[aur-general] TU Application - serebit
Hello all, My name is Campbell Jones, my online handle is serebit, and this is my application to become a Trusted User. I've been graciously sponsored by Jonas Witschel (diabonas) and Leonidas Spyropoulos (artafinde). I'm 22 years old, I live in Maryland (though I'm in Ireland for a couple more weeks), and I've been developing software to some degree for about a decade now. My hobbies involve software development, playing video games (some favorites being Titanfall 2 and ULTRAKILL), critiquing my friends' art and animation pieces, building computers, learning about space, and hugging my dogs. My favorite movies are Into the Spider-Verse and Interstellar.
=============== HISTORY ===============
Feel free to skip reading this if it gets boring!
My exploits with programming started with programs on my TI-84 calculator to aid me in math class, and have culminated in closing in on a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, which I'll have by the end of this year. I've also landed a post-grad position as a software engineer working on non-classified software used by the Navy and Coast Guard, which will primarily involve working with RHEL and aiding with improvements to build systems and version control. I'm the sole developer of Wraith Master, an open-source application to configure the RGB LEDs on the Wraith Prism CPU cooler, and one of the core developers of the Budgie desktop environment.
My first experience with Unix was with my family's iMac, which I used to begin my programming journey with software like QB64, then Python, Processing, and Java. In early 2017, after building a computer of my own, I elected to dual boot Windows 10 and Ubuntu, so I could continue to use a Unix-like environment for the purposes of developing software. However, dissatisfaction with the Unity desktop led me to install Mint instead at the suggestion of others, followed by Solus. I ended up liking Solus enough to stick with it for the next four years and change.
Soon after installing Solus, I began to investigate its processes for package submission and updating, and I decided to participate. I started with submitting packages for inclusion, then began to build packages myself, and eventually took up volunteer maintainership of packages. By the time I left Solus, I was maintaining the entire JVM stack, including handling the large-scale migration from JDK 8 to JDK 11 and patching software to facilitate that migration; in one excruciating case, I spent two full days patching modelio to build on JDK 11. I had also taken up maintainership of the Intel GPU compute stack, aka "neo", and several other miscellaneous packages like Kitty, libwacom, and shotcut. Occasionally, I would find reason to submit patches for packages to the upstream projects as well.
In any case, I left Solus in January 2022, along with Joshua Strobl, one of the prior "core team" members. I would rather not air dirty laundry in a publicly available thread, so I won't go into details here, but it ultimately came down to a split between the "core team" members over serious issues with development and conduct that had been festering for some time. With the departure of Josh came the departure of Budgie, which became a standalone project backed by prior contributors, including myself. I had previously swapped out the system tray backend in Budgie for my own implementation of the XEMBED spec, which resolved numerous longstanding issues with the tray applet, and I wanted to continue moving Budgie forward now that it had been freed from the shackles of Solus.
Upon leaving Solus, I decided to find a new distribution that could replace it on my personal machines. It had to satisfy the criteria of being rolling release, having up-to-date software in its repositories, having a fast package manager, and having Budgie as an option in its installer - so I elected to install EndeavourOS as a way of getting a somewhat curated experience on Arch. I had already been maintaining a couple AUR packages for Wraith Master for some time, so I had some experience with the PKGBUILD format already, and I decided to take up maintainership of Budgie's various AUR packages (mostly -git variants of existing packages) in order to update them to the new repository that had been set up under Buddies of Budgie.
=============== END HISTORY ===============
Ultimately, my motivation with applying to be a Trusted User is an extension of my prior motivation to aid with Solus packaging, and my motivation to maintain Budgie's AUR packages. Arch doesn't have a dedicated maintainer for Budgie's community packages, and I believe I would be an ideal candidate to fill that role. Though I haven't been on Arch for long, I have been maintaining packages for years, and I'm more than willing to learn and abide by the standards that Arch has set for its community and repositories.
To address the minimum requirements:
- I'm well acquainted with bash, sh, and csh (the latter not by choice...) - I maintain a few packages in the AUR with what I believe to be clean and quality PKGBUILDs - I've recently joined the Arch Matrix channel and plan to stay - I like to think my Google-Fu is well-trained! It had to be after the years I've spent being the dedicated technical support person for my family and friends... - I know exactly what packages I want to maintain as a start - the Budgie stack!
As for the extra requirements:
- I've reported some issues with Budgie packages on the bug tracker, so a little bit of involvement there - I have not submitted patches for Arch projects - I've been contributing to and maintaining open-source projects for years
My first order of business after becoming a Trusted User would be to clean up the PKGBUILDs for the following Budgie packages:
- budgie-desktop - budgie-desktop-view - budgie-screensaver
Second order of business would be to move the AUR package "budgie-control-center" into the community repository, as it is a necessary component of the Budgie stack and has additionally reached the minimum requirements for inclusion. Finally, I would begin discussions of how the "budgie-extras" package could be modified or split, with cooperation from upstream if necessary. I'd also like to push for SPDX license ID support in the PKGBUILD format after having discussed it with Jonas.
