Today I was working all day on
python-debianbts 1.0 and uploaded it to unstable a few minutes ago. This version breaks backwards compatibility with previous versions. I removed lots of unneeded old cruft like the HTMLStripper class needed ages ago when I was still using HTML instead of debbugs SOAP interface.
A new method
get_usertag(email, *tags) was introduced. It returns a dict containing usertag-buglist mappings. If tags are given the dict is limited to matching tags, otherwise all available tags of the given user are returned:
In [1]: import debianbts as bts
In [2]: bts.get_usertag( debian-python@lists.debian.org )
Out[2]:
dist-packages : [547838, 547832, ..., 547858],
dpmt-todo : [332913],
policy : [373301, 373302, ..., 377089],
python-oldnum : [478467, 478442, ..., 478441],
python2.1 : [351108, 351110, ..., 351131],
python2.2 : [351108, 351109, ..., 351161],
python2.6 : [547838, 547832, ... 547858]
In [3]: bts.get_usertag( debian-python@lists.debian.org , python2.1 , python2.2 )
Out[3]:
python2.1 : [351108, 351110, ..., 351131],
python2.2 : [351108, 351109, ..., 351161]
get_bug_log(nr) now returns a list of dicts with the keys:
header (string),
body (string),
msg_num (int) and
attachments (list). Before 1.0 it returned a list of Buglog objects.
The Bugreport class now supports every information provided by the SOAP interface. I tried to stay as close as possible to the data SOAP provides, so I renamed existing attributes (like Bugreport.nr which is not supported by SOAP but is now Bugreport.bug_num) and also added the quirky ones like: id and bug_nr, found and found_versions, keywords and tags, fixed and fixed_date which always seem to provide the same data.
Instead of the Bugreport.value() method which provided a number representing the openness (in terms of: open, closed and archived) and urgency (like: grave, important, ) to make bugreports sortable by their status, the Bugreport class now has a
__cmp__ method which makes bugreports comparable. The more open and urgent a bug is, the greater it is. Openness always beats urgency (eg: an open whishlist bug is greater than a closed grave one).
While pre 1.0 versions of python-debianbts more or less served the needs of
reportbug-ng, it now tries to stay as close as possible to the data provided by SOAP. As a result many parts of reportbug-ng had to be fixed for the new version. I hope this makes python-debianbts more attractive for other projects dealing with Debian s bug tracker. As always: python-debianbts is on
github and forks, patches or other kinds of collaboration are very welcome.
For the curious here a litte quickstart. it shows how to get all important bugs from reportbug-ng and prints out the bugnumber and summary:
# Get all important bugs of reportbug-ng (returns a list of integers)
bugnrlist = bts.get_bugs("package", "reportbug-ng", "severity", "important")
bugnrlist
[548871, 439203, 542759]
# Get the actual bugreports (returns a list of Bugreport-objects)
bugs = bts.get_status(bugnrlist)
for bug in bugs: print bug.bug_num, bug.subject
.:
542759 [reportbug-ng] Erroneously reports nothing or repeats previous package s report
439203 Doesn t give any explanations of the severities and what they mean
548871 reportbug-ng: does not check for newer versions before reporting a bug
Sean Kenny emailed us to tell us about an event in Bristol: This week s 
I wasn't going to write about this since I thought that 
Yesterday I did what Free Software authors supposedly don t do. I wrote documentation. In fact, I had a relatively detailed README already, but I thought this would be a good opportunity to create a more elaborate documentation, using the ubiquitous DocBook. You can read the 
I haven't written about politics since the election for several reasons. First and foremost, Obama won fair and square. While I might wish the other guy had won, I can't whine and pout or threaten to move to Canada like some people. The vox populi chose and that choice has to be respected.
Secondly, one of the worst aspects of the current American political scene is the paranoid obsession with personalities in which the president is not just an implementor of policies good or bad, but personally responsible for the entire state of the cosmos. It started with Nixon, started getting alarming with Clinton and reached batshit levels of insanity with George W. Bush. But just because the left does it it, doesn't mean we have to follow suit. Although I figured Obamas policies would end up a trainwreck, I wanted to see what he actually did before calling him on it.
The Nobel comittee isn't hoping and changing with me. In a decison that is bizarre even by the lax standards of a prize that long since 
Random plea for free stuff.
