[aur-general] TU Application
Hello, My name is Evangelos Foutras. I'm 20 years old and currently a student of Informatics at the University of Piraeus in Athens, Greece. I had my first taste of GNU/Linux a few years back with Mandrake 9.0 (if I remember correctly) that came with a magazine I bought. I didn't know much about computers back then and gave up quickly. Since then, I used Windows (2000 and then XP) pretty much until 2007. At that time I discovered Ubuntu and started messing around with it, setting my system to dual-boot XP and Ubuntu. I gradually increased the time spent on Ubuntu especially during the summer of the same year, and finally dumped Windows all together on Oct 20 2007. I've never looked back since. During this one and a half year, I've tried several distributions, including Fedora and Debian; they were alright. I really liked that Fedora shipped with very up-to-date software and I still use Debian for server environments. My first Arch installation was done this spring but for some reason I can't recall, I went back to Ubuntu the following day. My next Arch encounter I owe to Alex Cartwright, founder of TangoCMS[1]. He had recently switched to Arch himself and urged me to give it another try. This time I got to understand and love the Arch Way, so I didn't bounce. "Love at second sight", I guess. Currently, I maintain 8 packages in AUR. Two of them feature (crappy) software I've authored, two others are new contributions and the rest are orphans I've adopted. I'm somewhat experienced at C, Python, PHP and Bash, skills which have aided in handling issues that arise when packaging a piece of software. Let me say that I'm amazed at the quality of the distribution as a whole, and the tools that have been developed for it. The community is wonderful as well, composed of smart and skillful people who enjoy being of assistance to others. I'd like to get more involved in Arch and help wherever I can; therefore I'm applying for TUship. Daenyth has offered to be my sponsor and I sincerely thank him for that. :) Feel free to ask me any questions you might have. Kind regards, ------------ [1] http://www.tangocms.org/
Evangelos Foutras ha scritto:
Hello,
My name is Evangelos Foutras. I'm 20 years old and currently a student of Informatics at the University of Piraeus in Athens, Greece.
I had my first taste of GNU/Linux a few years back with Mandrake 9.0 (if I remember correctly) that came with a magazine I bought. I didn't know much about computers back then and gave up quickly. Since then, I used Windows (2000 and then XP) pretty much until 2007. At that time I discovered Ubuntu and started messing around with it, setting my system to dual-boot XP and Ubuntu. I gradually increased the time spent on Ubuntu especially during the summer of the same year, and finally dumped Windows all together on Oct 20 2007. I've never looked back since.
During this one and a half year, I've tried several distributions, including Fedora and Debian; they were alright. I really liked that Fedora shipped with very up-to-date software and I still use Debian for server environments. My first Arch installation was done this spring but for some reason I can't recall, I went back to Ubuntu the following day. My next Arch encounter I owe to Alex Cartwright, founder of TangoCMS[1]. He had recently switched to Arch himself and urged me to give it another try. This time I got to understand and love the Arch Way, so I didn't bounce. "Love at second sight", I guess.
Currently, I maintain 8 packages in AUR. Two of them feature (crappy) software I've authored, two others are new contributions and the rest are orphans I've adopted. I'm somewhat experienced at C, Python, PHP and Bash, skills which have aided in handling issues that arise when packaging a piece of software.
Let me say that I'm amazed at the quality of the distribution as a whole, and the tools that have been developed for it. The community is wonderful as well, composed of smart and skillful people who enjoy being of assistance to others. I'd like to get more involved in Arch and help wherever I can; therefore I'm applying for TUship. Daenyth has offered to be my sponsor and I sincerely thank him for that. :)
Feel free to ask me any questions you might have.
