Developer tip: test MariaDB install/upgrade quickly with Docker

Here is a quick tip for any developer who might want to test if the latest development version of MariaDB installs/upgrades. Traditionally, developers seem to have a bunch of virtual machines lying around which they use to test MariaDB installation and upgrade related things. Snapshotting virtual images, keeping them up-to-date, starting, stopping etc. takes a lot of time and does not feel very convenient.

A much faster option would be to use pristine Docker images for every test. Docker images however normally only run one process and thus do not simulate a complete operating system and lack vital things like systemd interactions. …

Scripts for migrating bug reporting from Launchpad to JIRA

About two and a half years ago I wrote about how the MariaDB project moved bug reporting from Launchpad to JIRA. Every now and then I get contacted about how it was done and whether I would be willing to share the tools used for doing it and of course I’ve done that. Especially in one occasion the scripts were even further developed by one company that was in the process of doing exactly the same, i.e. moving bugs from Launchpad to JIRA. Thanks for the enhancements Philip Colmer from Linaro!

In Launchpad there isn’t a readymade tool for exporting bugs and I didn’t find any 3rd party tools for doing it. …

Consolidating MariaDB project tools

It is not a secret that we’ve been kicking the tires and playing with JIRA for project management. After using it since the beginning of the year most of us like the feel of it and we’ve decided that it makes sense to start using it more.

As you know, the MariaDB project has many fragmented resources. We report bugs in Launchpad. We store our plans in worklog. We’ve never used the Launchpad Blueprint feature for this very reason. We don’t use Launchpad Answers because we have the Knowledgebase.

With this move to hosted JIRA (yes, this is an important link: https://mariadb.org/jira) we can report bugs, have future plans, and also give users a roadmap which is pretty cool. …

Bzr and launchpad tricks: firefox plugin

If you work with bazaar, you have seen its URIs. You can find the complete list is in the bzr help urlspec. Although I commonly use only a subset of that, like bzr+ssh://bazaar.launchpad.net/~maria-captains/maria/5.2-serg/ and http://bazaar.launchpad.net/%2Bbranch/mysql-server/5.5/.

In addition I often use Launchpad aliases, such as lp:~maria-captains/maria/5.3-serg/, lp:maria/5.3, and lp:869001.

And finally, there are common abbreviations that we have used in MySQL, and others that we use in MariaDB, for example bug#12345 and wl#90.

What’s annoying, I need to remember that wl#90 corresponds to http://askmonty.org/worklog/?tid=90 and type the latter in the location bar of the browser, when I want to look this task up. …