I, Ilya Barygin, apply for MOTU.

Who I am

I'm a physicist from Saint Petersburg, Russia, born in 1982.

My Ubuntu story

My involvement

I learned the basics of packaging when in December 2008 there was an initiative to package Eclipse for Debian/Ubuntu. This eventually got nowhere, but at least I knew what debian/rules and debhelper were.

My first contribution to archive was when I isolated upstream's fix for https://launchpad.net/bugs/364069 (pidgin: ICQ protocol update, March 2009). It quickly got SRU'd, but the folks using hardy-backports got stuck with the old version, so I created a debdiff, which was sponsored by pitti. A couple of months later I merged a new version of g3data (a tool of use for me) from Debian.

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

• https://launchpad.net/bugs/364069 : FTBFS fix for wesnoth

• https://launchpad.net/bugs/415782 : new release of gnome-commander

• https://launchpad.net/bugs/462059 : multiple FTBFS fixes of root-system, made it installable

List of contributions: wiki LP

Areas of work

The bulk of my contributions are merges/syncs and FTBFS fixes. This is a scattered, QA-like activity, and this is why I apply for general upload rights. As such, my uploads were sponsored by many (over 20) developers. However, my principal sponsors are fabrice_sp and sistpoty. Other than that, there are several packages in universe I especially care about (I use them daily), these include claws-mail{,-extra-plugins} and gnome-commander.

Things I could do better

• Changelogs. Like mentioning which files were modified.
• Get more familiar with Python packaging.

Plans for the future

General

I plan to continue in the same vein, as there seems to be no shortage of pending merges and unbuildable packages.

What I like least in Ubuntu

I'm a little jealous when my Arch friends start using new versions of software days after they are being released This is a design choice and doesn't need fixing.

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

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

ScottKitterman

General feedback

I sponsored three packages from randomaction: klear, givaro, and crawl. All of the packages were uploaded when I first looked at them. Technically it's clear that randomaction definitely knows what he is doing and his help at the end of the Karmic cycle with fixing FTBFS was very useful. With only three uploads, I can't say if I trust him, but I definitely have no reason not to. Our interactions on IRC have been good too.

Specific Experiences of working together

Klear was a non-trivial FTBFS fix and I uploaded it on the first review, so perfect score. As you can see, https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/klear/+bug/459734 had a bit of work to it. Crawl was a trivial missing header issue to fix FTBFS. Givaro was relibtoolization (never fun IMO). No complaints.

Areas of Improvement

None noted in the bit we've worked together.

fabrice_sp

General feedback

As you can see looking at the sponsored upload list (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IlyaBarygin), I sponsored more than 40 uploads of Ilya, half of them with fixes to FTBFS. Iliya did a great job to find a real solution to a FTBFS, looking after the root cause of the FTBFS and not only the symptom.

He did also a so very good job reporting the fixes to Debian, that almost the other half of what I sponsored are sync requests.

Ilya will definitively be a very good asset to the MOTU team!

Specific Experiences of working together

gcc4.4 and globc2.10 fixes in Karmic: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nepenthes/+bug/486015 , https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/t1utils/+bug/453828

Non trivial fixes: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/luatex/+bug/453929 , https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/root-system/+bug/462059 , https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gimp-gap/+bug/451419

Areas of Improvement

The changelog entry could be better documented, even if the latest packages I have sponsored (merges, mostly), this is a lot better. Apart from that, nothing

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 ===

CategoryMOTUApplication