Contents

  1. Who I am
  2. My Ubuntu story
    1. My involvement
    2. Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of
    3. Areas of work
    4. Things I could do better
  3. Plans for the future
    1. General
    2. What I like least in Ubuntu
  4. Comments
  5. Endorsements
    1. Bryce Harrington
    2. Athos Ribeiro
    3. Simon Quigley
    4. Robie Basak
    5. AndreasHasenack
    6. Lucas Kanashiro
    7. TEMPLATE

I, Lena Voytek, apply for the Ubuntu Core Developer status within the Ubuntu community.

Name

Lena Voytek

Launchpad Page

~lvoytek

Wiki Page

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LenaVoytek

I am applying because:

Who I am

I am a software engineer on the Ubuntu Server team, and a Debian Maintainer on the Debian Python team. My focus is on maintaining packages including and related to MySQL, Django, Libvirt, data platforms, web, and email.

I have two bachelors degrees from the University of Arizona in electrical engineering and computer science. Prior to working at Canonical, I was an embedded firmware engineer for Garmin and Jacobs Engineering. In my previous positions I focused on RF communication, RTOS development, and sensor integration.

My Ubuntu story

My first endeavor into Ubuntu and Linux in general was with Precise Pangolin. On the day I turned 14, I convinced my parents to purchase me an old Dell workstation from the local University hardware surplus store. The computer did not have an OS installed, and I refused to pay for Windows, so I looked online for alternatives. Luckily for me, Ubuntu 12.04 had been released exactly one day earlier and was free to Download. I burnt the os onto a CD, installed it, and have been running Linux ever since.

Over the last 11 years I have explored various distros, but in the end Ubuntu has just been the best for me, both in the desktop and server spaces. It also feels nice to be not only a user, but a developer of Ubuntu, helping to release the version arriving a decade after my first.

My involvement

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

New Packages

Package Merges and Syncs

Bug Fixes and SRUs

Feature Freeze Exceptions

Autopkgtest & DEP8

Main Inclusion

Areas of work

Things I could do better

A major part of the packaging workflow that I need to improve on is reviews. I've benefited greatly from my peers on the server team and the Ubuntu Sponsors group in getting my packages reviewed and uploaded swiftly. I plan on giving back as a member myself of Ubuntu Sponsors and to my peers more in the future, especially while having upload permissions.

I could also work more on communicating with others outside my team. It can be difficult to interact with people in the open source community sometimes, especially when it comes to volunteer projects. I'm currently working to develop better lines of communication with those working on Debian and various upstream projects to benefit packages in all areas.

Plans for the future

General

In the future I would like to focus on the longevity and maintenance of the areas I am in charge of. For MySQL I would like to add additional packages such as MySQL-Shell and Percona Xtrabackup to the archive and keep it up to date. Whenever a new major release of Django happens I also plan to get all associated packages working with it. I also plan on keeping various packages alive in both Debian and Ubuntu, as I have seen many in need of some TLC as a part of the Debian Python team.

What I like least in Ubuntu

I believe the workflow for development on Ubuntu is quite daunting at first. It can be difficult to find documentation on what to do in the specific situations one encounters when creating or fixing a package. Launchpad can be hard to navigate, there are many commands to remember, and many packages have to be dealt with in unique ways. There are a few ways to make this better though, and I have seen improvements already in a few places. The Ubuntu Maintainers Handbook which is updated often has helped me immensely. Likewise, the addition of all main and universe packages to git ubuntu has made things much easier. I think this can all be made even better with standardization and centralization of documentation.

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.

Bryce Harrington

General feedback

I've worked closely with Lena and have had many opportunities to review and sponsor her packaging merge proposals. Lately it's been quite rare that I have any feedback to give, since she's very thorough and attentive to issues, and respectful of established procedures. Back when I did have feedback to give, it was rarely needed to be given more than once. I have a very high degree of trust in her judgement and her work quality.

She didn't mention it in her application, but she also developed a Python tool, dsctriage, that we use for tracking and triaging discourse posts. In addition to packaging skills she has an aptitude for Python development that I look forward to seeing her pursue further.

Specific Experiences of working together

I particularly appreciate her attentiveness to analyzing bugs to drive them to root cause and not simply settle on quick fixes; this has been particularly important for mysql since its installation errors are often quite subtle and hard to reproduce; since Debian is not actively maintaining the packaging Lena doesn't have the option of forwarding complex bugs to them, as we usually do!

