Package Maintainer Application - Hyacinthe Cartiaux
Hi, My name is Hyacinthe and I'm hereby applying to become a Package Maintainer. My application is sponsored by Rémi Gacogne (rgacogne), whom I met at FOSDEM this year, and Robin Candau (Antiz). I sincerely thank both of them for their availability and support. I live near Metz in France and I've been working as an HPC sysadmin at the University of Luxembourg for the last 15 years. You can find me by my first name on IRC or my unix login "hcartiaux" anywhere else. My Linux journey started in the 2000s with Mandrake 8.2 which was a magical (pun intended) experience, discovering all the desktop/window managers packed on the 3 CD-Rs, as well as Dreamcast-Linux which I used to write my first Hello World in C. I then used Ubuntu, Debian and Gentoo, before settling on Arch Linux in 2007, convinced by its design and the KISS philosophy. This experience has definitely shaped my professional skills and mindset. In the past years, I've shared my personal projects on GitHub[0] and more recently on Codeberg[1] as well. Among others, I've been particularly active in the dn42 community[2] and developed a BGP auto-peering service[3] which I had the opportunity to talk about at FOSDEM this year[4]. I also build and release OpenBSD cloud images[5] with cloud-init. On the Arch Linux packaging side, I am maintaining some packages on the AUR[6] and I've submitted a fair amount of Merge Requests on the Arch Linux gitlab, most notably to add missing nvchecker integration to packages[7]. I've also been active in the testing team, and started working on small PoC package testing suite using bash, bats and podman[8]. Some packages should obviously be tested on real hardware but, currently, testing packages is a quite repetitive and not well documented task, so I think that centralizing test cases as code could be a good idea. Aside from packaging-related contributions, I submitted two Merge Requests to pacman (pending approval): * one to fix compilation warnings (and make the CI green)[9] * another one to fix a bug (#297) regarding temporary directories left in /var/cache/pacman[10]. I genuinely enjoyed reading the pacman code. C is not my day job but I'm interested in everything low-level. Outside of the cyberspace, I like biking and hiking in the forest, ping me and I'll happily share my preferred spots in Luxembourg and in the greater area ;) If I'm accepted as a Package Maintainer, I'm especially interested in maintaining HPC and sysadmin related packages in [extra], such as: * clustershell * lmod * env-modules * netcalc * autofs I'd also be interested in moving the following AUR packages: * cvmfs * turbovnc * screen-message * ruby-hiera-eyaml * puppet-lint I'm willing to adopt some of the currently orphaned packages in [extra] (e.g. encfs, cdrdao, sg3_utils, nss-mdns) and also to help maintain some packages that only have one maintainer at the moment (e.g. bats* packages, gocryptfs, parted, iotop, smartmontools, autossh, python-paramiko, expect, ncftp, cdparanoia, powertop, unrar/unzip...). I may be interested in contributing to other areas as well in the future, such as bug wrangling and maybe infrastructure/devops (since I'm fairly accustomed to Ansible/Terraform). Thanks in advance for your feedback and for considering my application! Best, Hyacinthe [0] https://github.com/hcartiaux [1] https://codeberg.org/hcartiaux [2] https://hcartiaux.github.io/dn42/ [3] https://github.com/hcartiaux/dn42-sshd-autopeer [4] https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/RPJHYK-automating_bgp_peerings_in_the... [5] https://github.com/hcartiaux/openbsd-cloud-image [6] https://aur.archlinux.org/packages?SeB=M&K=hcartiaux [7] https://gitlab.archlinux.org/groups/archlinux/-/merge_requests/?author_usern... [8] https://codeberg.org/hcartiaux/archlinux-testing [9] https://gitlab.archlinux.org/pacman/pacman/-/merge_requests/349 [10] https://gitlab.archlinux.org/pacman/pacman/-/merge_requests/348
On 4/12/26 3:59 PM, Hyacinthe Cartiaux wrote:
Hi,
My name is Hyacinthe and I'm hereby applying to become a Package Maintainer. My application is sponsored by Rémi Gacogne (rgacogne), whom I met at FOSDEM this year, and Robin Candau (Antiz). I sincerely thank both of them for their availability and support.
[...]
Hi, I confirm my sponsorship, I think Hyacinthe would be a good addition to our team :) Good luck! -- Regards, Robin Candau / Antiz
On 12.04.26 at 15:59 (UTC+0200), Hyacinthe Cartiaux wrote:
Hi,
My name is Hyacinthe and I'm hereby applying to become a Package Maintainer. My application is sponsored by Rémi Gacogne (rgacogne), whom I met at FOSDEM this year, and Robin Candau (Antiz). I sincerely thank both of them for their availability and support.
