I, Skia, hereby apply for core-dev.

I am applying because:

• I'd like to be able to officially join the Release Team.
• I'd like to help smoothen the release process by being able to upload some bits by myself.
• I'd like to be able to help more effectively during +1 maintenance shifts, that I enjoy particularly.

• I'm aware that this is a straight to core-dev application, but this is what I need to actually better help the Ubuntu release process, and I would have a hard time justifying a PPU application. Also, MOTU wouldn't actually help me much, given the majority of my uploads, and particularly the ones that are part of my release work, are in main.

Who I am

This is almost plain copy-paste from my Contributing Developer application, given that the story hasn't changed.

My name is Florent Jacquet, but just call me Skia, even IRL, as everyone does.

I first installed Xubuntu 7.10 alternate edition on a 64MB RAM machine in 2008. The machine was already 10 years old by that time, but the lightweight system made it usable again, and it was great! Since then, I’ve installed a lot of {X,K,}Ubuntu on all my relative’s machines: parents, grand-parents, uncles, cousins, high-school companions, high school’s machines themselves, university friends and associations, you name it. I’ve personally distro-hoped for a while, but always kept either Debian or Ubuntu on my servers or machines that I wanted stable.

I now work since 2023-10-31 for Canonical as part of Foundations/Ubuntu QA/Release Management team.

My Ubuntu story

My involvement

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

Exhaustive list of my uploads is available here:

• Launchpad: https://launchpad.net/~hyask/+uploaded-packages

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

Below is a selection of those with some quick description and pointers, to make it easier to get an idea of my work. Please ask me about specific uploads that picks your interest and are not in the list.

Feature and bugfix uploads

• beets - s390x test failure

  • Interesting full story of a patch produced for Ubuntu, then sent out in both Debian and upstream repos, then came back with a sync.

  • Debian PR: https://salsa.debian.org/python-team/packages/beets/-/merge_requests/3

  • Upstream PR: https://github.com/beetbox/beets/pull/5708

  • bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/beets/+bug/2106276

  • git-ubuntu MP: https://code.launchpad.net/~hyask/ubuntu/+source/beets/+git/beets/+merge/483930

  • 2025-04-09 - Ubuntu Plucky - beets/2.2.0-2ubuntu1

  • sync bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/beets/+bug/2107317

• whoopsie - AptSolverDump support + packaging improvements

  • This one counts as FFe too, mentioned below.
  • This one is interestingly a native package.
  • This shows some lintian related improvements to the package.

  • MP: https://code.launchpad.net/~hyask/whoopsie/+git/whoopsie/+merge/482986

  • bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/whoopsie/+bug/2103526

  • 2025-03-19 - Ubuntu Plucky - whoopsie/0.2.79

• base-files - upload for Oracular release

  • interestingly made without git ubuntu

  • bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/base-files/+bug/2083825

  • 2024-10-07 - Ubuntu Oracular - base-files/13.3ubuntu6

• whoopsie FTBFS

  • This one is interestingly a native package, which was obviously out of sync between the archive and the repo.

  • bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/whoopsie/+bug/2081271

  • MP: https://code.launchpad.net/~hyask/whoopsie/+git/whoopsie/+merge/473530

  • 2024-09-23 - Ubuntu Oracular - whoopsie/0.2.78

• autopkgtest - bugfix

  • later SRU'd with autopkgtest 5.38 to Jammy and Noble.

  • bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/autopkgtest/+bug/2075166

  • 2024-07-30 - Ubuntu Oracular - autopkgtest/5.37ubuntu4

• apt-clone - fixing autopkgtests

  • Right before the Noble release, but didn't require an FFe because not seeded and leaf package.
  • Later synced from Debian (like, much later!)

  • bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt-clone/+bug/2062622

  • 2024-04-19 - Ubuntu Noble - apt-clone/0.4.3+nmu2ubuntu2

• klibc - fixing autopkgtests

  • My very first upload, nothing particular of note that I remember.

  • bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/klibc/+bug/2046336

  • 2023-12-15 - Ubuntu Noble - klibc/2.0.13-2ubuntu1

Package Merges and Syncs

• bpftrace merge

  • Quite complex merge with some changes along the way, see changelog for full story.
  • Most of the changes revolved around the autopkgtests, because that's the main cause for the delta in the first place.

  • bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bpftrace/+bug/2111982

  • git-ubuntu MP: https://code.launchpad.net/~hyask/ubuntu/+source/bpftrace/+git/bpftrace/+merge/487771

  • TODO: add upload link once done

• apt-clone sync

  • Happened after upstream caught up (eventually!) with my 0.4.3+nmu2ubuntu2 bugfix.