Kind regards,
------------ [1] http://www.tangocms.org/ <cut>
Hi Evangelos, you seems to be known for me(maybe on IRC @ #archlinux ;-D). Well, I reviewed your packages and I found this: * Remove this (vim tag) # vim:set ts=2 sw=2 et: from your packages. * gcompris, gnome-hearts, movic, xdotool: Maintainer tag is just for TUs (if this become a reality then you can change again to Maintainer, but consider to do this change to the next release) * gnalert: license is an array, change license="GPL" by license=('GPL') Now let me ask few questions, what are your plans becoming a TU? Adopting orphaned packages in community?, move some AUR packages to community (which ones?), help developing/patching AUR?. Btw you missed to point us to your AUR link or at least your nick in AUR (foutrelis), i guessed by your e-mail address ;). Good luck! -- Angel Velásquez angvp @ irc.freenode.net Arch Linux Trusted User (TU) http://www.angvp.com
First of all, let me say that this has not so much to do with the TU application of Evangelos per se. I mean I haven't even looked at his work yet so please don't feel this like an attack on you personally. Anyway, feel free to split this of if someone decides to respond to my concerns. First of all, I think the group is growing to fast. If Evangelos is accepted, I think we are close to 25% increase in group size in about 1 month. Sure, it is a good thing if we increase the size of the TU group, but we also need to worry about quality. Every new TU has to go through a learning curve, making mistakes in the progress. Quite a few new additions have only few packages in AUR. Basically the quality of their AUR packages is more or less the only thing we can judge them on as that mostly resembles what they will be doing if they become a TU. The last point, which may be actually my fault as I almost never hang out on IRC and don't read arch-general, I don't know any of the last TU additions. Point is, I think it should be a prerequisite to be part of the Arch community for quite some time, be known to help people in the progress. As said, this may be true for most new additions (I remember reading some in their applications either way), but for the case of for example Evangelos (sorry it is just the first example I have by hand), he is only using Arch for a couple of months. Who tells me he will still use Arch x months for now, leaving us with a bunch of orphans? As said, these are just a couple of concerns I have regarding the quaility of the TU group. Feel free to discuss them (either here or in a separate thread), or ignore them :p Regards, Ronald
On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 03:41, Ronald van Haren <pressh@gmail.com> wrote:
First of all, let me say that this has not so much to do with the TU application of Evangelos per se. I mean I haven't even looked at his work yet so please don't feel this like an attack on you personally. Anyway, feel free to split this of if someone decides to respond to my concerns.
First of all, I think the group is growing to fast. If Evangelos is accepted, I think we are close to 25% increase in group size in about 1 month. Sure, it is a good thing if we increase the size of the TU group, but we also need to worry about quality. Every new TU has to go through a learning curve, making mistakes in the progress.
I think we can only benefit from more. You bring up a good point about having many inexperienced TUs at a time, but I still think that the benefit outweighs any downsides.
Quite a few new additions have only few packages in AUR. Basically the quality of their AUR packages is more or less the only thing we can judge them on as that mostly resembles what they will be doing if they become a TU. What do you propose we judge them on apart from that? As I said, I've talked to him for some time on IRC, and he's a great guy.
The last point, which may be actually my fault as I almost never hang out on IRC and don't read arch-general, I don't know any of the last TU additions. Point is, I think it should be a prerequisite to be part of the Arch community for quite some time, be known to help people in the progress.
How could this possibly be quantified? And isn't this what the sponsorship is for, someone to vouch that the person in question is good?
As said, this may be true for most new additions (I remember reading some in their applications either way), but for the case of for example Evangelos (sorry it is just the first example I have by hand), he is only using Arch for a couple of months. Who tells me he will still use Arch x months for now, leaving us with a bunch of orphans?
I don't think this should be relevent when considering an addition, unless you have reason to believe that they will leave soon. The very fact that they are applying says to me that they care about the community and about arch. If they didn't care and didn't plan to stick with it, why bother applying? We still benefit in the short term at the very least. The worst that would happen is that we'd have to remove a few orphans in community. It's also just as likely that long-term members drop their packages and move on in some way. We've had several in the past few months who have been a TU for quite some time.
As said, these are just a couple of concerns I have regarding the quaility of the TU group. Feel free to discuss them (either here or in a separate thread), or ignore them :p
Regards,
Ronald
Ronald van Haren wrote:
First of all, I think the group is growing to fast. If Evangelos is accepted, I think we are close to 25% increase in group size in about 1 month. Sure, it is a good thing if we increase the size of the TU group, but we also need to worry about quality. Every new TU has to go through a learning curve, making mistakes in the progress.
