Package Maintainer Application - Carl Smedstad
Hi everyone, My name is Carl, or carsme on AUR/IRC, and this is my application to become a Package Maintainer. 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. 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. 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. 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!). For reference, PKGBUILDs for all packages I maintain in the AUR are available here: https://github.com/carlsmedstad/aurpkgs 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 * 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! -- Sincerely, Carl Smedstad PGP: 888285CF6ED6758F signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Package Maintainer Application - Carl Smedstad
Hey Robin, > 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). As discussed earlier, co-maintaining protonmail-bridge would be great. Looking forward to (potentially) working on this together in the future :) > Really great application overall! > > 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 :) > > I think he would be a great addition to the team! That's very nice to hear, thank you for the kind words and encouragement! -- Sincerely, Carl Smedstad PGP: 888285CF6ED6758F signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Package Maintainer Application - Carl Smedstad
Hi Morten and Torsten! Replying to both of your emails in one go :) > I notice you are using `-buildvcs=false` in some Go packages which should > probably go into the package guidelines, but that is largely on me. Great point. If I have time, I might sketch out an edit to the guidelines to include a section about using `-buildvcs=false` for non-VCS sources to avoid embedding errouneous VCS metadata. > Generally seems like high quality scripts. One nitpick is that you can replace > all your `[ "$some_check" = 1 ];` with `((some_check))` which is less letter > to > type. > > I'd also maybe look at parsing .SRCINFO instead of sourcing PKGBUILD, but not > super relevant for a TU application :) Thanks for looking through the scripts in addition to the PKGBUILDs! I never though of parsing the .SRCINFO instead of sourcing the PKGBUILD but it would likely be a lot cleaner and more robust, will look into it. > Now, excuse me. I need to find a Norwegian to sponsor as we can't have the > swedish leading with 3 packagers. Haha, at least we're currently safe from the Danes being in the lead! ;) > As mentioned earlier, they are of high quality and cover a broad range > of build systems and applications. One minor thing I spotted while going > through some of PKGBUILDs is the use of CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS, for instance in > > https://github.com/carlsmedstad/aurpkgs/blob/d071c9edc238af3819a5fddb6131195ef5df5761/luau/PKGBUILD#L35 > > If you set CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS then it overrides Arch's defaults. You have > to explicitly add $CXXFLAGS to the cmake option to append options. Thanks for looking through the PKGBUILDs and for the feedback, I'll make sure to address the flags in luau shortly. All in all, struggling to not repeat myself, but thanks for the kind words and encouragement. Appreciate it, cheers! -- Sincerely, Carl Smedstad PGP: 888285CF6ED6758F signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Package Maintainer Application - Peter Jung
On Mon Sep 2, 2024 at 7:07 PM CEST, Peter Jung wrote: > Hello everyone, > > My name is Peter and I'm 26 years old. I work as a test and quality > engineer and I'm from Augsburg, in Bavaria Germany. In my day-to-day > job, I'm working together with car OEMs, Android devices, and their > tools, like CANoe, CARMEN, Ellisys, ADB, and others. Servus Peter! 👋 > Following packages from the AUR, I would like to maintain in the Arch > Linux repository: > - scx-scheds (as soon as the sched-ext framework is merged in the > mainline kernel) > - libpfm (this needs to be discussed with the linux-tools maintainer) > - contour > - libunicode (dependecy for contour) > - boxed-cpp (dependecy for contour) > - virtme-ng > - llvm-bolt > - ananicy-cpp PKGBUILDs generally look good and according to the guidelines. One thing I noticed was that you still source explicit commits for VCS packages instead of pkgver-tags, e.g. in libpfm: _commit='3d77461cb966259c51f3b3e322564187f4bef7fb' source=("$pkgname::git+https://git.code.sf.net/p/perfmon2/libpfm4#commit=$_commit";) b2sums=('4380f73..') This is no longer required since support for VCS checksums was added to pacman - the above can be replaced with: source=("$pkgname::git+https://git.code.sf.net/p/perfmon2/libpfm4#tag=v$pkgver";) b2sums=('otherchecksum..') > If there are any other packages that currently lack maintenance and need > some help, I'm open to maintaining these. There sure are, but they're not always so easy to identify, the following pages might give you some ideas of where there is opportunity help out: - Orphaned packages [0]. - Open todos [1]. - Long-out-of-date packages [2]. > My sponsors are Christian "gromit" Heusel and Bert "bertptrs" Peters. > Thanks for guiding me through the application process as well as the > nice talk with each other. > > Best regards, > > Peter "ptr1337" Jung All in all, congratulations on a very well-written application. I think you have an impressive track-record and will make a addition to our distribution. Wish you all the best in the application process, good luck! :) [0]: https://archlinux.org/packages/?sort=&repo=Extra&q=&maintainer=orphan&flagged[1]: https://archlinux.org/todo/ [2]: https://archlinux.org/devel/reports/long-out-of-date/ -- Sincerely, Carl Smedstad PGP: 3D309011083BA25E signature.asc Description: PGP signature