I live near Metz in France and I've been working as an HPC sysadmin at the University of Luxembourg for the last 15 years. You can find me by my first name on IRC or my unix login "hcartiaux" anywhere else.
Hi, nice to see another HPC guy coming in. How many Arch Linux nodes does your cluster have? 😉 Cheers, Jakub
Hi Hyacinthe! My name is Benedek.. TLDR; I'm an open source newbie and I ask dumb questions; While this is my first reply to the aur mailing list and I have almost no reputation for contributing to open source or archlinux, I would like to kindly ask you the following question and I hope you will answer at your discretion and a level of detail you are satisfied with; I'm not the right person to decide the fate of your application, I'm only curious and I love prying into topics I have little knowledge about:
I genuinely enjoyed reading the pacman code. C is not my day job but I'm interested in everything low-level. TLDR; Fun fact: Working with C could be anywhere from easy to terrifying as a package maintainer imo but maybe I'm mistaken.
Having worked for so long being a sysadmin, could you please give us an overview of how low of a low-level you are talking about? I have clicked through your repositories but at first glance (but I'm sure there's more) I only found shell scripts and configuration files for containers. Is it just adventuring into C itself as a programming language that you are interested in, or would you go deeper than that, like maybe even to the extreme of working with things like microcode, graphics drivers, fileystems? So this is a spectrum of course, but on a scale of 1 to 10? I understand that as a package maintainer there is less responsibility on you than on the programmer, but to properly test these things can prove to be difficult. Now I apologize if my question is inappropriate for a package maintainer application. I just had this idea in my head as someone who is concerned with detail and things working well; and most of all security. And correct me if I'm wrong but it seems to me that it comes with great responsibility to maintain projects with low-level code. If you dislike this question I won't mind if it goes unanswered. Have a lovely day. Yours truly, Benedek On Sun, 12 Apr 2026 at 20:32, Jakub Klinkovský <lahwaacz@archlinux.org> wrote:
On 12.04.26 at 15:59 (UTC+0200), Hyacinthe Cartiaux wrote:
Hi,
My name is Hyacinthe and I'm hereby applying to become a Package Maintainer. My application is sponsored by Rémi Gacogne (rgacogne), whom I met at FOSDEM this year, and Robin Candau (Antiz). I sincerely thank both of them for their availability and support.
I live near Metz in France and I've been working as an HPC sysadmin at the University of Luxembourg for the last 15 years. You can find me by my first name on IRC or my unix login "hcartiaux" anywhere else.
Hi,
nice to see another HPC guy coming in. How many Arch Linux nodes does your cluster have? 😉
Cheers, Jakub
On 4/12/26 8:32 PM, Jakub Klinkovský wrote:
nice to see another HPC guy coming in. How many Arch Linux nodes does your cluster have? 😉
No Arch at work except for my laptop (plenty of Debian and RHEL/Rocky systems though), but we offer a bare-metal redeployment feature to our users so it's absolutely possible. That said, I will not start this side quest myself ;) -- Hyacinthe
Hi everyone, On 4/12/26 15:59, Hyacinthe Cartiaux wrote:
My name is Hyacinthe and I'm hereby applying to become a Package Maintainer. My application is sponsored by Rémi Gacogne (rgacogne), whom I met at FOSDEM this year, and Robin Candau (Antiz). I sincerely thank both of them for their availability and support.
I confirm my sponsorship, Hyacinthe has demonstrated fine skills and eagerness to contribute to Arch, in addition to being very friendly :) Good luck! Rémi
On 4/13/26 9:43 AM, Remi Gacogne wrote:
Hi everyone,
On 4/12/26 15:59, Hyacinthe Cartiaux wrote:
My name is Hyacinthe and I'm hereby applying to become a Package Maintainer. My application is sponsored by Rémi Gacogne (rgacogne), whom I met at FOSDEM this year, and Robin Candau (Antiz). I sincerely thank both of them for their availability and support.
I confirm my sponsorship, Hyacinthe has demonstrated fine skills and eagerness to contribute to Arch, in addition to being very friendly :)
Good luck!
Rémi
Both sponsors have confirmed their sponsorship. This marks the beginning of the discussion period which will last for two weeks and will end on 2026-04-27 :) -- Regards, Robin Candau / Antiz
On 4/13/26 9:52 AM, Robin Candau wrote:
On 4/13/26 9:43 AM, Remi Gacogne wrote:
Hi everyone,
On 4/12/26 15:59, Hyacinthe Cartiaux wrote:
My name is Hyacinthe and I'm hereby applying to become a Package Maintainer. My application is sponsored by Rémi Gacogne (rgacogne), whom I met at FOSDEM this year, and Robin Candau (Antiz). I sincerely thank both of them for their availability and support.