Remember there was a whole heap of new devs going through a bit of a learning curve not long ago... As long as all new TU's ask questions when they are unsure about anything and we are free to answer their questions, we should not run into problems that are too hard to fix. However, I do agree that it is becoming difficult for us to judge people based on their packages. Most people just do not have enough and those they do have are mainly adopted orphans rather packages of their own. This is fair enough - in my time here I have only added four or five packages to the AUR. If an existing TU knows an applicant then that is good, but we do not want this to be a rule. (In fact, someone pointed out that it seemed to be a necessity just today: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=56534). I do not know how to get around this. So, how can we judge new applicants? Allan
On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 2:58 PM, Allan McRae <allan@archlinux.org> wrote:
Ronald van Haren wrote:
First of all, I think the group is growing to fast. If Evangelos is accepted, I think we are close to 25% increase in group size in about 1 month. Sure, it is a good thing if we increase the size of the TU group, but we also need to worry about quality. Every new TU has to go through a learning curve, making mistakes in the progress.
Remember there was a whole heap of new devs going through a bit of a learning curve not long ago... As long as all new TU's ask questions when they are unsure about anything and we are free to answer their questions, we should not run into problems that are too hard to fix.
that is actually a good point. As long as they ask questions if unsure there most likely will not be any major breakages. And if the sponsor takes a look at the first couple of packages the new TU uploads to [community] everything is likely to be okay.
However, I do agree that it is becoming difficult for us to judge people based on their packages. Most people just do not have enough and those they do have are mainly adopted orphans rather packages of their own. This is fair enough - in my time here I have only added four or five packages to the AUR.
If an existing TU knows an applicant then that is good, but we do not want this to be a rule. (In fact, someone pointed out that it seemed to be a necessity just today: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=56534). I do not know how to get around this. So, how can we judge new applicants?
Allan
I don't mind people knowing eachother, though that may never be a reason to sponsor somebody who you would otherwise not sponsor. How to judge people? I'd say mainly on the PKGBUILDs, preferebly at least ~20 and preferebly a couple of them self added. Further if someone is highly active on the bugtracker, submitting patches and so, that would be another good sign someone is capable of maintaining packages (at least capable of fixing thins if something needs to be patched). Other linux or arch related activities can count as a bonus IMHO. Though I hardly doubt we can come up with a guideline for such things, there are just too many variables. Ronald
Ángel Velásquez wrote:
* Remove this (vim tag) # vim:set ts=2 sw=2 et: from your packages.
It doesn't hurt anything and it's included in '/usr/share/pacman/PKGBUILD.proto' so I believe it's preferable to leave it as is. Unless, of course, there is a reason for removing it (e.g. being obsolete).
* gcompris, gnome-hearts, movic, xdotool: Maintainer tag is just for TUs (if this become a reality then you can change again to Maintainer, but consider to do this change to the next release)
What should I add myself as, when adopting a package, if not using the Maintainer tag? "Contributor" maybe?
* gnalert: license is an array, change license="GPL" by license=('GPL')
Fixed. :)
Now let me ask few questions, what are your plans becoming a TU? Adopting orphaned packages in community?, move some AUR packages to community (which ones?), help developing/patching AUR?.
I certainly could help maintaining packages in [community] and thus lowering the number of packages each TU has to look after. I intend to bring a couple of my packages into [community] that I think are useful and used by enough people. Namely, xdotool, gcompris and movic (the latter when 2.0 gets released - which should be soon, according to its website). Actively participating in discussions regarding the AUR and possibly helping in its development, are two more areas I've considered engaging in. Helping other people write better PKGBUILDs is highly on my priority list as well.
Btw you missed to point us to your AUR link or at least your nick in AUR (foutrelis), i guessed by your e-mail address ;).
Good point! Your guess is correct, I go by the alias "foutrelis" everywhere.
Good luck!
Thanks. :)
-----Original Message----- Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:42:30 +0200 Subject: Re: [aur-general] TU Application From: Evangelos Foutras <foutrelis@gmail.com> To: "Discussion about the Arch User Repository (AUR)" <aur-general@archlinux.org>
Ángel Velásquez wrote:
* Remove this (vim tag) # vim:set ts=2 sw=2 et: from your packages.
It doesn't hurt anything and it's included in '/usr/share/pacman/PKGBUILD.proto' so I believe it's preferable to leave it as is. Unless, of course, there is a reason for removing it (e.g. being obsolete).
* gcompris, gnome-hearts, movic, xdotool: Maintainer tag is just for TUs (if this become a reality then you can change again to Maintainer, but consider to do this change to the next release)
I always wondered about these tags/comments or what ever they are. I do not use vim, being fan of emacs. Well, they do not suck me hat much , but what are their benefits for vim users?
