DeveloperApplication-CoreDev

Revision 15 as of 2020-04-16 19:04:58

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I, Lucas Kanashiro, apply for core-dev.

Name

Lucas Kanashiro

Launchpad Page

https://launchpad.net/~lucaskanashiro

Wiki Page

n/a

I am applying because:

  • I'd like to eliminate delays in getting my work sponsored.
  • I'd like to reduce the burden on my sponsors.

  • I'd like to make Ubuntu even better Smile :)

Who I am

I am a software engineer, a free and open source software contributor, who has been professionally working with Debian and Ubuntu for a couple of years. I started as a Debian contributor in 2014 when I was a GSoC intern writing DEP-8 tests for many different packages. In the following year I was again accepted in GSoC to work on Debian writing a tool called Debile which aimed to rebuild packages with different compiler's snapshots, run static analyzers and report the results in a centralized place (not a successful project AFAIK). After those great experiences I decided to join some teams and help with packaging in Debian. The great amount of work I did in Debian Perl team made me become a Debian Developer in 2016 and due to previous professional experience and my personal preference I joined the Debian Ruby team also.

All those contributions allowed me to start making some money while contributing to Debian. I became a member of the Debian LTS team and did some security uploads in Debian as a freelancer. Moreover, because of my previous $JOB I have been maintaining some cloud related packages under the umbrella of the Debian Cloud team, such as GCE agents.

In parallel I have mentored a couple of students in the context of GSoC, adding new features to Debian tracker, and implementing a Debian Cloud image finder from scratch (not in production yet).

Since August last year I am part of the Canonical Server team working mostly on Ubuntu Server and UA for Apps.

My Ubuntu story

Ubuntu was my first GNU/Linux distribution while I was at university, easy to use and intuitive. Now it has became my main system and drives my daily work.

My involvement

I am a Canonical employee and member of the Server team working on Ubuntu Server. I have been in contact with the community mostly via IRC on #ubuntu-devel and #ubuntu-release channels, and already experienced many things like preparing a SRU, promoting packages via MIR, driving a transition, working on proposed-migration to unblock packages (re-triggering autopkgtest, investigating arch specific issues), merging packages from Debian, fixing/reporting bugs, sync requests, reviewing merge proposals.

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

Ruby 2.7 transition

The biggest chunk of work and what I am proud of at the moment was driving the Ruby 2.7 transition during this Focal Fossa development cycle. It was quite useful to gain knowledge about Ubuntu procedures/policies and see how annoying I have been to my teammates because of many sponsorship requests Smile :)

Below is a list of what I have been doing regarding Ruby 2.7 transition (I lost track of some stuff, sorry):

FTBFS fixes:

Merges:

Patches:

Bug reports:

Sync requests:

Removal requests:

Misc

SRUs

MIRs

Merges

Syncs

Reviews

Seeds change

Hints

Proposed migration work

Bug fixes

CVE fix

Areas of work

I have been working on Ubuntu server packages in general and interacting mostly with people from server, release and foundations teams. However, my main area of work is on the Ruby stack (interpreter, libraries and apps) since I am also a maintainer of it in Debian.

Things I could do better

I could spend more time doing bug triage and fixing some of them, and also try to contribute to other set of packages like desktop ones.

Plans for the future

General

Help others to join the project and contribute to it. Moreover, get more deeply involved and maybe join one of the delegated teams.

I am interested in taking more broad ownership of a collection of server packages, not decided yet which domain specific area but this is a short-term goal.

What I like least in Ubuntu

I think sometimes the documentation is too decentralized and redundant. Managing documentation is a problem in many different projects and not an easy one to fix, I do not have a proposal to fix that right now.

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

Lucas is a diligent and reliable packager, who can be trusted to do solid work. He will be a solid addition to Ubuntu's core dev team.

Specific Experiences of working together

I've had the opportunity to work closely and directly with Lucas on UA for Apps, which involved creating new packaging for Java codebases and diagnosing a diverse array of package issues with existing Java packages. This comprised several dozen packages in total. I was impressed at the quick work he made, and the self-sufficiency he displayed in finding solutions to all manners of problems. This was an important project for Canonical, and I found Lucas could be trusted and relied on to do good work. He showed good transparency on problems he encountered, and was thorough in addressing review feedback on packaging work.

The Ruby packaging work itemized above is indeed something he can take pride in. He showed the same resourcefulness and self-sufficiency in dealing with this huge transition - the main thing he needed help with were the tasks that only core devs can do, and I found he understood clearly and correctly what needed done (sync's, re-triggers, package removals, et al) before he asked, which made sponsorship of his work smooth and generally problem-free.

Areas of Improvement

Nothing specific, just look for opportunities to share tips and tricks with others; help non-core-devs gain sponsorship and work towards core-dev; and continue expanding technical breadth into more areas of interest.