I confirm my sponsorship, Hyacinthe has demonstrated fine skills and eagerness to contribute to Arch, in addition to being very friendly :)
Good luck!
Rémi
Both sponsors have confirmed their sponsorship. This marks the beginning of the discussion period which will last for two weeks and will end on 2026-04-27 :)
Hi, Friendly reminder that there is one week left for the discussion period. If you have anything to say to Hyacinthe, now is the time :) -- Regards, Robin Candau / Antiz
On 4/13/26 9:52 AM, Robin Candau wrote:
On 4/13/26 9:43 AM, Remi Gacogne wrote:
Hi everyone,
On 4/12/26 15:59, Hyacinthe Cartiaux wrote:
My name is Hyacinthe and I'm hereby applying to become a Package Maintainer. My application is sponsored by Rémi Gacogne (rgacogne), whom I met at FOSDEM this year, and Robin Candau (Antiz). I sincerely thank both of them for their availability and support.
I confirm my sponsorship, Hyacinthe has demonstrated fine skills and eagerness to contribute to Arch, in addition to being very friendly :)
Good luck!
Rémi
Both sponsors have confirmed their sponsorship. This marks the beginning of the discussion period which will last for two weeks and will end on 2026-04-27 :)
The discussion period is now over. The vote is live: https://aur.archlinux.org/package-maintainer/164 Voting period ends on 2026-05-04 19:40 (CEST). Please cast your votes! :) -- Regards, Robin Candau / Antiz
On 4/27/26 7:43 PM, Robin Candau wrote:
On 4/13/26 9:52 AM, Robin Candau wrote:
On 4/13/26 9:43 AM, Remi Gacogne wrote:
Hi everyone,
On 4/12/26 15:59, Hyacinthe Cartiaux wrote:
My name is Hyacinthe and I'm hereby applying to become a Package Maintainer. My application is sponsored by Rémi Gacogne (rgacogne), whom I met at FOSDEM this year, and Robin Candau (Antiz). I sincerely thank both of them for their availability and support.
I confirm my sponsorship, Hyacinthe has demonstrated fine skills and eagerness to contribute to Arch, in addition to being very friendly :)
Good luck!
Rémi
Both sponsors have confirmed their sponsorship. This marks the beginning of the discussion period which will last for two weeks and will end on 2026-04-27 :)
The discussion period is now over. The vote is live:
https://aur.archlinux.org/package-maintainer/164
Voting period ends on 2026-05-04 19:40 (CEST).
Please cast your votes! :)
Friendly reminder that the voting period ends tomorrow. For those who didn't cast their vote yet, now is the time to do so :) -- Regards, Robin Candau / Antiz
On 5/3/26 3:29 PM, Robin Candau wrote:
On 4/27/26 7:43 PM, Robin Candau wrote:
On 4/13/26 9:52 AM, Robin Candau wrote:
On 4/13/26 9:43 AM, Remi Gacogne wrote:
Hi everyone,
On 4/12/26 15:59, Hyacinthe Cartiaux wrote:
My name is Hyacinthe and I'm hereby applying to become a Package Maintainer. My application is sponsored by Rémi Gacogne (rgacogne), whom I met at FOSDEM this year, and Robin Candau (Antiz). I sincerely thank both of them for their availability and support.
I confirm my sponsorship, Hyacinthe has demonstrated fine skills and eagerness to contribute to Arch, in addition to being very friendly :)
Good luck!
Rémi
Both sponsors have confirmed their sponsorship. This marks the beginning of the discussion period which will last for two weeks and will end on 2026-04-27 :)
The discussion period is now over. The vote is live:
https://aur.archlinux.org/package-maintainer/164
Voting period ends on 2026-05-04 19:40 (CEST).
Please cast your votes! :)
Friendly reminder that the voting period ends tomorrow. For those who didn't cast their vote yet, now is the time to do so :)
The voting period is now over, here are the result: - Yes: 45 - No: 1 - Abstain: 9 - Quorum: 83.33% (66% needed) Congratulations Hyacinthe, welcome to the team! 🤗 -- Regards, Robin Candau / Antiz
On 5/4/26 19:44, Robin Candau wrote:
The voting period is now over, here are the result:
- Yes: 45 - No: 1 - Abstain: 9 - Quorum: 83.33% (66% needed)
Congratulations Hyacinthe, welcome to the team! 🤗
Well done, Hyacinthe, welcome to the team! Remi
On Sun, 2026-04-12 at 15:59 +0200, Hyacinthe Cartiaux wrote:
Hi,
Hello!