What should I add myself as, when adopting a package, if not using the
Maintainer tag? "Contributor" maybe?
Yes!
Helping other people write better PKGBUILDs is highly on my priority list as well.
I read some of your threads on bbs.archlinux.org and I think you do a good job concerning that.
stefan-husmann@t-online.de wrote:
What should I add myself as, when adopting a package, if not using the
Maintainer tag? "Contributor" maybe?
Yes!
Actually, I just read a wiki entry[1] on this which clears things up. # Maintainer: the maintainer responsible for this pkg in the official repositories # Contributor: the person who wrote the first PKGBUILD for this package So I shouldn't add myself at all to packages I adopt. :o /me goes to update his adopted packages. ---------------- [1] http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ABS_PKGBUILD_Explained
ts=2 sw=2
Some text editors have formatting configuration that unify editing from within files, and this is how they work. For Vim, ts is tab space and sw is shift width ( http://www.answers.com/topic/tab-stop ). Even Kate has something similar. As such, everyone that opens the file with Vim for reading/writing will have the same tab space and shift width. If you feel "forced", think of it as a bonus rather than an annoyance since a tab space of 2 is keeping it simple and unified. I'm more interested as to why there's a contradiction between the above TU's suggestion and the sample buildscripts (I'm sure they were updated fairly recently). Is it a more recent cosmetic shift, then?
Contributor: the person who wrote the first PKGBUILD for this package
Isn't it for any "maintainer" in _unsupported_ regardless of whether that person is the submitter? These are trivial matters which a TU should know about at the back of his/her head, but I'm just barging in to ask since they've been brought up anyway.
On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 9:32 PM, Ray Rashif <schivmeister@gmail.com> wrote:
Contributor: the person who wrote the first PKGBUILD for this package
Isn't it for any "maintainer" in _unsupported_ regardless of whether that person is the submitter? These are trivial matters which a TU should know about at the back of his/her head, but I'm just barging in to ask since they've been brought up anyway.
Contributor tag should be used pretty liberally, you don't need to have only one tag. If you wrote/edit/adopt/patch the PKGBUILD you should really add a contributor tag of your own and don't delete any old ones. -- Callan Barrett
On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 3:32 PM, Ray Rashif <schivmeister@gmail.com> wrote:
ts=2 sw=2
Some text editors have formatting configuration that unify editing from within files, and this is how they work. For Vim, ts is tab space and sw is shift width ( http://www.answers.com/topic/tab-stop ). Even Kate has something similar. As such, everyone that opens the file with Vim for reading/writing will have the same tab space and shift width. If you feel "forced", think of it as a bonus rather than an annoyance since a tab space of 2 is keeping it simple and unified.
I'm more interested as to why there's a contradiction between the above TU's suggestion and the sample buildscripts (I'm sure they were updated fairly recently). Is it a more recent cosmetic shift, then?
This line is controversial for the following simple reasons : 1) it is good because it ensures style consistency among vim users 2) it is bad because it is specific to one single editor and seems unfair to all other editors (why only a vim modeline and not also a emacs/kate/etc one?) In my opinion, there should not be any strict rules, it should be up to the actual maintainer. Though, if the majority of packagers prefers to not put any modelines and recommend doing that, we should consider removing it from the prototypes.
On Thu, Oct 09, 2008 at 06:28:34PM +0200, Xavier wrote:
Though, if the majority of packagers prefers to not put any modelines and recommend doing that, we should consider removing it from the prototypes.
Though I use vi I support the removal of all modelines. I'm a fan of the tab.
On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 6:28 PM, Xavier <shiningxc@gmail.com> wrote:
This line is controversial for the following simple reasons : [...]
You're right it's controversial. If I understood correctly the large majority of devs/TUs is made by vim users, so this could be a reason to leave it in. I'll be happy to ditch it in any case, though, if some vim guru explained (and meybe wikified) how to get the same result with your .vimrc or whatever way it's done. After all, those who don't like it will continue to remove it, and those who like it will continue to use it in their rc file. Corrado
On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 13:30, bardo <ilbardo@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 6:28 PM, Xavier <shiningxc@gmail.com> wrote:
This line is controversial for the following simple reasons : [...]
