I, Olivier Gayot, apply for core-dev.

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.

Who I am

My name is Olivier. I am an open source software developer currently living in Strasbourg, France.

Besides spending time with computers, I enjoy a wide variety of sports including (but not limited to!) cycling, rock climbing, badminton, table tennis, kayaking and handball. I also love playing chess, both online and over the board.

In November 2021, I joined Canonical as a member of the Foundations team. During work, I spend the majority of my time working on Subiquity (which originally started as the installer for Ubuntu Server but now also serves as the back-end for the Ubuntu Desktop installer) and its related components.

My Ubuntu story

In late 2008, I did my first installation of Ubuntu 8.04 as a dual-boot on my family's Intel Pentium 4. This marked my first encounter with Linux. Shortly after, I heard about Ubuntu being ported to the original PlayStation 3 and started experimenting with Ubuntu 8.10 on my video game console.

In 2010, I acquired a netbook Eee PC and picked Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.04 as my distribution of choice, upgrading it periodically until I eventually replaced that netbook.

Over the next years, I explored various Linux distributions (including Debian and Arch Linux) on different machines.

In 2020, I joined a company that primarily used Windows. This led me to experiment with WSL, which brought me back to the Linux distribution that started it all for me!

My involvement

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

• My contributions to Subiquity

• Wrote the NVMe/TCP POC on Ubuntu

• > 75 uploads sponsored

• This specific SRU of virt-manager ; which involved an SRU of python-argcomplete and back-porting other fixes to make the package build again.

• The successive uploads of khmer (3.0.0~a3+dfsg-5ubuntu1, 3.0.0~a3+dfsg-5ubuntu3) that started as what looked like a simple fix but kept on giving, eventually ending with me porting khmer's test-suite to python 3.12.

• I've done a few merges, some with and some without git-ubuntu

• Some SRUs (including SRU validation)

• Three MIRs of Perl libraries as well:

  • libio-interactive-perl (LP: #1951067)

  • libset-intspan-perl (LP: #1956444)

  • libregexp-wildcards-perl (LP: #1980968)

Areas of work

Let us know what you worked on, with which development teams / developers with whom you cooperated and how it worked out.

Things I could do better

• Being more involved in discussions in #ubuntu-devel (and other communication channels in general)
• Learning more about image building
• Taking more +1 maintenance shifts

Plans for the future

General

• Subiquity receives a large volume of bug reports today (especially since its integration with the desktop installer). Many of the bug reports are semi-automated and are not immediately actionable. To make it more manageable, I am trying to filter out the reports using bug automation based on launchpadlib.
• In the same vein, I am trying to reduce the number of bug reports by categorizing the exceptions and only suggesting to open a bug report if it seems sensible.

What I like least in Ubuntu

• The lack of codesearch makes it awkward to check whether our delta is still actually used.
• Autopkg tests are an important component of Ubuntu and I wish we could have a bidirectional integration with launchpad.

• The documentation is difficult to find (especially when you are a new contributor). Fortunately, this is going in the right direction with https://ubuntu.com/community/contribute and the new packaging guide \o/

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.

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 ===