I showed some test output images to the folks in #ubuntu-offtopic and a few of them thought it was neat and asked me for the code so that they could make their own graphs.  I took that as a sign that I should clean up the code to make it more efficient.  I also went ahead and used optparse to make the application more user-friendly.

To start, lets take a look at what the output for the teams that Jussi created:

Well that’s rather self-explanatory. Much more so than looking at a bunch of lists on LP.

How if we looked at someone that has administrative access for some Launchpad teams.  Perhaps Jono:

Green filled team nodes indicate that the root user has administrative access to them.  I chose to focus on what teams a person had control over, rather than which relationships granted that level of access.  This was mostly due to not being happy with the options that Graphviz had for shading and coloring edges.

I suppose that graph was somewhat complex… although its nothing compared to sabdfl‘s:

Anyway, the python script itself is available here. And the help page is as follows:

Usage: lpdot.py [-c COLOR] [-a COLOR] [-o PATH] [-d PATH] username

Options:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit
  -c COLOR    set default node color to COLOR (defaults to white)
  -a COLOR    set administrative node color to COLOR (defaults to greenyellow)
  -o PATH     write png file to PATH (defaults to pwd)
  -d PATH     write dot file to PATH

  A list of valid colors can be found here:

http://www.graphviz.org/doc/info/colors.html

1. Get the user’s Launchpad page
2. Check if they’re indeed an Ubuntu member
3. Go to the cloaked Ubuntu members team
4. Remember the user’s Launchpad id and add them to the team
5. Ask freenode staff to apply the cloak

Now this doesn’t sound that difficult, but we’re all busy and we know that Launchpad isn’t exactly the fastest site around.  So, in order to make this easier for myself, I put together a small python script using launchpadlib to do all the dirty work for me.  It also gave me an excuse to play with optparse, which I have been looking to have a reason to use.

The script gives me the ability to check a member’s status and add them to the cloak team in one step.  I can also choose to use the launchpad staging server to do a dry-run if I’m just testing.

This was my first time using launchpadlib to update information on Launchpad itself.  I have to say that it was a lot easier than I had originally thought it would be.

As of revision 9, the code is as follows:

#!/usr/bin/env python
cachedir = '~/.launchpadlib/cache/'
import sys
from optparse import OptionParser
 
def main():
    usage = 'usage: %prog [options] username'
    parser = OptionParser(usage)
    parser.add_option('-f','--force',action='store_true',dest='force',
        help='add user regardless of membership in ubuntumembers')
    parser.add_option('-s','--staging',action='store_true',dest='staging',
        help='preform events against the launchpad staging server')
 
    options,args = parser.parse_args()
 
    if len(args) != 1:
        print 'Error: incorrect number of arguments'
        parser.print_help()
        sys.exit(2)
 
    from launchpadlib.launchpad import Launchpad,STAGING_SERVICE_ROOT,EDGE_SERVICE_ROOT
    from launchpadlib.errors import HTTPError
 
    if options.staging:
        print 'Warning: using staging.launchpad.net'
        service = STAGING_SERVICE_ROOT
    else:
        service = EDGE_SERVICE_ROOT
 
    launchpad = Launchpad.login_with('irc_lpteam',service,cachedir)
    membername = args[0]
    teamname='ubuntu-irc-cloaks'
 
    team = launchpad.people[teamname]
    member = launchpad.people[membername]
 
    if 'ubuntumembers' in  [e.name for e in member.super_teams]:
        print "'%s' (%s) is an Ubuntu Member" % (member.display_name,membername)
        print "Attempting to add '%s' (%s) to '%s' (%s)..." % (member.display_name,membername,team.display_name,teamname)
 
        try:
            status = team.addMember(person=member,status="Approved")
        except HTTPError as error:
            print "Error: %s has occurred" % error
            sys.exit(1)
 
    else:
        print "'%s' (%s) does not appear to be an Ubuntu Member." % (member.display_name,membername)
        if options.force:
            print 'Warning: force enabled, adding to team anyway'
            try:
                status = team.addMember(person=member,status="Approved")
            except HTTPError as error:
                print "Error: %s has occurred" % error
                sys.exit(1)
    print 'Success!'
if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

The latest code is available here for anyone who wants to play around with it themselves.

