I, Adam Gandelman, wish to apply for membership to ~ubuntu-server-dev, upload rights to the Ubuntu Server package set and MOTU.

Who I am

I am a developer on the Ubuntu Server Team at Canonical, specifically the Cloud Infrastructure sub-team.

My Ubuntu story

I was introduced to Linux at age 13 thanks to Slackware. At some point in high school I switched to Debian as my primary desktop distribution. The idea of a Linux distribution as successful as Ubuntu had been something of a dream at that point. In 2002, I went on ~6 year hiatus from all things computer related while I spent time focusing on other interests (traveling, music, etc). Upon returning in 2008, I was amazed to hear about Ubuntu and its success. I began using Linux again and primarily Ubuntu somewhere around Intrepid.

I began working at an open source company that maintained some upstream kernel code and specialized in data replication and high availability clustering. Most of the customers I supported were using RHEL to deploy more legacy technologies, though Ubuntu was always my desktop platform of choice. It wasn't until I took a job a cloud-based SaaS start-up that I got my first taste of Ubuntu on the server. I was amazed to see things like daily EC2 images, cloud-init, cloud-utils, etc. It was obvious that Ubuntu was leading a new charge: bringing Linux to the masses in the cloud in the same way it had on the desktop in the past.

My involvement

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

Aside from general maintenance of the packages in the server seed, most of my time is spent working to make Ubuntu the best possible platform for deploying an Openstack cloud. Together with other members of the server team, I've been helping maintain the various Openstack packages in Ubuntu. Currently, this includes roughly 53 binary packages spread across 8 or so source packages. The work is non-stop and has proven to be very challenging given the velocity of the upstream project.

In addition to helping maintain the packaging branches, I've developed corresponding charms to deploy most components using Juju. Development and deployment of these charms helped enrich the Openstack package set in Ubuntu as it helped uncover lots subtle issues in our packaging trees that would have otherwise gone unnoticed.

At the beginning of the Precise cycle, we (with the rest of Ubuntu) made a commitment to QA, CI and ensuring a usable development release of Ubuntu. To that end, my team and I developed an automated continuous integration QA lab around Openstack. Here, we trigger Jenkins jobs for every upstream commit. The jobs deploy all of Openstack from trunk, runs integration tests. This coverage helps us ensure our packaging stays in-line with upstream changes and makes sure all components work well together before entering the Ubuntu archive every week. We will be expanding this work to cover automated testing of stable branches and Ubuntu SRUs. More information about this work is available at James Page's blog. Results from our QA work is published to qa.ubuntu.com

Areas of work

I primarily work on the maintenance and testing the Openstack components in Ubuntu. Additionally, I help process incoming bugs as best I can and have been helping with early-cycle syncs and merges for the last two cycles.

Here is a list of packages I've touched in Ubuntu

Things I could do better

I sometimes get too caught up in a single task. I could let myself get lost in a bug for two days without paying much attention to anything else. I also feel I could do a better job at attempting to triage incoming bugs reported to a package that I may not have any experience with. Even if I may not be able to resolve it, poking at new things is the best way to learn new things and get exposed to other parts of the distribution I might not otherwise spend time on.

Plans for the future

General

I hope to ensure our CI and QA work around Openstack scales well across multiple releases of both Ubuntu and Openstack. I also hope to get my hands dirty with other parts the Ubuntu server package set, broaden my knowledge of Ubuntu development and hopefully achieve core-dev status soon.

What I like least in Ubuntu

I wish packaging best-practices were better enforced on existing developers in the same way they are on aspiring developers seeking sponsorship. One thing I hate is looking at a package hoping to learn by example, but finding someone who has touched it omitted entries from change logs, headers from patches, or cut corners in other ways.

Comments

If you'd like to comment, but are not the applicant or a sponsor, do it here. Don't forget to sign with @SIG@.

Endorsements

Scott Moser

General feedback

I have absolutely no reservations about giving Adam upload access to any Ubuntu package set. Adam's work on Openstack in Ubuntu, and especially the testing infrastructure has been excellent. He is willing to dive into any package to fix a problem. He is careful and deliberate and willing to seek feedback and review to "do things right" rather than "do things now".

I think Adam's criticism is spot on:

• finding someone who has touched it omitted entries from change logs, headers from patches, or cut corners in other ways.

I hope that he can work to clean up the backlog of patches without proper documentation and continue to do good work and not take shortcuts. We all get lazy and use "quick fixes" sometimes, the one solution I see to that is in Peer review, and Adam has made extensive use of package reviews.

Specific Experiences of working together

• BugId:812539 : There was an issue in Openstack, Adam crafted a work around in cloud-init. We later fixed the issue in Openstack as well.

Areas of Improvement

• Adam should have applied for Ubuntu Server Dev a long time ago.

ClintByrum

General feedback

I've been working with Adam on and off since he joined our team last Summer. His ability to understand how servers are really used and how the configurations and options we choose for users affects them is second to none. I'm often impressed by not only his basic packaging knowledge (which he has gained very rapidly), but also how well he's able to map it to real world examples. Ubuntu Server needs people like Adam, he will make a fine addition to the Ubuntu Server Dev team.

Specific Experiences of working together

I've sponsored a few of his patches, all were excellently constructed, including SRU's, which can be tricky:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/facter/1.5.6-2ubuntu2.3 https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/facter/1.5.7-1ubuntu1.3 https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/facter/1.5.8-2ubuntu2.2

In October 2011 Adam and I attended the OpenStack Design Summit and Conference to help demo Ubuntu Cloud Infrastructure and Juju during a keynote given by Canonical CEO Jane Silber. He was able to deploy and configure OpenStack in just a few hours on Ubuntu 11.10 beta repeatedly over the course of 3 days. Because of his excellent work on the Juju charms, Orchestra, and the OpenStack packages, the demo was a huge success for Ubuntu.

Areas of Improvement

Adam should continue expanding the width of his knowledge. In most server related areas, it is incredibly deep, and I think with some additional knowledge of high level Ubuntu/Debian development tools he'll be quite ready for core-dev in the near future.

As a sponsor, just copy the template below, fill it out and add it to this section.

Daniel Holbach (dholbach)

General feedback

The work from Adam I reviewed was top-notch with nothing to complain about. I'm sure he'd make a good MOTU/server developer.

Specific Experiences of working together

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/python-dingus/+bug/879051

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ipsec-tools/+bug/881097

TEMPLATE

== <SPONSORS NAME> ==
=== General feedback ===
## Please fill us in on your shared experience. (How many packages did you sponsor? How would you judge the quality? How would you describe the improvements? Do you trust the applicant?)

=== Specific Experiences of working together ===
''Please add good examples of your work together, but also cases that could have handled better.''
=== Areas of Improvement ===