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
On 3/3/24 16:27, Carl Smedstad wrote:
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!
Hi all, I hereby confirm my sponsorship of Carl. He seems to be very motivated and has a good understanding of packaging while always strives to be on top of the latest packaging guidelines and tooling (like nvchecker configs). It was always nice to cooperate together with Carl and during our Jitsi session he seems like a very social and friendly person. I believe we will make a great package maintainer and addition to our distro. Sincerely, Levente
On 3/3/24 16:27, Carl Smedstad wrote:
Hi everyone,
My name is Carl, or carsme on AUR/IRC, and this is my application to become a Package Maintainer.
Hey Carl, thanks for your application and all the best for the process!
[...] 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!
I hereby confirm my sponsorship. This therefore marks the beginning of the discussion period which will last for two weeks until 2024-03-17. Afterwards we will start the voting period (1 week), which will be announced separately. Cheers, gromit
On 3/4/24 00:06, gromit wrote:
On 3/3/24 16:27, Carl Smedstad wrote:
Hi everyone,
My name is Carl, or carsme on AUR/IRC, and this is my application to become a Package Maintainer.
This therefore marks the beginning of the discussion period which will last for two weeks until 2024-03-17.
Afterwards we will start the voting period (1 week), which will be announced separately.
Hello everyone, time has passed and we are already at the point to vote about this application! Fellow package maintainers, please cast your vote: https://aur.archlinux.org/package-maintainer/151 The voting will last for one week and end on 2024-03-25! Cheers, gromit
On 3/18/24 1:18 AM, gromit wrote> Hello everyone, Hello everyone,
time has passed and we are already at the point to vote about this application! Fellow package maintainers, please cast your vote: https://aur.archlinux.org/package-maintainer/151
The voting will last for one week and end on 2024-03-25!
We only have one and a half days left to vote for this so please cast your vote everybody. In order to reach the quorum we still need around 10 more people to vote! cheers, gromit
On 24/03/18 01:18AM, gromit wrote:
On 3/4/24 00:06, gromit wrote:
On 3/3/24 16:27, Carl Smedstad wrote:
Hi everyone,
My name is Carl, or carsme on AUR/IRC, and this is my application to become a Package Maintainer.
Afterwards we will start the voting period (1 week), which will be announced separately.
Fellow package maintainers, please cast your vote: https://aur.archlinux.org/package-maintainer/151
The voting will last for one week and end on 2024-03-25!
Thanks everbody for voting! The result is as follows: Yes: 39 No: 2 Abstain: 7 Total: 48 (75%) The above application is therefore accepted, congratulations Carl for becoming a package maintainer 🎉 Cheers, gromit
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,
On 3/3/24 16:27, Carl Smedstad wrote: 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! 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! -- Regards, Robin Candau / Antiz
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
On Sun, Mar 03, 2024 at 03:27:54PM +0000, Carl Smedstad wrote:
Hi everyone,
Yo!
[....]
For reference, PKGBUILDs for all packages I maintain in the AUR are available here: https://github.com/carlsmedstad/aurpkgs
As of writing I have gone through ~100 of the ~160 available packages (skipping a few ruby ones) and generally the quality seems good. 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.
I've also published some helper scripts I use: https://github.com/carlsmedstad/aurutils-extra
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 :)
For my other OSS-contributions, primarily bug reports and minor patches, my GitHub profile is most likely the best place to get an overview.
I went back a few years on Github and the bug reports seems to generally be of a nice and high quality.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, cheers!
Thanks for applying and good luck. Now, excuse me. I need to find a Norwegian to sponsor as we can't have the swedish leading with 3 packagers. -- Morten Linderud PGP: 9C02FF419FECBE16
Am 03.03.24 um 16:27 schrieb Carl Smedstad:
Hi everyone, Hi Carl!
My name is Carl, or carsme on AUR/IRC, and this is my application to become a Package Maintainer. Thank you very much for your application! I already came across your work on the AUR a couple of times and had the pleasure to adopt some of your packages and add them to [extra].
For reference, PKGBUILDs for all packages I maintain in the AUR are available here: https://github.com/carlsmedstad/aurpkgs
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/d071c9edc238af3819a5fddb6131195... If you set CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS then it overrides Arch's defaults. You have to explicitly add $CXXFLAGS to the cmake option to append options.
Hopefully that gives a good picture of who I am and where I'd like to start my journey as a package maintainer, if accepted. Overall a very strong application! I think you would be a great addition to the team.
Cheers, Torsten
Hi Morten and Torsten! Replying to both of your emails in one go :)
I notice you are using `-buildvcs=false` in some Go packages which should probably go into the package guidelines, but that is largely on me.
Great point. If I have time, I might sketch out an edit to the guidelines to include a section about using `-buildvcs=false` for non-VCS sources to avoid embedding errouneous VCS metadata.
Generally seems like high quality scripts. One nitpick is that you can replace all your `[ "$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/d071c9edc238af3819a5fddb6131195...
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
participants (6)
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Carl Smedstad
-
gromit
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Levente Polyak
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Morten Linderud
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Robin Candau
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Torsten Keßler