[aur-general] TU application.

[Thomas Dziedzic]

On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 2:24 PM, Daenyth Blank <daenyth+arch at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 15:22, Christopher Brannon <cmbrannon79 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Indeed I have.
>> Let the discussion period begin.
>>
>> -- Chris
>>
>> PS.  That's a very well-written application!
>>
>
> I have nothing to add except to concur with Chris. Nice application :)
>

Hey Peter.

I'm just going to reply to some of the things you said.

>1) Maintain popular packages well and reliably.
>
>I currently maintain 7 packages in the AUR, and am interested particularly in
>things relating to science and research (e.g. latex, octave, sage,
>bibliographic management stuff like mendeley and kbib), as well as KDE things
>(I've been building and using KDE since version 1.0). And while I think it's
>ideal when people maintain things that they use themselves, this wouldn't
>restrict me from taking on other packages that I don't use.
>
>See my current packages here:
>http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?SeB=m&K=petelewis
>

The only packages that you mentioned your interests in that aren't
maintained in community are mendeley and kbib.

You do have very few packages albeit nice and clean ones. I think that
you should demonstrate the final thing you mentioned by adopting some
more packages and cleaning them up so that you at least have 20. Ofc
this is not required and it's just my opinion. (I think the minimum
amount of packages any user should have before applying to a TU
position is 20 nice and clean ones)
I'm just suggesting this so that I know that when TU's apply (not just
picking on you) that they at least look like they have some minimal
experience that I expect a TU to have.

>2) Promote Arch and the TU scheme.
>
>As I said, I think we need more TUs, while maintaining our high standard. I'd
>like to promote the TU scheme and get more skilled Arch users to take on
>maintaining the packages that they use. I think a world where more people
>maintain a small number of packages each in [community] will lead to a bigger
>and higher quality [community] repo. We should advertise, with the aim of
>

I agree.

>having many more TUs. This also means that we shouldn't be afraid of voting
>people down if they're not yet ready, and give feedback to help them improve
>and invite them to apply again later. We all benefit from this.
>

Now I know you can't be angry at me for the previous comments :)

>3) Maintain / improve processes and package standards.
>
>I think that standard processes and packages are very important, and can make
>life using Arch a lot easier. It's also important that the processes are
>right, and this means attention to detail. Things like package naming and
>categories fall into this. I think a large part of the job of a TU is to keep
>the AUR clean and clear, and I would spend time helping to achieve this. I
>have in mind that bits of additional functionality, such as to enabling
>deletion requests to be handled through the web interface, perhaps duplicate
>flagging and package renaming would be useful and make the job of a TU easier.
>Over time, I would investigate implementing things like this.
>

Awesome.

>Also on processes, I'm a bit of a geek for democratic stuff, constitutions and
>bye-laws and things. I've worked with a couple of quite large democratic
>organisations on their election and decision-making rules and would be
>interested in helping to keep these working well for the good of Arch and us
>all too. Again, it's important to get the rules right, but in addition to hard
>rules, often establishing good etiquette is just as important (but IMO
>preferably without going down the Ubuntu route of canned responses). I think
>Arch people are good at this kind of thing, but I think it always helps to
>have people who are interested in keeping things fresh.
>

I agree.

>If there are any questions, I'm very happy to try to answer them.
>

Can I get your secret beer recipe?

>Cheers, and thanks for reading.
>

Cheers!