I'd like to also highlight the work she did on Lua. Things had been out of sync with Debian and upstream for a long time, and while we've all be working on closing the gap there was still quite a variety of tasks still to be done. As can be seen in her application, she tackled a wide variety of packaging issues to close the gap and enable us to get back in sync.

Areas of Improvement

Lena mentioned she'd like to be more active in sharing her expertise via MP reviews, and I agree - I've very much appreciated her reviews of my own python code MPs in particular.

Athos Ribeiro

General feedback

I Work with Lena in the Ubuntu Server team. She has been doing a great job maintaining MySQL and related packages.

Lena performed SRUs, MIRs, MREs and requested FFes. Her thorough work shows she has the experience with several different processes within Ubuntu which a core-dev should understand.

IMHO, her recent work on django is a great example to show that she is ready to get core-dev upload rights.

Specific Experiences of working together

This is a list of packages I have sponsored for Lena:

https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/ubuntu-sponsorships.cgi?render=html&sponsor=*ribeiro*&sponsor_search=name&sponsoree=*voytek*&sponsoree_search=name

While I only sponsored 4 packages for Lena, I am familiar with her work. I believe she would be a great addition to the core-devs group and her skill set would definitely sum up on +1 maintenance, patch piloting and other development activities throughout the development cycles.

Areas of Improvement

It would be nice to see Lena working with other contributors performing reviews, providing feedback and even sponsoring packages to other people with no upload rights. It would be nice to have her participating on other areas of the distro, joining discussions on IRC and in our mailing lists.

Simon Quigley

General feedback

This is not a fully-qualified endorsement, since I've only sponsored two of the uploads in question. That being said, after re-reviewing those uploads, Lena did them correctly the first time. I am especially thankful for the DEP-3 patch headers and verbosity in linking to upstream counterparts for the package.

The amount of packages I am seeing on this list is quite impressive, and certainly is indicative of a "ready" Ubuntu Core Developer. That being said, my endorsement stops short here, and I'll let others fill in on those specific packages.

Robie Basak

I previously endorsed Lena for her server pacakgeset application). Everything I said in my previous endorsement still stands and I've copied it in below for reference.

According to the sponsorship miner I have only sponsored one package for Lena that is relevant to this application, which was swtpm, way back in March 2023 for Lunar. So this cannot be a full endorsement, but I will try to provide a picture from my perspective so that the DMB can combine it with others' experiences to form an opinion.

With swtpm I did have some review comments there on the general approach, which Lena acknowledged. I'm confident that she understands my suggestions and will implement them at the next opportunity, but I'm not aware that there has been any reason to have uploaded sooner.

I since advocated for Lena for DM status for mysql-8.0 in Debian, and she made her first upload (not sponsored by me) there recently. For quailty purposes we continue to use peer review in Salsa for packaging work on MySQL in Debian, as is our policy on the Canonical Server Team. My review for that most recent upload required no review changes or comments.

I asked her the other day about MySQL packaging plans, and she seemed to have a good grasp of what would be involved for a major MySQL bump, and is deliberately deferring it until after Noble due to the size of the transition required and the upstream schedule. This seems sensible to me, and gives me confidence that she understands transitions! I'm aware that she has done similar work with the reverse dependency tree for Django, even if that was not precisely a library transition in the same sense.

In general, I have the sense that Lena has a good grasp of what is going on across the archive and in the various interactions between packages (reverse dependencies, proposed migration, etc). I expect that those who have sponsored her work in the last cycle can speak to that in more detail.

I believe I've seen some of Lena's SRU work fly by more recently, and I have no concerns about the quality of those.

General feedback

I've been working with Lena since she joined Canoncial as a colleague on my team in October 2021. I have found that I only have to outline the background of a task once, and it comes back done correctly. My review comments mostly tend to be on nuances I didn't think to mention or otherwise weren't reasonable to have anticipated. I don't recall ever having to ask for something twice.

I think Lena's upload history is quite extensive now, and well past the bar for server packageset access.

Specific Experiences of working together

Lena has taken the maintenance of MySQL packaging over from me. Looking at the sponsorship miner, this looks like a total of five sponsored uploads for MySQL and related packages in Ubuntu. But I've also sponsored four uploads of mysql-8.0 into Debian for Lena. And the number of commits into Salsa from Lena is much larger than that. We operate a peer review policy in Salsa for MySQL packaging, and I believe I reviewed a majority of these.

