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Getting started as an Author or Editor

To work on the project, you’ll need to know how to do a few things:

  • Create a Launchpad account and create an SSH key
  • Join our team
  • Download the bzr branch
  • Install TeX Live 2011
  • Start working on the tex files
  • Compile the manual to test your work
  • Commit and push to Launchpad

We’ll walk you through each step here.

Note: These instructions assume that you are using Ubuntu 9.04 or later.

Creating a Launchpad Account

  1. Go to https://launchpad.net and click "Register" in the top-right corner of the page
  2. Fill in your details

    Now you need to create an SSH key. Instructions taken from here.

    1. Install OpenSSH. On Ubuntu, you can install OpenSSH by opening your terminal and typing:
      2. $ sudo apt-get install openssh-client
    2. Once OpenSSH is installed, stay in the terminal and type:
      3. $ ssh-keygen -t rsa
    3. When prompted, press Enter to accept the default file name for your key.
    4. Next, enter then confirm a password to protect your SSH key. Your key pair is stored in ~/.ssh/ as id_rsa.pub (public key) and id_rsa (private key)

    3. Now you need to upload the public portion of your SSH key to Launchpad:
    Open your public key in a text editor and copy its contents to your clipboard. The public key file has the extension .pub. For example: id_rsa.pub

  3. Visit your SSH keys page.
  4. Paste your public key into the text box and then click the Import public key button to continue.

Joining our team

  1. Go here.
  2. Click on "Join this team."
  3. You should subscribe to the mailing list as well.

Downloading the bzr branch

You will need to install bzr. Run these commands in a terminal to install bzr and configure it.

  1. Install bzr:
    2. $ sudo apt-get install bzr
  2. Configure bzr with your name and email:
    3. $ bzr whoami "Your name <email@domain.com>"
    To check that bzr knows who you are, run: 
    $ bzr whoami
    If it has worked, it should return your name and email address. Now we need to download the Ubuntu Manual branch.

    1. Create a new directory in your home folder called "Projects".
    2. Change into that directory in a terminal window:
      3. $ cd ~/Projects
    3. Once you are in your Projects directory, run this command to download our branch:
      4. $ bzr branch lp:ubuntu-manual
    4. Bzr will now download the project files. This may take a few minutes depending on your connection speed.

Installing TeX Live 2011

The Ubuntu Manual requires TeX Live 2011. The version of TeX Live in the Ubuntu repositories is incomplete and out-dated. You must use the upstream version of TeX Live 2011 to compile the manual successfully.

Installing TeX Live 2011


  1. First, remove any Ubuntu TeX Live packages, if you have them installed.
    2. $ sudo apt-get remove texlive-*
  2. Download the TeX Live 2011 install script: Download now
  3. Unpack the tarball:
    4. $ tar xvf install-tl-unx.tar.gz
  4. Change to the newly-unpacked directory:
    5. $ cd install-tl-*
  5. Run the script:
    6. $ sudo ./install-tl
  6. Select where you’d like to install everything, and any other options you prefer. If you choose not to install everything, the minimum that you’ll need is the following collections:
    1. Essential programs and files (a)
    2. LaTeX recommended packages (s)
    3. XeTeX packages (C)

    Under the language collections, you can skip all the documentation, but be sure to install all the languages you wish to translate into. (If the language you wish to translate into isn’t listed in the menu, don’t worry, there are just no specific packages required for that language.)

    You should also enable the creation of the symlinks:

    1. From the main TeX Live installation menu select Options (O).
    2. From the Options menu, select “create symlinks in standard directories” (L).
    3. The default directories are usually okay.
    4. Press R to return the main menu.

    Once those are installed, we can install the remainder of the packages with the install-pkgs.sh script. (Note that this hasn’t been tested yet and it’s pure guesswork on Kevin’s part! Let us know if it does or doesn’t work for you.)

  7. Run the install-pkgs.sh script that’s in the ubuntu-manual/pkgs/ directory to make sure you have all the required packages.
  8. If everything checks out okay, you should be able to run: make ubuntu-manual-LANG.pdf where LANG is the language code (see the po/ directory for a list of supported languages).

Checking Prerequisites


To make sure you have all the prerequisites installed, run the install-pkgs.sh script (located in the ubuntu-manual/pkgs/ directory).

The script will check for the required Ubuntu packages, TeX packages, and fonts.