[aur-general] TU Application - Konstantin Gizdov

[Sven-Hendrik Haase]

On Sun, Oct 14, 2018, 22:34 Konstantin Gizdov <arch at kge.pw> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I am Konstantin Gizdov [1] [2],
> (`kgizdov`, `arch at kge.pw`, `kgizdov at gmail.com`)
>
> I would like to apply to be a Trusted User under Baptiste Jonglez's
> sponsorship.
>
> A few words about me:
>
> I am currently a Particle Physics PhD at Univerisity of Edinburgh and I
> have used Linux since my early teenage years. After I finished
> high-school, Linux has been my main operating system. I embraced Open
> Source software for a long time ago and contribute to such several
> projects [2][3][4]. I have been with Arch Linux since 4+ years ago,
> although only more active since 2+ years.
>
> My main work is concentrated on Experimental Particle Physics & the LHCb
> Detector at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. As part of that I have
> been involved in the development, upgrade & maintenance of the
> High-Level Trigger & RICH systems and LHCb's data flow [3]. I also have
> experience with a lot of data processing & analysis - data distillation
> & enrichment, machine learning, statistical analysis, etc - and
> associated tools. Separately, I maintain several machines - a personal
> web server, company server with several VMs, local workhorse server,
> personal workstation & laptop (sprinkle around some RaspberryPis and
> network devices here and there). This put me in a unique position to
> work with many and different kinds of systems and software - ranging
> from ASICs & FPGAs, through localized control systems & end-user devices
> to large clusters & super computers. Daily, I use popular tools such as
> VMs, docker, git, GCC, CUDA, tensorflow, Cern's ROOT, but I also run a
> lot of custom and even-self made software [4][6]. All of this has been a
> breeze on Arch Linux.
>
> Thus, a couple of years ago, I decide to get more involved and
> contribute. I took on the task to maintain CERN's ROOT package [7] and
> since then I've involved myself heavily into that, I'm a contributor to
> the project and I use it daily in my work. I have been providing this
> package for many colleagues in the field, including all of its stack &
> complementary tools (Pythia, XRootD & other Python tools). I have
> enabled a lot of new features and worked with upstream towards new
> functionality, bug fixes, etc. On top of that I have shipped several
> other related projects - machine learning packages, SciKit-HEP packages
> like uproot, Docker images, GitLab CIs and so on.
>
> I have also been able to develop and publish a machine learning project
> me and colleague came up with [4]. This is soon going to be a package in
> SciKit-HEP and I will aim to make it package here too. Arch Linux was a
> great platform for all of this. I was able to install & configure
> up-to-date software easily and what I did not find, I provided for me &
> others on the AUR without too much hassle.
>
> Overall, I have to say Arch Linux (and its community) have played a key
> role in me being able to do all of these things. I have found the OS
> itself to be stable and flexible and the users & maintainers
> approachable and direct, which I appreciate a lot. I have met a lot of
> people through the Arch Linux community - forums, AUR and just saying 'I
> use Arch, too!', haha.
>
> The reason for applying to become a TU is to get even more involved and
> give back to the community. If you accept me, I would like to continue
> maintaining and improving my current packages as well as bring new
> packages. As an AUR maintainer I basically consider it an on-going duty
> already.
>
> I would like to maintain/contribute/adopt the following:
>
>   * Packages I would like to co-maintain:
>       o python-awkward
>       o libafterimage
>       o xxhash
>       o unuran
>   * Packages I already maintain and intend to move from AUR:
>       o root & root-extra
>       o xrootd
>       o simpletools
>       o root5
>       o python-root_numpy
>       o python-uproot
>       o python-uproot-methods
>       o python-hep_ml
>       o pythia
>       o llvm50
>       o llvm50-libs
>       o clang50
>   * New packages I would like to add/move from AUR:
>       o cern-vdt
>       o cvmfs
>       o HepDrone [4]
>       o python-keras
>       o root_pandas (new)
>       o histbook (new)
>       o decaylanguage (new)
>       o pyjet (new)
>       o vegascope (new)
>       o root_ufunc (new)
>       o formulate (new)
>
> I hope to make Arch Linux more versatile and accessible to users in data
> science, high-energy physics & machine learning, and possibly as a whole.
>
> Thank you.
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Konstantin
>
> 1. https://keybase.io/kgizdov
> 2. https://github.com/kgizdov
> 3. https://gitlab.cern.ch/kgizdov
> 4. https://github.com/Tevien/HEPDrone
> 5. https://github.com/scikit-hep
> 6. https://gitlab.cern.ch/kgizdov/pdqa-automation


Great stuff. Would you be interested in co-maintaining tensorflow, cuda and
pytorch and related packages? They sometimes cost a lot of time to fix up.