  • 2025-04-09 - Ubuntu Plucky - apt-clone/0.5.3+nmu3 sync

• kbd boring merge

  • bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kbd/+bug/2098852

  • git-ubuntu MP: https://code.launchpad.net/~hyask/ubuntu/+source/kbd/+git/kbd/+merge/481541

  • 2025-02-19 - Ubuntu Plucky - kbd/2.7.1-2ubuntu1 merge

• shadow interesting merge

  • Interesting merge that needed to be coordinated with the next one in util-linux, because of the login binary package moving from one to the other.

  • bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/shadow/+bug/2089923

  • git-ubuntu MP: https://code.launchpad.net/~hyask/ubuntu/+source/shadow/+git/shadow/+merge/477650

  • 2025-01-13 - Ubuntu Plucky - shadow/1:4.16.0-7ubuntu1 merge

• util-linux interesting merge

  • See shadow merge description just above.

  • bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/util-linux/+bug/2091862

  • git-ubuntu MP: https://code.launchpad.net/~hyask/ubuntu/+source/util-linux/+git/util-linux/+merge/478455

  • 2025-01-13 - Ubuntu Plucky - util-linux/2.40.2-14ubuntu1 merge

SRUs

• mod_python crash:

  • This one had an interesting story revolving around some Merge-O-Matic + mod_python + Python 3.9 madness.

  • SRU bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libapache2-mod-python/+bug/2100590

  • git-ubuntu MP: https://code.launchpad.net/~hyask/ubuntu/+source/libapache2-mod-python/+git/libapache2-mod-python/+merge/482125

  • 2025-03-03 - Ubuntu Jammy - libapache2-mod-python/3.5.0+git20211031-0ubuntu3

• base-files - upload for Noble .2

  • bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/base-files/+bug/2097469

  • git-ubuntu MP: https://code.launchpad.net/~hyask/ubuntu/+source/base-files/+git/base-files/+merge/480705

  • 2025-02-05 - Ubuntu Noble - base-files/13ubuntu10.2

• python-apt mirror refresh:

  • SRU exception to update mirror list before release

  • SRU bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/python-apt/+bug/2096775

  • git-ubuntu MP: https://code.launchpad.net/~hyask/ubuntu/+source/python-apt/+git/python-apt/+merge/480150

  • 2025-01-27 - Ubuntu Noble - python-apt/2.7.7ubuntu4

• zip crash:

  • Pretty boring buffer overflow issue. One notable part is that this was apparently reported in 2018 as a CVE: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2018-13410

  • Submitted to Debian and uploaded.
  • Added a DEP8 test along the way.

  • SRU bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/zip/+bug/2093024

  • git-ubuntu MP against devel: https://code.launchpad.net/~hyask/ubuntu/+source/zip/+git/zip/+merge/479674

  • git-ubuntu MP against oracular: https://code.launchpad.net/~hyask/ubuntu/+source/zip/+git/zip/+merge/479896

  • git-ubuntu MP against noble: https://code.launchpad.net/~hyask/ubuntu/+source/zip/+git/zip/+merge/479897

  • 2025-01-24 - Ubuntu Oracular - zip/3.0-14ubuntu0.2

  • 2025-01-24 - Ubuntu Noble - zip/3.0-13ubuntu0.2

  • 2025-01-17 - Ubuntu Plucky - zip/3.0-14ubuntu2

• autopkgtest new release

  • Special SRU exception: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates#autopkgtest

  • SRU bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/autopkgtest/+bug/2071609

  • 2024-10-15 - Ubuntu Noble - autopkgtest/5.38ubuntu1~24.04.1

  • 2024-10-15 - Ubuntu Jammy - autopkgtest/5.38ubuntu1~22.04.1

• autopkgtest new release

  • SRU bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/autopkgtest/+bug/2051939

  • 2024-02-13 - Ubuntu Mantic - autopkgtest/5.32ubuntu3~23.10.1

  • 2024-02-13 - Ubuntu Jammy - autopkgtest/5.32ubuntu3~22.04.1

Autopkgtest & DEP8

• Yes, I do run some tests 🙃: https://autopkgtest.ubuntu.com/user/hyask/?only-results=true&limit=4000

• bpftrace had its testsuite running, but logging was a bit poor in case of issue

  • See "Merge" section above

• util-linux recently started shipping the login binary package, but lacked tests.

  • See the "Working with upstream" section, because the test I've wrote and submitted went straight to Debian.

• zip had a crash when using -T -TT options

  • See zip SRU in section above, I've added a DEP8 test along with the bugfix.

