This past quarter I spent some time [modernizing Balrog's toolchain](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1232436) to make it more approachable. We've switched from Vagrant to Docker, cleaned up setup.py, started using tox, and updated the sample data included in the repo. At the same time, I started [identifying some good first bugs](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Balrog#Getting_Involved), and put together a [proposal for a Summer of Code project](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Community:SummerOfCode16#Release_Engineering). I feel very lucky that this work has paid off so quickly. There's been great interest in the Summer of Code project, and we've had 5 new volunteers submit patches to Balrog. These people are doing really great work, and I'd like to highlight their contributions today (in no particular order). ## Njira Perci Njira has focused on UI improvements, and has already improved the [confirmation dialog for deleting Rules](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1150538) and added the ability to [autocomplete Products and Channels](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1257293) in form fields. She continues to hack away and is now working on improving the Releases UI to [highlight whether or not a release is active](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1113689) in any way. ## Ashish Sareen Ashish fixed a bug where the Admin server would hit an [ISE 500 under certain conditions](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1134190). With his patch, it now correctly returns a 400 error to the client. ## Varun Joshi Varun has been diving deep into the Admin server. He started off by fixing a small bug where some [weirdly formed Releases caused ISE 500s](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1113111), and has since provided a patch that gives us the ability to [mark Releases as "read only"](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1127875). This is something we intend to make use of in our new Release Promotion system to guard accidental (or malicious...) changes to Release metadata. ## Aybüke Özdemir Aybüke enhanced the UI to [show rule_ids](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1146496), which makes it esaier for humans to find them when they need to put them into a script or automation. ## Kumar Rishabh Kumar fixed a very annoying bug where diffs of different versions of Releases would be [generated against the wrong base version](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1140262), making them essentially useless. ## You? If *you* would like to get involved in the development of Balrog, we'd love to have you. The wiki page [can get you bootstrapped](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Balrog#Hacking), and you can find us all on [irc.mozilla.org in #balrog](irc://irc.mozilla.org/#balrog).