One interesting thing about Ubuntu is that you can follow on launchpad the bug presents in the packages of the distribution, see the progress and contribute to testing PPA on your Ubuntu installation and giving feedback back.
But let see this process in detail and how each of us can help the community.
Launchpad, developed by Canonical, is a system used to keep track of many aspects of open-source development. Landscape’s features include code hosting, bug tracking, translation, feature blueprints and a community-based answer tracker.
Ubuntu uses Launchpad for project management. You can visit Ubuntu’s Launchpad project page for more information.
To join the community the first thing to do is to create an account, To create a new Launchpad account, visit the account sign-up page. All you need is an email address that Launchpad can use to contact you.
Now that you have a valid account you can decide for example to look if the bug you’re fighting with is already in the list of open bugs, to do this go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu.
From this screen you can do some search on open bugs and have the results sorted as you like (importance, date, status, etc..), You can also do to advanced search where you can specify really many different options.
Hopefully you’ll find your bug in the list, you can than select it and look into the bug history to see if some workaround has been proposed, or compare the other user experience to your. A really useful feature of Launchpad is the possibility to subscribe to a Bug, so any news posted for that bug will be emailed to you, and you’ll be updated when a Fix or PPA is available.
PPA stand for Personal Package Archives, Using a Personal Package Archive (PPA), you can distribute software and updates directly to Ubuntu users. Create your source package, upload it and Launchpad will build binaries and then host them in your own apt repository.
That means Ubuntu users can install your packages in just the same way they install standard Ubuntu packages and they’ll automatically receive updates as and when you make them.
Every individual and team in Launchpad can have one or more PPAs, each with its own URL.
Packages you publish in your PPA will remain there until you remove them, they’re superseded by another package that you upload or the version of Ubuntu against which they’re built becomes obsolete.
Adding a PPA to the repository list
PPAs work like normal Ubuntu archives. You can install software in the usual way — for example, through apt-get or synaptic — and whenever there’s an update Ubuntu will prompt you to install it.
To start installing software from a PPA, you need to tell Ubuntu where to find it and how to verify the integrity of the packages.
Step 1: Visit the PPA’s overview page in Launchpad and look for the heading that reads Adding this PPA to your system. Make a note of the PPA’s location, which looks like:
ppa:gwibber-daily/ppa
Step 2: Open a terminal and enter:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:user/ppa-name
Replace ppa:user/ppa-name with the PPA’s location that you noted above.
Your system will now fetch the PPA’s key. This enables your Ubuntu system to verify that the packages in the PPA have not been interfered with since they were built.
Step 3: Now, as a one-off, you should tell your system to pull down the latest list of software from each archive it knows about, including the PPA you just added:
sudo apt-get update
Now you’re ready to start installing software from the PPA! If you already have the software installed and you’re adding the PPA to get a more recent/different version, you may just need to run:
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
For more info check launchpad official link
And if all work fine and you are satisfied with your new package from the PPA don’t forget to give a feedback back on the bug threads, so the maintainers can know that it work fine, and other users can use it as well.
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Thank-you!