• rust-reqwest autopkgtests were having troubles due to the proxy in Canonical's infrastructure:

  • bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/rust-reqwest/+bug/2071789

  • Fix upstream: https://github.com/seanmonstar/reqwest/pull/2418

  • Debian upload: https://tracker.debian.org/news/1543652/accepted-rust-reqwest-01127-3-source-into-unstable/

Proposed Migrations

• I'm regularly being affected packages stuck in proposed during Foundations' Thursday meetings. Working with those usually involves retriggering autopkgtest, sometimes finding the right triggers for the tests to pass, and more rarely a fix to be uploaded.

• As part of my work on the autopkgtest infrastructure, I also regularly run retry-autopkgtest-regression for massive re-run of tests, sometimes involving shenanigans like adding a particular trigger for big sets of packages, or even running them with all-proposed=1.

• Working on proposed migration also sometimes involves giving Britney some hints:

  • https://git.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-release/britney/+git/hints-ubuntu/commit/?id=816184dc75f114a5ebf6812eb95d2afff12ac228

    • and its later drop: https://git.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-release/britney/+git/hints-ubuntu/commit/?id=6f34c31bb389f84dff5b23dd70911fdd8ca23ee9

Transitions

TODO: make some more

• alberta

  • Helped the alberta transition from libalberta4t64 to libalberta5 by fixing the last remaining dependency: dune-grid.

  • bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dune-grid/+bug/2114917

  • git-ubuntu MP: https://code.launchpad.net/~hyask/ubuntu/+source/dune-common/+git/dune-common/+merge/487436

  • 2025-06-20 - Ubuntu Questing - dune-common/2.10.0-4ubuntu1

• Infamous t64 transition

  • 2024-03-22 - Ubuntu Noble - pg-gvm/22.6.2-1build1

  • 2024-03-21 - Ubuntu Noble - gvmd/23.1.0-1ubuntu1

Milestones and Exceptions

• Debian Import Freeze:

  • capnproto sync

    • bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/capnproto/+bug/2063194

    • 2024-04-23 - Ubuntu Noble - capnproto/1.0.1-4

• FFe:

  • whoopsie - AptSolverDump support + packaging improvements

    • bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/whoopsie/+bug/2103526

    • 2025-03-19 - Ubuntu Plucky - whoopsie/0.2.79

• Putting in place the 24.04.2 SRU freeze in Britney:

  • https://git.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-release/britney/+git/hints-ubuntu/commit/?id=f6a3c8e7c55cf88459e50096bff4113d2c171b11

+1 maintenance

• 2025, week 25: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/1-maintenance-report-week-25-2025/63166

  • Uploaded four packages:

    • pcb-rnd amd64 FTBFS (MP: https://code.launchpad.net/~hyask/ubuntu/+source/pcb-rnd/+git/pcb-rnd/+merge/487210)

    • opensmtpd-table-mysql FTBFS (MP: https://code.launchpad.net/~hyask/ubuntu/+source/opensmtpd-table-mysql/+git/opensmtpd-table-mysql/+merge/487281)

    • dune-common ppc64el FTBFS (MP: https://code.launchpad.net/~hyask/ubuntu/+source/dune-common/+git/dune-common/+merge/487436)

    • linuxcnc merge (MP: https://code.launchpad.net/~hyask/ubuntu/+source/linuxcnc/+git/linuxcnc/+merge/487358)

MIRs

TODO mmdebstrap

• util-linux - after a merge, bin:util-linux started to depend on bin:liblastlog2-2 which was in Universe

  • Wasn't strictly necessary because of the "renamed of reorganized source" policy.
  • This ended up being an opt-in re-review, which is good to improve the overall quality of Ubuntu.

  • MIR bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/util-linux/+bug/2113961

• retry - new autopkgtest dependency - interesting story involving an SRU too

  • It fell under the particular case of having retry only in the jammy-release pocket, so couldn't be updated. This required a new upload to reach jammy-updates and then get promoted to main.

  • MIR bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/retry/+bug/2076381

  • SRU bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/retry/+bug/2080616

  • 2024-09-18 - Ubuntu Noble - retry/1.0.5-3build1~ubuntu0.24.04.1

  • 2024-09-16 - Ubuntu Jammy - retry/1.0.4-3build1

Seed Operations

• Simple update of ship-live for ARM laptops

  • 2025-03-19 - Ubuntu Plucky - https://code.launchpad.net/~hyask/ubuntu-seeds/+git/ubuntu-seeds/+merge/483070

  • commit: https://git.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu-seeds/+git/ubuntu/commit/?id=1b5098bb6635bb1181faa8b5f1c6806b0aada26d

Working with upstream

Debian

• beets:

  • Story above, in the "Feature and bugfix uploads" section.