Rafael David Tinoco

General feedback

Lucas was already a Debian Developer and I think that made all the difference for him to ramp up so quickly doing all needed Ubuntu packaging & distro tasks. During 20.04 cycle he has shown really good skills that will, for sure, make him a solid Ubuntu Core Developer.

Specific Experiences of working together

Among the following sponsorships:

I have done tons of syncs, per his request, for the Ruby 2.7 transitions. Lucas has done an incredible work in Debian and synced all his work to Ubuntu so we could move to 2.7 in Ubuntu 20.04. After the sponsorships and sync's were done he continued very good work in fixing migration issues that were unknown at that time because of our autopkgtest multiple architecture setup. That helped a lot in making all this transition portable.

Areas of Improvement

I think he has already shown he can be a really good Ubuntu Core developer. He also knows about how Ubuntu development works (uploads, queues, exceptions, SRUs, sponsorship, freeze dates, etc). I'd like to see Lucas now more involved in core (to distribution) packages as well AND in public discussion in Ubuntu mailing lists regarding community technical suggestions & decision making emails.

Andreas Hasenack

General feedback

Lucas is my team mate in Ubuntu Server at Canonical.

In this past cycle, I don't think there isn't an area of Ubuntu development that Lucas hasn't worked on, or with. We can see in this application that he had his hands full: a large transition, DEP8 fixes, seed management, MIRs, SRUs, FTBFS fixes, you name it.

One thing I particularly liked, and it may not sound important to many, is that whenever he asked for DEP8 retries, he had a good justification. It wasn't just "please retry this test for me, I think it's flaky" or something like that. He has shown that he investigated the issue and had arguments for a retry, but most of the time, he also had the triggers he wanted ready. The same applies to his sync request, they are never just "please sync this". They come with arguments.

Even in the very beginning of his work in Ubuntu, the quality of his packaging was evident. This of course comes from his experience in Debian, and shouldn't be a surprise.

I trust Lucas to become CoreDev and help make Ubuntu better.

Specific Experiences of working together

I sponsored many packages for Lucas: https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/ubuntu-sponsorships.cgi?render=html&sponsor=*hasenack*&sponsor_search=name&sponsoree=*kanashiro*&sponsoree_search=name

I can't highlight any issues with these sponsorships. Lucas has everything done correctly, asks smart questions, challenges assumptions, and engages in a fruitful discussion.

Specifically, in the runc and containerd MIRs[1][2], Lucas was very organized in finding all the golang dependencies of these two packages, whether they were vendored or not, and if the archive had packages for the vendored ones. Identifying these was crucial for the MIR to move forward.

1. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/runc/+bug/1817336/comments/6 2. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/containerd/+bug/1819761/comments/9

Areas of Improvement

In general, just get more mileage, perhaps in other areas of Ubuntu, like he mentioned in this application. I think he knows quite well many of the Ubuntu processes, and asks smart questions when needed. Time to start mentoring others too! Smile :)

Gianfranco Costamagna

General feedback

I started sponsoring packages for Luca only some months ago, but he knows his stuff, he is already DD so I since the begin just sponsored without even having to nitpick on minor stuff like changelog or similar. He did quickly fixup even some merges I did wrt mysql8.0, this is why I appreciated a lot his work since the begin. He did work on autodep, ruby, python, mysql and other server stuff helping a lot of different areas with his nice work, and upstreaming in Debian his changes.

I trust Lucas to become CoreDev and help make Ubuntu better.

Specific Experiences of working together

I sponsored not many packages for Lucas: https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/ubuntu-sponsorships.cgi?render=html&sponsor=Gianfranco+Costamagna&sponsor_search=name&sponsoree=Lucas+Kanashiro&sponsoree_search=name

But I worked with him, and looked at his work when working on ruby2.7 transition. He finish the stuff he works on, and I retried a lot of tests on his behalf.

Date ▴ Sponsor Sponsoree Package Version Distribution Bugs fixed Action 2020-03-10 18:46 Gianfranco Costamagna Lucas Kanashiro puma 3.12.4-1ubuntu1 focal 2020-03-10 18:46 Gianfranco Costamagna Lucas Kanashiro puma 3.12.4-1ubuntu2 focal 2020-03-05 18:09 Gianfranco Costamagna Lucas Kanashiro ruby-bootsnap 1.3.0-1ubuntu1 focal 2019-12-07 14:30 Gianfranco Costamagna Lucas Kanashiro ruby-riddle 2.3.1-2ubuntu2 focal 2019-12-06 17:38 Gianfranco Costamagna Lucas Kanashiro sphinxsearch 2.2.11-2ubuntu1 focal

But the list of autopkgtests fixes and similar is really longer (specially because of ruby).

Areas of Improvement

I would have advocated him to become MOTU before Core-Dev, but I have no objection in seeing him doing the big jump, he knows really well his stuff, he doesn't need somebody double checking his work.

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 ===