I, Chad Miller, apply for upload rights for package chromium-browser.

Who I am

I'm a Floridian interested in free software and making the world better.

My Ubuntu story

My involvement

I'm a long-time Debian and Ubuntu supporter. I helped with Debian informally in late 1990s and became Developer in December 2000, and lost interest in active development around 2004. I picked up Ubuntu very early, and grew excited again.

https://launchpad.net/~cmiller/+related-packages

https://launchpad.net/~cmiller/+participation

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

First, some old stuff: A few years ago, I helped maintain the desktopcouch and couchdb packages as part of my day-job in Canonical Online Services. couchdb upstream source and release policy was a bit of a nightmare, and it wasn't my idea to start it or keep it, but I tried to make it as good as was possible. One thing I am proud of is my splitting the packaging of couchdb into two packages so a system daemon wasn't implied if mundane users needed to run their own copies of couchdb.

I left Online Services in late 2012 and joined the Desktop Team to get closer to my interests, delivering software to users instead of writing server-side software.

The chromium-browser package was rotting then, because it was big, packaging was crufty, and no one understood it very well or had enough time to tend it.

Since I took it over, I've taken over the webapps patches from the #webapps team because I can't wait for someone else when a security update should be out the door soon.

I've worked with upstream to have a better relationship. We have Google API keys built-in now, and I have met Chromium's linux-distro liaison.

I've added autopkgtests that verity that browser runs and requests pages, and our patched configuration changes were applied. I have switched to upstream's preferred build system, to speed up builds and use only tested paths. I dropped cdbs and switched to dh, and dropped 10 unnecessary build-deps.

I made the rules download official release tarballs, instead of checking out nebulous versions from the SCM, and I moved down the extraction root so we don't have to re-pack the orig tarball, which means we can check orig tarball checksums against upstream's to verify that my own workflow is not the easiest vector for attack of users.

I set up a staging PPA that I can upload to and get testing and QA feedback, and that Security team can copy from directly instead of waiting half a day for another build.

Things I could do better

I could get more QA involvement. Chromium is going through some big changes in Linux soon, and will need more eyeballs.

I should get Cr templates flowing into Launchpad again, and get Launchpad translations flowing into the packaging.

Plans for the future

General

What I like least in Ubuntu

I dislike depending on GL hardware in our desktop. GL is still a fantastic headache. Ask me about nouveau for an ear-full.

Also, our grab handles for window management are far too small. Oh, and poor discoverability of buttons in maximized windows is dumb.

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

JamieStrandboge (jdstrand)

I've worked with Chad on several occasions regarding chromium-browser updates. He is very knowledgeable of chromium-browser and its packaging and given sustained contributions over the years. Honestly, I was shocked to hear he was not an Ubuntu member yet. -- jdstrand 2014-04-09 13:10:08

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

Sebastien Bacher

Chad has been working on Ubuntu for quite some years, his work on chromium has been solid and I think he deserves getting upload rights for it!

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 ===

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