Thank you for reading this massive email, and I look forward to receiving your feedback!
Best, Campbell Jones
=============== LINKS ===============
GitHub: https://github.com/serebit GitLab: https://gitlab.com/serebit AUR: https://aur.archlinux.org/account/serebit Bugs: https://bugs.archlinux.org/user/37021 Solus: https://dev.getsol.us/p/serebit Mastodon: https://fosstodon.org/@serebit Matrix: @serebit:matrix.org Homepage: https://serebit.com
On 25/07/2022 14:57, Campbell Jones via aur-general wrote:
Hello all, My name is Campbell Jones, my online handle is serebit, and this is my application to become a Trusted User. I've been graciously sponsored by Jonas Witschel (diabonas) and Leonidas Spyropoulos (artafinde). [..]
I confirm my sponsorship
Best of luck!
On 2022-07-25 13:57, Campbell Jones via aur-general wrote:
My name is Campbell Jones, my online handle is serebit, and this is my application to become a Trusted User. I've been graciously sponsored by Jonas Witschel (diabonas) and Leonidas Spyropoulos (artafinde). [...]
I confirm my sponsorship of serebit. Best of luck, let the discussion period begin!
Cheers, Jonas
Just to highlight the obvious,
On 25/07/2022 14:57, Campbell Jones via aur-general wrote:
I elected to install EndeavourOS as a way of getting a somewhat curated experience on Arch.
-snip-> Though I haven't been on Arch for long
Are you running EndeavourOS, or Arch? ;P
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512
I currently have two machines - one desktop, which I use for most of my work, and one significantly less powerful laptop that I'm typing this email from. Both of these machines are currently running EndeavourOS, and not vanilla Arch Linux. I chose Endeavour initially because I wanted something very close to upstream Arch, using upstream repositories, but with a curated set of packages on install.
While I would like to keep one of my machines running Endeavour so I can help with the Budgie experience on that distribution as well, I am not opposed to converting my laptop to vanilla Arch if that's something that would be requested of me upon becoming a TU. I see the value in having pure Arch installed as a testing and validation platform.
------- Original Message ------- On Monday, July 25th, 2022 at 4:30 PM, Jonathon Fernyhough via aur-general aur-general@lists.archlinux.org wrote:
Just to highlight the obvious,
On 25/07/2022 14:57, Campbell Jones via aur-general wrote:
I elected to install EndeavourOS as a way of getting a somewhat curated experience on Arch.
-snip-> Though I haven't been on Arch for long
Are you running EndeavourOS, or Arch? ;P
On 25/07/2022 18:57, Campbell Jones via aur-general wrote:
I currently have two machines - one desktop, which I use for most of my work, and one significantly less powerful laptop that I'm typing this email from. Both of these machines are currently running EndeavourOS, and not vanilla Arch Linux. I chose Endeavour initially because I wanted something very close to upstream Arch, using upstream repositories, but with a curated set of packages on install.
While I would like to keep one of my machines running Endeavour so I can help with the Budgie experience on that distribution as well, I am not opposed to converting my laptop to vanilla Arch if that's something that would be requested of me upon becoming a TU. I see the value in having pure Arch installed as a testing and validation platform.
Most people who know me know that I am a proponent of (and contributor to) a couple of derivatives (EndeavourOS and Garuda) as they provide a certain value to specific groups of people (plus I like the people and communities behind them).
However, I myself run Arch proper, which means that it's much easier to exclude any distro-centric changes having an effect on configuration, packaging, etc. etc. etc. and this is particularly key when running on [testing].
While EndeavourOS is one of the closest derivatives I'm aware of, they still have their own repo with some tooling and hooks which might (maybe) affect things once installed (package building can/should be done in a clean Arch chroot so that's never an issue). Therefore, running some instance of Arch proper (even if it's in a VM) is likely to be important, as you say, for testing and validation.
Having said all of this, I'd also wait to hear from any devs/TUs who want to weigh in on this; they might consider that an Arch TU not running Arch might be a bit weird. xD
On 2022-07-25 20:09, Jonathon Fernyhough via aur-general wrote:
While EndeavourOS is one of the closest derivatives I'm aware of, they still have their own repo with some tooling and hooks which might (maybe) affect things once installed (package building can/should be done in a clean Arch chroot so that's never an issue). Therefore, running some instance of Arch proper (even if it's in a VM) is likely to be important, as you say, for testing and validation.
