DeveloperApplication

I, Martin Pool, apply for per-package upload rights for bzr and related packages listed below

Name

Martin Pool

Launchpad Page

https://launchpad.net/~mbp

Wiki Page

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MartinPool

Who I am

I'm the technical lead of the Bazaar project, and I manage the Bazaar team at Canonical. I also wrote distcc and librsync and some other free software. I've been working on free software since about 1997 (starting with Apache jserv).

My Ubuntu story

I first switched to Ubuntu in the Warty release, moving from Debian and Gentoo. I thought it provided a very nice balance between freshness and stability, and between approachability and technical seriousness. In early 2005 I joined Canonical to work on version control tools.

My involvement

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

1. Bugs and patches in Ubuntu. When I see a problem, I like to fix it. Ones that come to mind recently:

2. Bazaar itself, and alignment with Bazaar. I like what we've done there, and I want to improve two specific parts in relation to Ubuntu: first, for me to do more Ubuntu development work so I better understand what you need; and secondly to be better able to get our changes into Ubuntu.

At my initiative we've started making major releases every six months, synchronized with the Ubuntu release schedule, and then bugfix releases on that series. This has worked quite well at getting a good stable release into each Ubuntu release, but we have not yet done really well at getting the updates out, which is one thing I want to fix.

There was a good technical-board thread (also on irc) where we discussed what to do to make bzr mesh even more smoothly. One of the suggested actions was to get PPU access.

Here are some examples of specific Ubuntu bzr work:

3. Launchpad: I've been doing some amount of work on Launchpad; I want to make it something that works very smoothly for Ubuntu and upstream developers. Recently:

Areas of work

  • bzr and related things
  • python and libraries
  • usb-creator, vm-builder and other "getting started" type tools

I'd specifically like PPU for bzr and "closely related things": there are a bunch of closely related plugins such as bzr-svn and bzrtools. Specifically at least

  • bzr
  • bzrtools
  • loggerhead
  • qbzr
  • bzr-explorer

and if possible also

  • bzr-hg
  • bzr-svn
  • bzr-git
  • bzr-gtk
  • bzr-pqm
  • hitchhiker
  • bzr-xmloutput
  • bzr-webdav
  • bzr-upload
  • bzr-stats
  • bzr-search
  • bzr-rewrite
  • bzr-pipeline
  • bzr-loom
  • bzr-grep
  • bzr-fastimport
  • bzr-email

I'm aware that doing SRUs can be a high risk operation so I will be extra careful.

Things I could do better

I have a moderate amount of Debian/Ubuntu experience. I will draw on mentors and learn more without exceeding my present limits.

In my general work? I could do lots of things better. The biggest is probably making good choices about what to work on, where I am trying to think about:

  • what is most useful, not just most comfortable?
  • what will make the project move much faster in the future, either through technically enabling people or drawing more people in
  • what will feel good to do -- I'm trying to recapture the feeling of improving projects because it feels good, even if it's not on a roadmap

I've been relying a bit too much on James_w for the package importer, bzr-builder, bzr-builddeb and so on when I should have been helping with that. It's related to the previous point: it's easy to choose tasks already in my area and where I know more about how to fix them.

Plans for the future

General

  • The first thing I want to do is to get SRUs for Bazaar flowing more smoothly into Ubuntu. We have a Micro Release Exception for Bazaar that acknowledges that our bugfix updates match Ubuntu's conditions for shipping updates. However, they're currently stalling for a long time waiting for SRU review. I realize as a PPU I won't be able to unilaterally make the SRU -- and I don't want to because extra care is very appropriate here -- but I will be able to get them further along.

  • I want to walk a bit more in the shoes of Ubuntu developers to better understand what we can do in Launchpad and Bazaar to help them.
  • Just fixing more bugs I run into.

What I like least in Ubuntu

  • I think the profusion of stacked or alternative toolchains makes packaging very complicated, and hard to approach for upstream developers or people from other free software distributions.
  • In a small fraction of cases the emotional tone is unattractive and offputting.

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

Bryce Harrington

General feedback

From what I've seen of the stability and reliability of the bzr releases, Martin certainly deserves the trust of the PPU role for the package. I think this would further strengthen the robustness of the bzr-* packages.

Specific Experiences of working together

While I've not sponsored packages from Martin (that I can recall), I've worked along side him enough on Launchpad and other areas to give my unconditional endorsement.

Areas of Improvement

Martin mentioned wishing to walk in ubuntu developers' shoes to better understand their work. I would encourage spending a day or two doing package merge work - this is entry level packager work and there tends to be a large queue of it to do. But I think Martin would be particularly well situated at analyzing the workflow and perhaps finding ways to help simplify the workflow. For instance, finding ways to reduce the frequency of merge conflicts or tools that could help resolve conflicts more easily.

More Endorsements

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

Barry Warsaw

General feedback

As his technical leadership of bzr has shown, Martin has the right mix of technical ability, critical analysis and judgement to be trusted with the PPU role for the packages he requests. He has my unconditional support.

Specific Experiences of working together

I've worked with Martin on various projects. Martin is unquestionably technically adept, and he embodies the spirit of Ubuntu in the way he embraces collaboration. He is always eager to help users and other developers, and cares deeply about the user experience.

Areas of Improvement

I'm eager to work with Martin on finding ways to improve the UDD process. Doing more packaging work using those tools will be a great way to feel the pain points, and I have no doubt Martin will jump right into those issues.

Steve Langasek

<slangasek> poolie: I think it's great that you're applying for dev membership, but I'm crap at writing endorsements for these things so hopefully your application doesn't hinge on me doing so
<poolie> slangasek: mind if i paste that?
<slangasek> poolie: uh... I don't mind :)

Evan Dandrea

From what I've seen of Martin's work through his contributions to usb-creator, he has shown an eagerness to improve Ubuntu and the competence to do so.

Robert Collins

General feedback

Martin is a very competent engineer, does good stuff and is very interested in having bzr in Ubuntu be a first-class experience.

Specific Experiences of working together

I've worked with Martin for a few years now on the bzr team. We rarely disagreed and when we did it was amicable: very technical, never becoming personal.

Areas of Improvement

As Martin isn't a regular packager, he will need to practice that to keep his skills up - but this is the expected condition for PPUers IMO so I don't count this against him. Granting him PPU rights to bzr-* would be a wise decision to take Smile :)

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 ===

MartinPool/DeveloperApplication (last edited 2010-11-09 05:42:02 by ppp112-44)