You're right it's controversial. If I understood correctly the large majority of devs/TUs is made by vim users, so this could be a reason to leave it in. I'll be happy to ditch it in any case, though, if some vim guru explained (and meybe wikified) how to get the same result with your .vimrc or whatever way it's done. After all, those who don't like it will continue to remove it, and those who like it will continue to use it in their rc file.
Corrado
The point is that it's NOT in vimrc. vimrc might have something like ts=8 sw=8, and another might like 4, or two, or 6. This way the mode is set for that file while you edit it, without having to manually change anything.
On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 12:30 PM, bardo <ilbardo@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 6:28 PM, Xavier <shiningxc@gmail.com> wrote:
This line is controversial for the following simple reasons : [...]
You're right it's controversial. If I understood correctly the large majority of devs/TUs is made by vim users, so this could be a reason to leave it in. I'll be happy to ditch it in any case, though, if some vim guru explained (and meybe wikified) how to get the same result with your .vimrc or whatever way it's done. After all, those who don't like it will continue to remove it, and those who like it will continue to use it in their rc file.
Something like: " ~/.vimrc if has("autocmd") au BufRead,BufNewFile PKGBUILD setlocal ft=sh ts=2 sw=2 noet endif
On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 1:12 PM, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 12:30 PM, bardo <ilbardo@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 6:28 PM, Xavier <shiningxc@gmail.com> wrote:
This line is controversial for the following simple reasons : [...]
You're right it's controversial. If I understood correctly the large majority of devs/TUs is made by vim users, so this could be a reason to leave it in. I'll be happy to ditch it in any case, though, if some vim guru explained (and meybe wikified) how to get the same result with your .vimrc or whatever way it's done. After all, those who don't like it will continue to remove it, and those who like it will continue to use it in their rc file.
Something like:
" ~/.vimrc if has("autocmd") au BufRead,BufNewFile PKGBUILD setlocal ft=sh ts=2 sw=2 noet endif
Though I guess ft=bash is more correct
It would be nicer yet to acknowledged the original contributor with something like "Original Contributor". I know it has been odd to discover a PKGBUILD I wrote years ago show up with someone else's name on it !! Very best regards; Bob FInch On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 1:41 AM, Evangelos Foutras <foutrelis@gmail.com>wrote:
stefan-husmann@t-online.de wrote:
What should I add myself as, when adopting a package, if not using the
Maintainer tag? "Contributor" maybe?
Yes!
Actually, I just read a wiki entry[1] on this which clears things up.
# Maintainer: the maintainer responsible for this pkg in the official repositories # Contributor: the person who wrote the first PKGBUILD for this package
So I shouldn't add myself at all to packages I adopt. :o /me goes to update his adopted packages.
---------------- [1] http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ABS_PKGBUILD_Explained
On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 9:41 AM, Evangelos Foutras <foutrelis@gmail.com> wrote:
stefan-husmann@t-online.de wrote:
What should I add myself as, when adopting a package, if not using the Maintainer tag? "Contributor" maybe?
Yes!
Actually, I just read a wiki entry[1] on this which clears things up.
# Maintainer: the maintainer responsible for this pkg in the official repositories # Contributor: the person who wrote the first PKGBUILD for this package
So I shouldn't add myself at all to packages I adopt. :o /me goes to update his adopted packages.
---------------- [1] http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ABS_PKGBUILD_Explained
Better use this document: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Packaging_Standards The document you are referring to contains a couple of errors from a quick look at it. btw it seems trivial to me that a contributor is someone who did contribute to the PKGBUILD at some point. That is why the comment starts with 'contributor' and not with 'firstsubmitter' or so.... Ronald
Daenyth has offered to be my sponsor and I sincerely thank him for that. :) As he said, I will sponsor him. Let the plan to take over the worl^W^W^W^W^W^W discussion period begin.
I've known him on IRC for a while, and was impressed by the quality of his work. I offered many weeks ago to sponsor him, but he decided to wait until he was more comfortable with the process and work of it before applying. I went over his PKGBUILDs with him, and apart from a few minor issues (almost entirely cosmetic/style), which he promptly fixed, his work is top-notch. We'll be glad to have him as a TU. --Daenyth
participants (13)
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Aaron Griffin
-
Allan McRae
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bardo
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Bob Finch
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Callan Barrett
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Daenyth Blank
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Evangelos Foutras
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Loui
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Ray Rashif
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Ronald van Haren
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stefan-husmann＠t-online.de
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Xavier
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Ángel Velásquez