I would indeed expect all building and smoketesting of packages to be carried out on a vanilla Arch system. Doing the building on a derivative distribution, however small its modifications might be, might introduce subtle reproducibility bugs that I would like to avoid at all costs. I also expect all packagers to do basic testing of their packages on a standard system to catch obvious packaging mistakes.
Having said all of this, I'd also wait to hear from any devs/TUs who want to weigh in on this; they might consider that an Arch TU not running Arch might be a bit weird. xD
On the other hand, I have absolutely no issue with packagers also running or contributing to derivative distributions: it feels to me like there are not many connections between upstream Arch and its ports/derivatives, which is a pity. I think there is a lot of collaboration potential not only w.r.t. packaging, but also regarding usage and improvement of distribution-specific tooling (e.g. dbscripts/repod, keyringctl, ...). Having an active EndeavourOS contributor feels like a great way to bridge this perceived gap a bit.
To reiterate, I expect any member of the Arch staff to take an active role in the Arch community. Using Arch only as a "service platform" to get packages into derivative distributions wouldn't work well, but that is absolutely not the impression I get from this TU application. On the other hand, there is no rule forbidding staff members to use other distributions as well, and I see no reason why derivatives of Arch should be special in that regard.
Best, Jonas
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256
On Jul 26, 2022, 4:35 PM, Jonas Witschel via aur-general < aur-general@lists.archlinux.org> wrote:
Having an active EndeavourOS contributor feels like a great way to bridge this perceived gap a bit.
Just to clarify, I am not an EndeavourOS contributor, but an EndeavourOS user. However, I have had correspondence with an Endeavour contributor, flyingcakes, as he's in the Budgie Matrix space—this correspondence is the reason Endeavour has been shipping budgie-control-center in their own "eos" repository prior to it landing in [community]. I would, of course, be perfectly happy to provide a communication bridge of sorts between EndeavourOS and Arch regardless, if given the opportunity to do so.
On 26/07/22, Campbell Jones via aur-general wrote:
On Jul 26, 2022, 4:35 PM, Jonas Witschel via aur-general < aur-general@lists.archlinux.org> wrote:
Having an active EndeavourOS contributor feels like a great way to bridge this perceived gap a bit.
Just to clarify, I am not an EndeavourOS contributor, but an EndeavourOS user. However, I have had correspondence with an Endeavour contributor, flyingcakes, as he's in the Budgie Matrix space—this correspondence is the reason Endeavour has been shipping budgie-control-center in their own "eos" repository prior to it landing in [community]. I would, of course, be perfectly happy to provide a communication bridge of sorts between EndeavourOS and Arch regardless, if given the opportunity to do so.
I think packaging and testing makes sense to be done on a vanilla Arch system only. I've asked serebit before when reviewing the application and he suggested to migrate one of his machines to Arch native as already mentioned.
Many of us use different operating system / distributions as well as Archlinux so I don't think it's weird, I've contributed to repod patches to make it build successfully in MacOS. The fact EOS it a derivative makes it just easier to switch to native Archlinux and shows we are inclusive :)
As for bringing closer Archlinux with derivative ditributions we contacted already some for them and they attended in one of the repod meetings we have every other week with positive feedback and discussion [1]. I think it can bring positive feedback and collaboration on issues which we/they face challenges or both.
[1]: https://lists.archlinux.org/archives/list/arch-projects@lists.archlinux.org/...
Cheers
On 2022-07-25 13:57, Campbell Jones via aur-general wrote:
My name is Campbell Jones, my online handle is serebit, and this is my application to become a Trusted User. I've been graciously sponsored by Jonas Witschel (diabonas) and Leonidas Spyropoulos (artafinde).
Half of the 14-day discussion period has already passed, so if you have any questions for serebit, please ask away :)
Best, Jonas
On 2022-07-25 13:57, Campbell Jones via aur-general wrote:
My name is Campbell Jones, my online handle is serebit, and this is my application to become a Trusted User. [...]
The discussion period is over now, please cast your votes :)
https://aur.archlinux.org/tu/138
Cheers, Jonas
On 2022-08-08 17:23, Jonas Witschel via aur-general wrote:
On 2022-07-25 13:57, Campbell Jones via aur-general wrote:
My name is Campbell Jones, my online handle is serebit, and this is my application to become a Trusted User. [...]
The discussion period is over now, please cast your votes :)
The voting period has just ended, and the results are in:
Yes No Abstain Total Participation 32 7 15 54 90.00
Congratulations serebit and welcome to the team, you are now a Trusted User :)
Please follow the to-do list so that you can get onboarded:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/AUR_Trusted_User_guidelines#TODO_list_for_n...
Best, Jonas
participants (4)
-
arch＠serebit.com
-
Jonas Witschel
-
Jonathon Fernyhough
-
Leonidas Spyropoulos