So, much of this work is in Salsa since we try to keep in sync with Debian. But it has a tendency to diverge in Ubuntu because of incoming security updates in Ubuntu that often require minor packaging changes. This leads to some complexity in git workflows colliding between Salsa, Ubuntu and in non-VCS uploads from the security team. Lena has been navigating this without any issues and took the initiative to clarify and document the details.

Lena also identified the root cause of a number of long standing and commonly reported MySQL reports which I'd previously taken to be user error. I think this represents a significant improvement in MySQL packaging quality which wouldn't have happened without her involvement.

Areas of Improvement

(removed by Robie, since he thinks that what he mentioned last time has since been done!)

AndreasHasenack

General feedback

I sponsored about 12 unique packages for Lena since she started working in the Ubuntu Server Team, some multiple times. Many of these were SRUs, which can be challenging to many users, but she navigated those without issues, and they were of increasingly higher quality each time. I also sponsored merges[7][8] from debian

Specific Experiences of working together

Please add good examples of your work together, but also cases that could have handled better. List of my sponsorships:

https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/ubuntu-sponsorships.cgi?render=html&sponsor=Andreas+Hasenack&sponsor_search=name&sponsoree=Lena+Voytek&sponsoree_search=name

I'll comment now on some of Lena's work that I have sponsored and/or reviewed.

I would like to call out the ipmitool[1] 1.8.18-11ubuntu3 upload which I sponsored for lena. Initially, it was "just" about adding a new DEP8 test to a package, but ended up having Lena adding a NEW package[2] to Ubuntu (in Kinetic[3] back then) together with the Openstack team to be able to run that test. This was a little over a year ago, and she was already impressive back then.

Since then, Lena has taken care of major package sets like django, and complex SRUs like cyrus-sasl2[4], bind9[5] (a big MRE, which she also drove), swtpm[6], and others. They all show great technical competence, and excellent awareness of the place of each package in the ecosystem.

All this work also shows that Lena is fully aware of Ubuntu processes. She has done it all: SRUs, MREs, NEW packages, complex interdependencies (django migrations), DEP8 tests. I fully welcome her as a Core Developer of Ubuntu.

1. https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ipmitool/1.8.18-11ubuntu3

2. https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/virtualbmc/2.2.2-0ubuntu2

3. https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/kinetic/+queue?queue_state=3&queue_text=virtualbmc

4. https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cyrus-sasl2/2.1.27+dfsg2-3ubuntu1.1

5. https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bind9/1:9.18.18-0ubuntu0.22.04.1

6. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libvirt/+bug/1989100

7. https://code.launchpad.net/~lvoytek/ubuntu/+source/munin/+git/munin/+merge/428575

8. https://code.launchpad.net/~lvoytek/ubuntu/+source/bind9/+git/bind9/+merge/435543

Areas of Improvement

I think Lena is ready to speak up and suggest improvements and changes to processes.

Lucas Kanashiro

General feedback

Lena is my teammate in the Ubuntu Server team, and all our interactions so far has been pleasant. I sponsored some packages and all of them were in a good shape, they did not require many changes to be ready for the archive. I believe Lena already understands most of the Ubuntu processes and is keen to keep learning. I trust her to become a Ubuntu Core Developer.

Specific Experiences of working together

I sponsored 7 package uploads in total for Lena:

https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/ubuntu-sponsorships.cgi?render=html&sponsor=*kanashiro*&sponsor_search=name&sponsoree=*voytek*&sponsoree_search=name

A good example was the runc upload where she triaged the bug as a regular team duty, but she did not stop there, she went all the way down until get it fixed in all releases. I liked the pro-activeness, she could have just triaged the bug and left the fix to me (since I take care of the container runtimes).

Areas of Improvement

I think Lena already has enough packaging experience but there is a gap that I believe she will want to dive deeper, which is library transitions (sorry if I am mistaken here, I did not find any in your application). Performing a library transition is not a requirement for core-dev but I think it is technically interesting and Lena is curious enough to not do that at some point Smile :)

Apart from that, I think she just needs to get the rights and increase her interaction with the overall project in the public means.

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.''
## Full list of sponsored packages can be generated here:
##  https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/ubuntu-sponsorships.cgi
=== Areas of Improvement ===

CategoryCoreDevApplication

LenaVoytek/UbuntuCoreDeveloperApplication (last edited 2023-11-22 22:06:01 by lucaskanashiro)