This week I have been gathered with 38 KDE people in Randa, Switzerland. Randa is a place in a valley in the middle of the Alps close to various peaks like Matterhorn. It has been a week of intense hacking, bugfixing, brainstorming and a bit of enjoying the nature.
R is for Reproducible builds
I spent the first couple of days trying to get the Qt Documentation generation tool to reproducible generate documentation. Some of the fixes were of the usual ‘put data in an randomized datastructure, then iterate over it and create output’, where the fix is similar well known: Sort the datastructure first. Others were a bit more severe bugs that lead to the documentation to shuffle around the ‘obsolete’ bit, and the inheritance chains. Most of these fixes have been reviewed and submitted to the Qt 5.6 branch, one is still pending review, but that hopefully gets fixed soon. Then most of Qt (except things containing copies of (parts) of webkit and derivatives) should be reproducible.
R is for Roaming around in the mountains
Sleeping, hacking and dining in the same building sometimes leads to a enormous desire for fresh air. Luckily in the middle of the alps, it is readily available, and at least once a day many people went for a walk. To say hi to a sheep. Or to just go uphill until tired and then going back down. Or just finding a circle around. For this area, OpenStreetMap seems to have better maps than Google. We also went on a nice group trip to Zermatt and surroundings, sponsored by our friends in Edeltech.
R is for Releasing
One of the tasks I set myself for was to get my barcode generation library (prison. you know. being behind bars.) ready for release. A bit of api cleanup, including some future proofing, was done, and all users adapted. Hopefully it will be released as part of the next KDE Frameworks release.
R is for Reviewing code
When signing up for the sprint, one has to declare a couple of tasks to work on. One of the things I put myself up to was reviewing David Faure’s code changes. First, he is very productive, and second, he often gets into creating patches in code areas where many other contributors are scared to look. So someone has to do it, and code never scared me.
R is for Running
I planned on going running along the river monday, wednesday and friday. Fortunately that happened, but due to Switzerland having a bit more ups and downs than flat Denmark, it didn’t go that fast.
R is for Random bugfixing
When in the hacking mood surrounded by great developers, it is very easy to just fix minor bugs when you encounter them. There is likely someone around who knows the code in question. Or you are just in the mood to actually fix it, rather than living with a missing clock applet or a corner case crash.
R is for Rubber ducking
I am a brilliant person sized rubber duck. And I did get the opportunity to show off my skills a couple of times, as well as using some of the other people for that.
R is for Raising money
These sprints in Randa is only possible because of all the nice donations from people and companies around the world. The fundraiser is still running, and can be found at
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