UniverseContributorApplication

I, Alexandros Frantzis, apply for universe-contributor.

Name

Alexandros Frantzis

Launchpad Page

https://launchpad.net/~afrantzis

Wiki Page

<link to your Wiki page>

Who I am

I have been involved with computers as far back as I can remember. My first experiences were with a Macintosh and an Amiga 500 a long, long time ago.

In 1999 I was introduced to Linux through the Slackware distribution. I managed to last 4 years with Slackware, at which point I switched to Debian. A few years later (about 2005) I started using Ubuntu.

My Ubuntu story

My involvement

I got into Ubuntu development through my involvement with the Linaro project. My contributions include improving existing packages, creating new packages and making some small improvements to tools related to ubuntu infrastructure. Within the Linaro UserPlatforms team I also help out new team members with packaging tasks.

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

Contributions to existing packages:

  • clutter
    • Major repackaging using dh7, 3.0 (quilt), multiple build runs to produce binary packages for all clutter gl/eglx variants.
    • Changes included in clutter-1.0 1.2.12-0ubuntu6.
    • Changes ported to clutter-1.0 1.4 (upcoming in natty).
  • cairo

New packages (accepted in universe/multiverse):

New packages (accepted in official linaro overlay PPA):

  • qt4-qws
  • es2gears

Various fixes/improvements:

  • germinate does not support multiple repositories on the same host (lp: #634831)

Areas of work

My main focus has been packages related to my work in the Linaro project, which is currently graphics and UIs. My interaction was mainly with the linaro, ubuntu-desktop and kubuntu teams. Members from all teams have been very helpful and responsive. This was very important, especially in the beginning when I was not very familiar with ubuntu processes.

Things I could do better

While I am quite familiar with dh7, my CDBS skills are somewhat lacking. I plan to become more familiar with CDBS, so that I can contribute more effectively to a larger selection of packages.

Plans for the future

General

I plan, of course, to continue to contribute to any areas that are related to my linaro work. In addition, now that I have the necessary experience, I would also like to help solve issues with packages that are not necessarily related to my work.

What I like least in Ubuntu

Getting new packages reviewed and uploaded (eg through revu) has proved to be a frustrating process. There seems to be a lack of active reviewers and you have to chase individuals to perform a review.

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@.

Ricardo Salveti (rsalveti)

Alexandros is the kind of developer that you'll probably always end up with good results. Currently he's working on a specific area for ARM that is hard to find people who knows enough to work with it. He's always available at the IRC, and quite easy to work with. His work on packaging and improving clutter helped getting the GLES support for it on Maverick, and the packaging itself was well done. I'd really like to see him as a universe contributor, I just hope he finds more time to invest in improving Ubuntu Smile :-)

Endorsements

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

didrocks

General feedback

Alexandros is a good team player, he understands perfectly the specific issues that a distribution has to deal with and don't enforce convenient things for linaro that can disturb ubuntu itself. I strongly advise the council for Universe Contributor Application. Keep the good work Alexandros! Smile :)

Specific Experiences of working together

We worked together on clutter. This library had support for an egl backend that was interesting particularly for ARM in addition to the gl traditional one. So, all the build system was needed to be rewritten to trigger two builds (transition from cdbs to dh7) and a lot of NEW binary packages was needed to be created, supporting both and parallel installations. A tricky work that Alexandros has done on his own before requesting me for a review. I only had two/three remarks on some hundreds of changes, so, more than an excellent work! Smile :)

Then, I raised the issue that we should discuss with the Debian Developer maintaining it to not diverge the packaging, what he made with any frustration and we agreed with them to reduce the delta. Smile :)

Areas of Improvement

Well, just need more packaging work like that and I'm certain Alexandros will do then a wonderful MOTU. Smile :)

asac

I work with Alexandros on the Linaro User Platforms team for more than 6 month now. His work on the packaging side and upstream side is clearly remarkable. He is a good team player and interacts nicely with the ubuntu and upstream community. Technically he can quickly dive into new topics and get great results. He didn't do any packaging for ubuntu/debian before he started working on linaro, but he picked up the best practices quicker than I ever imagined. His packaging soon got to a stage where I hardly had much to correct. His main contributions to ubuntu was the GLESification of the clutter/mutter stack. Here he had a few really tough challenges to solve which required him to use various tricks on library packaging and dependency tweaking that most of motu's would probably have a hard to time to do. All this on top of solid packaging best practices make me confident that he will quickly go to the next stage: MOTU.

Hence I fully endorse his universe contributor and strongly recommend the council to grant him this badge as recognition and motivation to keep on doing a great job in the ubuntu community.

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 ===

CategoryUniverseContributorApplication

AlexandrosFrantzis/UniverseContributorApplication (last edited 2010-12-03 13:17:47 by c952482f)