https://launchpad.net/madgraph5

Ask to join the team “maddevelepors” at ​https://launchpad.net/~madteam/+join . A team member will have to accept your request.

Now, you have to tell Launchpad your computer is allowed to connect using a ssh key. Generate one (if not already done) by typing

ssh-keygen -t dsa

and enter no passphrase. Then upload the public key id_dsa.pub on Launchpad (go to your home page and click on the yellow exclamation point close to “SSH keys”.

Once done, type in a terminal

bzr launchpad-login your_launchpad_account

and check it worked by typing

bzr launchpad-login

Summary of Launchpad concepts

NOTE: Everywhere in Launchpad, you can modify information (if you have the right to do so) by clicking on yellow exclamation points.

• User: you! You can access your “home page” once logged in by clicking on your name in the top right of the window

• Team: a given set of users who share certain privileges. The madgraph development team is the “madteam”, you can access it there: ​https://launchpad.net/~madteam. You need to be an administrator to change team details.

• Project: a set of branches, series, milestones, bug reports, blueprints, ... Our project is called “madgraph5”, you can acces it from here: ​https://launchpad.net/madgraph5

• Branch: a branch in the Bazaar sense. You can access all the branches associated to a given project by clicking on the “Branches” thumbnail. Branches in Launchpad can be tagged: Experimental: do not even run correctly -> only for developers Development: runs, but some tests might fail -> for developers and very expert users Mature: runs, all test pass -> for expert users (normal users should use official releases) Merged: Successfully merged into its target branch(es). No further development is anticipated. Abandoned

• Series: branches which are more visible, and stored under the project main directory (others short-lived branches are stored under team/user directories). The trunk branch is an example, see ​https://launchpad.net/madgraph5/trunk, but we could add more in the future for large and important parallel developments (which have a well defined series goal). Series can be viewed as “sub-projects”.

• Milestone: points in the development of a series, such as future minor releases or release candidates. While we are in development, milestones should be called 0.X.Y. They have dates associated to them.

• Releases: once a milestone results in a release of your software, one can turn it into a release in Launchpad. Launchpad only helps to record and publicise the actual details of the release, such as its release date and changelog. Each release shows up in the timeline on the project's Launchpad home page, providing a historical record of what happened and when.

• Bugs: users and developers can report observed bugs on the page ​https://bugs.launchpad.net/madgraph5 , a bug is associated to a given serie and a given branch can be created/associated to fix it. Launchpad nicely automatize all steps from bug reports to bug fixing (report, discussions, mailing, branch creation, merging, logs, ...)

• Blueprints: similar to bugs, but for new feature requests.

• Answers: questions asked by users and answered by developers or other users.