On the Arch Linux packaging side, I am maintaining some packages on the AUR[6] and I've submitted a fair amount of Merge Requests on the Arch
Your packages look nice and clean. I couldn't help but notice that you maintain vagrant-git. I don't know how you manage; we dropped vagrant to the AUR because it didn't work well with our Ruby ecosystem. Nice.
Linux gitlab, most notably to add missing nvchecker integration to packages[7].
Appreciated.
I've also been active in the testing team, and started working on small PoC package testing suite using bash, bats and podman[8]. Some packages should obviously be tested on real hardware but, currently, testing packages is a quite repetitive and not well documented task, so I think that centralizing test cases as code could be a good idea.
This looks neat. I'd love to pick your brain about that some time.
I may be interested in contributing to other areas as well in the future, such as bug wrangling and maybe infrastructure/devops (since I'm fairly accustomed to Ansible/Terraform).
As you are currently decidedly active on the AUR, would you be interested in helping with AUR moderation (handling orphan/merge/deletion requests) as well? Cheers, Bert.
Hi Bert, On 4/23/26 9:55 PM, Bert Peters wrote:
Your packages look nice and clean. I couldn't help but notice that you maintain vagrant-git. I don't know how you manage; we dropped vagrant to the AUR because it didn't work well with our Ruby ecosystem. Nice.
Thanks for reviewing my packages! I occasionally needed vagrant-git when the latest release of vagrant was broken due to ruby dependencies but the fix was already in the upstream repository :) I find vagrant quite useful when I need to reproduce production servers, prototype or write procedures. I really don't use it every day and I'm not brave enough to try bringing it back into extra.
This looks neat. I'd love to pick your brain about that some time.
Actually, I'd like some feedback on this. My goal is not to cover 100% of any software, but at least to verify that a package is usable after installation and that library updates don't break the packages that depend on them. I'd like to cover as many packages from core as possible (given the constraint that it runs in podman containers). I've really tried to keep the code as simple as possible to make the whole project maintainable/understandable on volunteer time. Another objective was to make it easy to write test files with very little overhead, you just have to source one helper script and the tests run almost transparently in an Arch Linux container with the right packages updated from the testing repositories. If you have more questions, don't hesitate to ask.
As you are currently decidedly active on the AUR, would you be interested in helping with AUR moderation (handling orphan/merge/deletion requests) as well?
I can definitely help, but I can't guarantee that I will commit regularly a fixed amount of time on this. That said, I'll do my best ;) Best, -- Hyacinthe
On 2026-04-12 15:59, Hyacinthe Cartiaux wrote:
Hi,
My name is Hyacinthe and I'm hereby applying to become a Package Maintainer. My application is sponsored by Rémi Gacogne (rgacogne), whom I met at FOSDEM this year, and Robin Candau (Antiz). I sincerely thank both of them for their availability and support.
On the Arch Linux packaging side, I am maintaining some packages on the AUR[6] Hi Hyacinthe,
Nice application! Especially the testing suite sounds very interesting. I’m aware that I’m late, and the discussion period is already over. Still, I have a question regarding your vim-puppet package: There is one version tag in the upstream repo (1.0.0), but the pinned commit is a few commits ahead of it (but not the latest either). Is there a reason the package is pinned to this commit? If not, it would make more sense to track the release tags in this package, and create vim-puppet-git to track the latest commit. And one nitpick: install -D will create leading folders, so the first three installs are redundant :) Best, Jonathan
On 4/27/26 9:23 PM, Jonathan Grotelüschen wrote:
Nice application! Especially the testing suite sounds very interesting.
Thanks!
Still, I have a question regarding your vim-puppet package: There is one version tag in the upstream repo (1.0.0), but the pinned commit is a few commits ahead of it (but not the latest either). Is there a reason the package is pinned to this commit? If not, it would make more sense to track the release tags in this package, and create vim-puppet-git to track the latest commit.
It's a simple mistake. The package was versioned correctly before 2018, but then the upstream source repository changed and there were no releases from 2018 to 2024. It should have been converted to a -git package during this period. Then I guess I missed the tag 1.0.0. The files modified between v1.0.0 and the pinned commit are not included in the package (README and GitHub actions). So I've just bumped the epoch and used the tag. Given the low activity of the project and the commit diff since last release, I don't think it's justified to create vim-puppet-git.
And one nitpick: install -D will create leading folders, so the first three installs are redundant :) Nice catch, fixed! ;)
-- Hyacinthe
participants (7)
-
Bert Peters
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Hyacinthe Cartiaux
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Jakub Klinkovský
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Jonathan Grotelüschen
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Remi Gacogne
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Robin Candau
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Shard smp