  • Forwarded a bugfix: https://salsa.debian.org/python-team/packages/beets/-/merge_requests/3

  • Uploaded there: https://tracker.debian.org/news/1639271/accepted-beets-220-3-source-into-unstable/

• util-linux:

  • Forwarded a dep8 test for util-linux: https://salsa.debian.org/debian/util-linux/-/merge_requests/37

  • Subsequently patched this test after some feedback and discussion with @zeha (the Debian maintainer): https://salsa.debian.org/debian/util-linux/-/merge_requests/39

• autopkgtest:

  • This is closer to my regular work in Foundations, so there are many MR that have been merged there already.

  • See https://salsa.debian.org/ci-team/autopkgtest/-/merge_requests?scope=all&state=all&author_username=skia

• zip: forwarded a dep8 test + bugfix: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1093629

  • Bugfix got uploaded: https://tracker.debian.org/news/1641790/accepted-zip-30-15-source-into-unstable/

  • Bigger plans for the test suite: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1104090#17

• My +1 maintenance section also has examples of this.

Upstream projects

• beets:

  • Story above, in the "Feature and bugfix uploads" section.

  • Forwarded a bugfix: https://github.com/beetbox/beets/pull/5708

• rust-reqwest: helped make the tests work within a proxy environment:

  • https://github.com/seanmonstar/reqwest/pull/2349

  • https://github.com/seanmonstar/reqwest/pull/2418

• systemd: some documentation update on the mutually beneficial integration autopkgtest has with the upstream project:

  • https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/32584

• My +1 maintenance section also has examples of this.

Misc

TODO CDimage stuff: https://code.launchpad.net/~hyask/ubuntu-cdimage/+git/ubuntu-cdimage/+merge/484314 TODO: add also ubuntu-release-tools, ubuntu-archive-tools, etc...

Bug Triage and reporting

I'm often exposed to bugs, either directly or indirectly through colleagues hitting them, so I try to report them as much as possible: Just a few examples:

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tzdata/+bug/2085147

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/noble/+source/autopkgtest/+bug/2049529

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/autopkgtest/+bug/2075166

As part of Foundations, I'm subscribed to a number of packages where I receive bugs and triage them. Just a few examples:

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/boot-managed-by-snapd/+bug/2096979/comments/9

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apparmor/+bug/2099811/comments/4

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/2098093/comments/4

Areas of work

Since I'm working for Canonical, in the Ubuntu Release Management Team (Foundations), I'm very much involved with the release process of Ubuntu as a whole. In the past, I've also been involved in the maintenance of the autopkgtest.u.c infrastructure, and the tooling around that. In the coming future, I'd like to help automate as much as possible the release process, so that it's self-documented as code, and not tribal knowledge in people's head anymore.

On my free time, which I don't have much, I like maintaining and improving swaysome, and give a hand hosting Thread and Needles. I also like to maintain and improve my lovely little space of the Internet, as well as my self-hosted NAS running Armbian. As always, side projects come and go, but I generally like hacking and DIY many things more or less always related to free software.

Things I could do better

There are a few things I'd like to improve:

• Write more bug reports. It's often that I have a few things hitting me on my machine, but it's way too often that I just workaround and forget about the problem, where I could actually spend time fixing things for real.
• Take some time to improve my tooling and workflow. It's way too easy to get stuck with doing/using what I know, when sometimes there is a nice process/tool I see used by someone else, and would like to adopt it, but never get to it.

Plans for the future

General

• Reach a state where one clicks a button and releases Ubuntu. That's a long shot, and there will always be some manual steps involved, but targeting that will bring many improvements already.
• Help out set up what's needed to have nicer testing, especially around GUI. There is already ongoing work for that, but this will need integration, and a lot of work to have testsuites for everything. I'd like to give a hand, especially to flavors, to have them catch the train and improve the QA of the whole ecosystem.

What I like least in Ubuntu

• Things are improving (a lot!), but the tooling is always a pain. On the top of my head, I could think of bzr, Launchpad's merge view, the seeds file format (wiki syntax, seriously???), the ubuntu-cdimage story, etc...

• To compensate Launchpad being Launchpad, many repos withing the Ubuntu world have moved to Github. While this brings nice modern features, it also reduces the integration of everything, like Ubuntu bugs, and sometimes makes it harder to discover where sources are hosted. I'm also wondering what would happen if Microsoft Github went down, regarding releasing Ubuntu, since some important repos are hosted there (like the models).

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

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