Re: Package Maintainer Application - Carl Smedstad

[Robin Candau]

On 3/3/24 16:27, Carl Smedstad wrote:

Hi everyone,

Hey,

My name is Carl, or carsme on AUR/IRC, and this is my application to
become a Package Maintainer.

Thanks for your great application, I wish you good luck!

I started my Linux journey in 2016, while studying engineering
mathematics at Chalmers University here in Gothenburg, Sweden. At the
time, I was struggling with motivation and direction in my studies, but
things took a positive turn when my friend group introduced me to Linux.
I started out on Ubuntu but quickly transitioned to Arch Linux as there
was a strong "btw, I use arch" atmosphere in our group :)

With this new discovery, technology suddenly started making sense and
became understandable. I had tinkered with computers since I was a
child, but this was the first time I felt that anything was doable,
given some time and dedication. As such, tinkering with my system became
my new favorite pastime.

Relatable :)

Shortly after this formative moment, I got a part-time job as a
developer, which eventually became full-time and made me drop out of
university. This put me on a path which I'm very happy to be on, and
which led me to today, where I'm leading a team developing route
optimization solutions for commercial aviation. I still tinker a lot,
but now with a broader scope that includes the processes, technologies
and tools me and my team use in our daily work.

Congratulations!

Arch Linux has been my daily driver for around eight years now, and I
have since 2021 tried to get more involved in the project, mainly by
maintaining packages in the AUR. This has been a learning experience and
I've tried to continuously improve my process and my packages. Examples
include: fixing namcap warnings, migrating to standards based Python
packaging (PEP 517), migrating to SPDX license identifiers, and most
recently, using nvchecker to check for new versions.

Nice to see that you're constantly keeping up with packaging standard's evolution!>

Outside of tech, I really enjoy traveling and try to do so as often as
possible. Specifically, hiking through new landscapes and sampling local
cuisine. Most recent trips were to the Bavarian Alps and to Sardinia in
Italy, both of which were fantastic experiences (with great food!).

Arch is mostly relying on Cookies though, hope you like them :D

For reference, PKGBUILDs for all packages I maintain in the AUR are
available here: https://github.com/carlsmedstad/aurpkgs

I've been taking a quick look at your PKGBUILDs and they all generally look fine. Not much to say (in a good way, obviously). As said above, the packaging standards are applied and the PKGBUILDs are genuinely high quality.

I've also published some helper scripts I use:
https://github.com/carlsmedstad/aurutils-extra

For my other OSS-contributions, primarily bug reports and minor patches,
my GitHub profile is most likely the best place to get an overview.

As package maintainer, I intend to initially bring the following
packages (+deps) into [extra], provided no one has any objections:

* espanso
* opentofu
* powershell
* protonmail-bridge

As discussed a bit together already, I would personally be interested in this package as well. I actually had the intention to move it myself some time ago but the package was in a FTBFS state at the time unfortunately. Anyway, I think it would be a nice addition to the [extra] repo. Given that you are accepted as a Package Maintainer, I would be glad to work on moving that package to [extra] together and co-maintain it with you (if you're okay with that).> * rdiff-backup

* watchman

Regarding (co-)maintenance of what's already in [extra], I'd like to
adopt some of the currently orphaned Python and Ruby packages, for
example:

* python-joblib
* python-oscrypto
* ruby-treetop

Additionally, I did a quick search for packages with only one maintainer
among those I regularly use, and ended up with the following candidates
for potential co-maintainership:

* aerc
* handlr
* istio
* python-black
* sqlfluff

Hopefully that gives a good picture of who I am and where I'd like to
start my journey as a package maintainer, if accepted.

My sponsors are Levente Polyak (anthraxx) and Christian Heusel (gromit)
and I'm very thankful for their feedback and encouragement so far.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, cheers!

Really great application overall!



I think he would be a great addition to the team!

--
Regards,
Robin Candau / Antiz

For what it's worth, I've seen Carl's alias (carsme) frequently over the last year on the AUR and IRC; and always with good qualities actions/interactions. I had the occasion to talk with him a bit in the past and I confirm Levente's feeling that Carl's seems like a very social and friendly person :)

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