I, Robert Ancell, apply for core-dev status.

Who I am

I'm Robert Ancell and work for Canonical as a GNOME Desktop Engineer on the Ubuntu Platform team. I am an upstream GNOME developer (gcalctool, GNOME Games).

My Ubuntu story

I've been using Ubuntu since 4.10 when I was thinking "how have I never heard of this project that is at version 4 already?". Before that it was Debian, Mandrake and Red Hat Linux.

My involvement

• Long time Ubuntu user and bug reporter
• Upstream developer

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

• Simple Scan (https://launchpad.net/simple-scan)

Areas of work

I have worked as a member of the Desktop team for the last year updating GNOME packages and fixing bugs. I also continue to make gcalctool releases and fix bugs in GNOME.

Things I could do better

Filling out Ubuntu paperwork earlier (e.g. Core Dev applications)

Plans for the future

General

I'd like to see the core Ubuntu applications improve in usability and consistency. Being able to work continuously on Ubuntu allows me to push the small patches upstream to help the upstream projects achieve this. I'd also like to help to improve the platform development documentation so real-world programmers can work out how to easily use all the APIs.

What I like least in Ubuntu

The Preferences/Administration tools. They have multiplied over the years and while there seems to be regular effort each cycle to tidy them they don't seem to be getting any better.

---

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.

Sebastien Bacher

General feedback

Robert Ancell has joined the Ubuntu Desktop Team a year ago and has became one of the key members there. He has been showing strong technical skills as well on packaging than on upstream hacking, did a great amount of GNOME updates during the karmic and lucid cycle, worked with the Ubuntu community, Debian and upstream when appropriate and helped improving the way the desktopteam is working. I recommend him strongly there!

Specific Experiences of working together

I've been sponsoring lot of GNOME updates from Robert over the two previous cycles and working with him in the desktop team for a year now, he has been mostly been taking good decisions, doing good work and moving things forward in an efficient way.

Areas of Improvement

Robert, you should really have applied for upload rights earlier, would have spare us some sponsoring

Martin Pitt

General feedback

In the last year I have sponsored several dozens of Robert's packages. He now knows enough about packaging, patch systems, our release process, and freezes for me to fully trust him for full core developer powers. He has uploaded a lot of desktop related packages for about half a year now through his ubuntu-desktop membership.

Specific Experiences of working together

The most complex upload that I remember was splitting gnome-games into a lot of individual binary packages, which required a lot of packaging rework, conflicts/replaces, sensible file layout, etc. This was handled very well.

I also reviewed several new packages from him, like simple-scan (which by the way is a gem!)

Areas of Improvement

He needs to review the SRU process again and prepare SRU bugs a little more carefully.

Luke Yelavich

General feedback

I have worked with Robert now for well over 6 months, taking care of various uploads that he prepared, such as gnome-media, gconf, glib, gtk+, and more that currently don't come to mind. Overall Robert's work has been consistant, well documented, and often requires no more work from me to process and upload.

Specific Experiences of working together

I have had to upload both glib and gtk+ packages for Robert recently, both of which are complex packages. The merge work he did to update these packages for maverick was excellent, and the work from my point of view with regards reviewing the changes was minimal. For such complex packages, I have to say a job very well done.

Areas of Improvement

I think Robert should try to build packages exclusively in chroots. I managed to catch a few build failures this way, preventing the time that would have been lost by uploading the package, finding it failed to build, and having to fix it, and upload a second revision. Other than that, great 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.''
=== Areas of Improvement ===

---

CategoryCoreDevApplication