Note: I have filed a bug against launchpad that could make it easier to add people to teams.

Prune Channel Access Lists:

Currently about half of the people on our core channel access lists are inactive. Some of them now contribute to other parts of Ubuntu, while others simply do not contribute at all. Soon we will be using Launchpad teams to ensure that our operators are active and interested. Eventually we’d like to have an automated process whereby operators with expired team memberships are automatically removed from the access lists.

Develop an Application Process for New Operators:

Presently when we feel that we need more operators we use a set of undocumented guidelines to pick from a pool of IRC helpers.  The IRCC will work towards creating a documented set of criteria that potential operators must meet.

Document Operator Assessment Process:

We currently do not have a written, or scheduled, assessment process for current operators.  With the team membership expiration dates going in, we will need a way to assess operators who wish to keep their channel privileges.  Working from the operator guidelines and the new operator application procedures, we will put together an assessment document that we may compare our current ops against.

Membership Approval:

As its stands now, people who contribute extensively via IRC are left to apply for membership via their respective regional membership boards.  We will be working with the Community Council to come up with a set of IRC-specific requirements so that we may approve these new members directly.

IRC Tracker:

We also have a long list of new suggested features for our IRC Tracker (previously called BantrackerTwo):

• MyBans page
• Mode generator for ban removals
• Concept of relationships between events
• Anonymous access
• Links to the appeals process for banned users
• Aliases/tags for nicks
• API
• Better bot to tracker interface
• Bot nagging for comments after an event occurs
• Human readable URLs throughout
• Improved interface for Encyclopedia (factoid) plugins
• Suggested factoid queue moderation

As you can see, we’re going to be very busy in the next few months.

One such package was devscripts; I make heavy use of the rmadison command when doing support in #ubuntu.  While I could probably have easily just used the basic interface for searching, I wanted something a bit nicer.  I settled for using Mozilla’s Mycroft to create a SearchPlugin that could be added to Firefox’s search bar.

The plugin itself can be found here.

#ubuntu has be wonderfully busy since the release announcement.  We’re currently hovering around 1500 users in channel.

Some of the first packages for Jaunty were just uploaded.  I’m waiting patiently for the time where the archives are at a state where they can start being tested.

One of the features that many people do not realize that nano supports is syntax highlighting.  This can quickly and easily be enabled by following these directions:

nano will automatically read in ~/.nanorc if it exists. Since you probably don’t have that file there already, go ahead and copy the sample file out of /etc:

 [pici@romulus:~]$ cp /etc/nanorc ~/.nanorc

Highlighting for each language needs to be turned on explicitly in your new .nanorc file. In Intrepid, the lines specifying each language begin around line 217, which is probably around the same area in other releases. If not, this is what you’re looking for something similar to this:

some default languages supported by nanorc:

## Nanorc files
include "/usr/share/nano/nanorc.nanorc"
 
## C/C++
include "/usr/share/nano/c.nanorc"
 
## HTML
include "/usr/share/nano/html.nanorc"
 
## TeX
include "/usr/share/nano/tex.nanorc"
 
## Quoted emails (under e.g. mutt)
# include "/usr/share/nano/mutt.nanorc"
 
## Patch files
include "/usr/share/nano/patch.nanorc"
 
## Manpages
include "/usr/share/nano/man.nanorc"
 
## Groff
# include "/usr/share/nano/groff.nanorc"
 
## Perl
include "/usr/share/nano/perl.nanorc"
 
## Python
include "/usr/share/nano/python.nanorc"
 
## Ruby
include "/usr/share/nano/ruby.nanorc"
 
## Java
include "/usr/share/nano/java.nanorc"
 
## Assembler
include "/usr/share/nano/asm.nanorc"
 
## Bourne shell scripts
include "/usr/share/nano/sh.nanorc"
 
## POV-Ray
#include "/usr/share/nano/pov.nanorc"

Go ahead and remove the hash from each include statement for the languages you wish to enable, and you’re all done.

Some other options that I find helpful to have in my .nanorc are as follows:

Other options:

## Setup tabs
set autoindent
set tabstospaces
set tabsize "4"
## Don't wrap text at all.
set nowrap

Screenshot coming soon.