If anyone out there has any geeky stickers (or anything a bit random for a sticker) lying around, please send them to me!
I d rather not put my address on the intarwebs, so please feel free to email me on martin AT sourceguru DOT net if you have something to send me, and I will happily send you out a Stamped Addressed Envelope.
The stickers will be put to good use decorating my laptop 
Edit:-
I ve just realised that sending a SASE to another country really doesn t work particularly well, different countries use different stamps after all!!!!
Recently I posted a brief tool for managing "dotfile collections". This tool was the rationalisation of a couple of adhoc scripts I already used, and was a quick hack written in nasty bash.
I've updated my tool so that it is coded in slightly less nasty Perl. You can find the 
I can t say I m surprised, but I m still appalled by reading, again, a completely out-of-reality polemic about a leader of the Free software community being called sexist (among other nice names), after an innocent and random word used in a talk.
Oh noes! Serving in the navy will hurt!
It s often that you hear jokes or references picturing French as arrogant, Italians as womanizers, geeks as bearded and smelling under the arms, sailors as gay, et c tera. It s called a clich , and it helps people understand each other because it s part of the collective imagination. If you insert a reference to an Italian in a speech about womanizers, it helps picturing the clich of a guy in a black Armani suit, wearing sunglasses and using gomina. It doesn t mean you think Italians are like this, and if it ever convinces someone that they are so, it means that someone really had trouble using the thing she calls brain to begin with.
The same goes for a talk about people not being familiar to computers, that is using women as a clich . When you look for a picture in your mind of someone who has trouble with using computers, what do you find? A granny fighting with her keyboard which keys are not in alphabetical order, or a busty blonde following with her eyes each movement of the mouse cursor. It s only natural to use these pictures as a ground for communication, and it doesn t mean you think bad of grannies or busty blondes. And if, because of that or of anything else, some people end up thinking that women can t use a computer, or that they are not equal to men in this regard, these people are the sexist ones. Not the guy who drew that picture in a magazine you read 10 years ago and forgot since, nor the one using it as a reference.
My intolerance is worth more than yours
And instead of actually focusing on educating or slapping those people, some of us are conducting a witch hunt, in which anyone implying the very existence of different categories of people, called men and women, regardless of his merits or opinions, is called a sexist and has stones thrown to him on several public fora. This is not acceptable. Do not let your speech be dictated by intolerance. If you apply the same reasoning to anyone that could be possibly hurt, in a completely literal and simplistic analysis of the speech, you can stop right now using any kind of metaphor, idiomatic expression or proverb. All that remains is a poor, sterilized speech. And when the speech is poor, the ideas get poorer as well.
Imagine what would a complete stranger reading those blogs understand. She would surely picture hackers as a completely misogynistic community in which people only talk about women (whether it is for sexist jokes or for rhetorical discussions about them) and never talk with them. Which would be utterly wrong, since hackers (and geeks in general) are on the contrary open-minded and friendly to feminism, compared to the rest of the population of course, except for the OMG OMG it s a woman! We need to be nice!!! kind.
And this is actually the reasoning that hides behind all this insane RMS and Mark Shuttleworth are sexist trolls. The picture they are giving of women are that of fragile little things that need to be protected against any attack of all these evil misogynist bearded geeks. Pretty ironical for people who claim fighting for gender equality, isn t it?
Questioning the unquestionable
Frankly, RMS and Mark are among the people I trust the less in the community, but I don t need to paint them as misogynists for that. Look at what they say instead of how they say it: one is an intolerant man who used to be a visionary but turned his principles into dogma; the other has seen the light and behaves as if he was the savior of Free software. I d prefer if we questioned their vision and leadership based on their ideas and actions, not on distorted ways to interpret what they say based on a few people s neuroses.
Or, to say it shorter: dudes, get a life.
There are a few ways to easily keep track of what others are saying about your Free Software project. In a very popular project, you may already have enough feedback from its busy forum or mailing list, but in new and small projects, you often have to actively seek feedback/comments from end-users.
Sarah told me a while ago that she was planning an early birthday present
for me, but it was going to be a surprise.
Last night, I found out what it was: tickets to see 
Normally I, like most people, ignore cold calls but someone asking about opinions on software caught my interest - doesn't happen often. Turned out to be a study using contact data gleaned from a now dead Linux magazine which, in turn, had been gleaned from the attendance information submitted to a now all-but dead conference: 
