Core Developer application for Michael Casadevall (NCommander/sonicmctails)

[Scott Kitterman]

Michael Casadevall wrote:
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> To the MOTU council:
>
> Wiki Page: http://wiki.ubuntu.com/MichaelCasadevall
> LP Profile: http://launchpad.net/~sonicmctails
> Primary Main Sponsors: Scott Kitterman, Steven Kowailk, Sebastien
> Bacher, Jon Riddell, Luke Yelavich, Oliver Grawet,
> Primary Team Memberships: Xubuntu (Developer), Kubuntu (Developer),
> Backports (Tester), Mobile (ARM Porter) SRU (PowerPC tester), Ports
> (PowerPC)
>
> I'm writing today to apply for Core Developer status in Ubuntu. Having
> continued to do work towards making Ubuntu better on the desktop and
> better as a distribution overall, I feel the time is appropriate to
> apply for core developer status. As a core developer, I can help work
> directly in the archive without interrupting other people to get
> sponsorship of packages, and I can help get others get their works
> sponsored into main.

Definite plus one from me.  I was torn when he applied for MOTU about if he 
should apply directly for core-dev then.  He's definitely ready now.

> Towards working for a better integrated desktop, I've been working at
> polishing up the Ubuntu port architectures (specifically PowerPC) in
> the Jaunty release, and working towards merging and syncing packages
> to this affect within Xubuntu. My current projects involve porting
> ubuntu-mid to non-lpia platforms, vastly upgrading and tweaking the
> linux-ports kernel to be on feature parity and version parity against
> the mainline kernel, de-lpiaification and porting of the Ubuntu MID,
> and bringing Ubuntu on PowerPC to a usable status once again. I also
> have plans to help package, test, and release KDE 4.2, as well as work
> towards porting the KDE packages to ARM and other ports architectures,
> in hopes we could see KDE on a device like the Nokia N810.

I share this hope.  Currently an early release of KDE 4.1 is all that's been 
ported to N810 and it's a buggy release.  A quality KDE 4.2 experience on N810 
or similar devices would be a big boost for Kubuntu. If we can pull this off, 
I'll be buying one.

> Futhermore, I've done work tracing issues through multiple packages.
> In fixing kde4bindings, I had to work through fixing issues in
> kde4libs and python-qt4 so the proper compiler options were available
> and set, and then make sure each one worked properly without
> introducing new regressions into the build system. I've also worked on
> packaging KDE4 updates, and working with the other Kubuntu developers
> to stage these updates and then safely push them out to jaunty, and
> working to port these packages to ARM and other architectures.

This was fiercely complex work that required a huge amount of patience because 
it involved multiple large packages and having to test build on armel (not a 
quick process).  Additionally, he has also worked on feeding these 
improvements back to Debian and upstream.  His work in this area definitely 
shows great core-dev type capabilities and follow-through.

...

> I also an extremely proud of working to resolve kde4bindings on ARM,
> which was a long standing issue to unique properties in the Qt library
> on the ARM architecture which changes the typedefs of a few variable
> types, which lead to interesting build failures in KDE. The entire
> opus involved some creative debugging, authoring new code,
> communicating with upstream, and now working to getting all the
> aptches into the appropriate upstream source control repos.

This was a complex piece of work.  People from a number of distributions have 
been working to get kdebindings for KDE4 to build on armel and Michael was the 
first (AFAIK) to accomplish it.  

I've sponsored a lot of his changes recently and I think they've all been top 
notch.  My biggest concern with this application is that if I don't have 
Michael's uploads to sponsor anymore my #1 spot for sponsored uploads on 
Ubuntu HoF will be endangered.  

Scott K