[aur-general] Trusted User Application

[Brad Fanella]

Hello everybody,
In response to this (https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=103250)
thread, I (and a few others) have decided that it would be a good idea to
have a stream of new TUs to maintain packages that they actually use
themselves, which in theory would lessen the gap between upstream and
package releases.

I guess I should tell you a little about myself and what I do/have done. My
name is Brad Fanella and I am from Chicago, Illinois within the United
States of America. I am a software developer, web designer, and
[no]monkey[/no]. My forum username is itsbrad212 (I doubt anyone cares) and
I have a little over 1,200 posts currently. I have been an Arch user since
around December 2009 and a Linux user since late 2008. Before I had found
Arch, distro hopping was a normal happening and I tended to do a lot of it.
>From Ubuntu to Slackware to Debian to Gentoo, none of them every pleased
me...until I found Arch. The combination of a simplistic, fast,
rolling-release distribution with a great community and team of developers
is what keeps me here, and I will definitely be staying for many years to
come (if I ever leave at all).

My talents? Well, when I first discovered that computers were for more than
what happens when you click the Internet icon, the first thing that peaked
my interest was web design, so I learned HTML, CSS, and (shortly later) PHP.
A couple of months after that, I found another programmer and together we
created a content management system (Surf-CMS) that we are currently
managing to this day.

Of course, how could you be called an "advanced" Linux user without knowing
C and shell scripting? Well, I first learned about shell scripting when
there were some tasks I needed to be done and I wanted to automate that
process. C, on the other hand, was learned for two (maybe three) reasons:
1) Linux and C go together
2) I like speed
3) I wanted to be 1337

Kdding about the last one. Anyway, within the past few weeks, I have been
developing a AUR+Pacman (and maybe ABS in the future?) wrapper in C. I
thought C would be a good candidate because it's *fast*, and even with more
than 500 lines of code, it still fetches, untars, and resolves dependencies
in a split second. It is currently incomplete, but I plan to release it
under the "Community Contributions" section in the near future.

I also know Python and Assembly, but nobody really cares about Assembly
anymore, so it's not really worth mentioning. I learned it because I have
beens steadily developing a bootloader and kernel in pure 32-bit assembly
(along with a few other developers) called LitaOS. Unfortunately, I don't
work on it that often (maybe a couple hours a week, if that).

What can I bring to the table? Well, as I said before, I use C for pretty
much everything, so I do use a good amount of C libraries, so I guess you
could say that. I also compile a couple of Python modules here and there.
The main reason I wanted to become a TU is because I wanted to help improve
the quality of both packages that I use personally and packages that others
ask for, as well as help users on the AUR to bring their PKGBUILDs to a near
perfected state. Arch deserves to be the very best, and I want to help get
it there.

Now, about my AUR package count. Allan even said it himself, and I quote:
"@itsbrad212:  You only have a few packages in the AUR but they look good.
 I'd say apply if you want..."

I was actually a little hesitant about applying to become a trusted user,
only because my AUR package count was so low. That being said, I actually
have a fairly proficient knowledge of writing PKGBUILDs, building packages,
using namcap, etc. For a short time, I was actually hosting a small
repository of compiled packages from the AUR (that were either common or I
used them myself) for a little linux discussion group on an IRC chat room.
I actually am not still hosting those packages or maintaining them anymore
as I wasn't getting enough of a response to make it worthwhile. I just
recently got a list from a forum user of suggest packages that I should
adopt in the AUR and keep up-to-date, so I plan on doing that.

Chris Brannon has been kind enough to sponsor me, on behalf of Allan,
through this process. I know I said it before, but I'll say it again. My
goals are not to maintain 100,000 packages or something silly like that, but
to improve other packages, submit clean and working packages myself, and
help others on the AUR to improve their packages.

Kind regards,
Brad