CoreDevApplication

I, Rik Mills, apply for core-dev.

Name

Rik Mills

Launchpad Page

https://launchpad.net/~rikmills

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.
  • I'd like to widen my Ubuntu contributions beyond flavours and Universe.

Who I am

I am a long time Kubuntu (and other flavour) user who decided some years ago now to step up to help the distribution/flavour that has been of such benefit to me over the years. I started using Linux/Unix at University for Physics, and carried on using Linux/Unix for post-grad research.

My Ubuntu story

  • January 2016 - Starting helping the Kubuntu team with QA/testing etc via IRC, moving on to helping with packaging fixes.
  • July 2016 - Became a member of Kubuntu Ninjas team. Git access to packaging branches and team PPAs.
  • October 2016 - Became a Kubuntu Member.
  • February 2017 - Became a Kubuntu Developer.
  • September 2017 - Elected to Kubuntu Council.
  • March 2019 - Granted MOTU upload rights.
  • Acted as Kubuntu lead (actual or de facto) for most of the last 7 years.

My involvement

Examples of my work / Things I'm proud of

Since I became a Kubuntu developer and later MOTU, I have done a significant proportion of the packaging and merging for KDE and related packages, and for Kubuntu itself. I hope that I can say that this has helped keep Kubuntu as a flavour alive and well and helped the same for other flavours who use parts of KDE. I have also tried to contribute generally to Ubuntu as much as time and permissions allow, assisting in transitions, proposed migration, bug reporting/triage etc.

As an upstream KDE developer/contributor, and frequent contributor to KDE Neon packing at some points, I have tried to help keep the good two way relationship between us healthy. I have tried to do the same with the Qt/KDE Debian team, and hope to do much more on that side in the future.

Areas of work

(This list is missing some packages copied from landing PPAs by a core dev as part of landing transitions, and maybe ones I just forgot I did via that route and are now hard to find. For example gst-plugins-good1.0 in Qt transitions)

lto-disabled-list

  • lto-disabled-list 62 - Disable LTO for nvidia-cuda-toolkit on ppc64el to fix FTBFS. Needed as will be part of upcoming Qt6 transition.

  • lto-disabled-list 61 - Disable LTO to make kseexpr snycable from Debian on symbols.

Other

New packages

KDE is constantly making new things and evolving old/current ones, which regularly requires NEW source packages. While is its obviously desirable to do this through Debian, differing schedules and freezes mean that quite frequently we have needed to package and introduce these in Ubuntu before Debian. For example Qt6, the KDE Frameworks 6 stack, new sources for Plasma 6 and additions to KDE Gear applications. In the last few cycles while Debian was not in freeze, and the Qt/KDE team more recently active, this has been less necessary.

Transitions

Qt transitions: I have assisted with Qt5 and Qt6 transitions for a significant period of time, and have lately driven several of these. This involves bootstrapping the Qt stack builds and building the remaining stack, rebuilds of rdeps against the Qt private ABI for sources that depend on it, and researching or finding fixes for FTBFS packages against the new Qt version. On landing the transition in proposed I have been involved in retriggering and working out triggers for required tests, and troubleshooting migration issues.

KDE: KDE packages inevitably get library version bumps every so often, resulting in mini (or not so mini) transitions for these. As with other transitions these need to be landed, rdeps rebuilt, and proposed migration shepherded through with any required troubleshooting.

Other: I frequently check to the transition tracker to see what transitions are ongoing and planned, and will assist with rebuilds if it looks as if that will be useful. Additionally on update-excuses I will regularly look at what test, and dependency or migration blockers may exist where I can be of some help.

SRUs

NOTE: This is not a comprehensive list.

  • 2109830 [SRU] kdeconnect - no SMS messages in Plucky

  • 2096990 [SRU] Noble - minimal install removes kubuntu-desktop metapackage and kubuntu-settings-desktop

  • 2084206 [SRu] Dolphin 24.08.1 has lost its Information Panel

  • 1992971 [SRU] tracking bug for plasma LTS 5.24.7 bugfix updates for Jammy

  • 1986447 [SRU] tracking bug for combined plasma LTS 5.24.5 & 5.24.6 bugfix updates for Jammy

  • 1938894 [SRU] tracking bug for combined plasma LTS 5.18.6 & 5.18.7 & 5.18.8 bugfix updates for Focal

  • 1980210 [SRU] Unable download from store.kde.org with error "invalid number of concurrent streams"

  • 1925022 [SRU] gwenview: loses image metadata on jpg rotation

  • 1923053 [SRU] nextcloud crashed with SIGSEGV

  • 1876876 SRU tracking bug for plasma 5.18.5 in Focal

  • 1843613 SRU tracking bug for plasma 5.12.9 in Bionic

  • 1812408 [SRU v1.3.3 to bionic and cosmic] - ubuntu still ships old version of KDEConnect

  • 1794494 SRU tracking bug for KDE's Plasma 5.12.7 for bionic

  • 1779456 SRU tracking bug for KDE's Plasma 5.12.6 for bionic

  • 1768245 SRU tracking bug for KDE's Plasma 5.12.5 for bionic

  • 1687444 Zesty SRU tracking bug for KDE's Plasma 5.9.5

Security Updates

MIR

Things I could do better

  • Better document for both myself and others details of fixes and processes. This is something I am especially mindful to do with any core dev related work I may do in the future.

Plans for the future

  • Try to do more work through and with Debian, and hopefully become a Debian Developer. I already have commit access to the Qt/KDE team repositories on salsa, so could make more use of this by making or proposing changes in consultation with that team.

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@.

Yay, Rik is finally going to be a Core Dev! After nearly a decade of bringing not just the team but the software to the 2025 users. Rik is unfailingly courteous and thoughtful, and gently brings others along the path as well. He has my full confidence for Core Developer. @valorie-zimmerman@.

Endorsements

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

Simon Quigley

It has always been a deep honor and privilege to work with Rik. Starting out as a young contributor, Rik has been someone I have looked up to throughout my entire journey, eventually becoming an Ubuntu Core Developer myself. In my honest opinion, Rik should have submitted this application long ago.

Rik truly understands what it means to be an Ubuntu Core Developer. He often manages large transitions entirely by himself, and has an extremely deep and thorough technical foundation, which results in excellent decisions (the vast, vast majority of the time. To err is human, of course.) He knows who exactly to poke and when (especially during freezes), he knows about the NBS and uninstallability reports, is excellent and mindful of the Transition Tracker, and much, much more. I truly consider him a peer who simply does not have the ability to push the same buttons, however imperfect our existing peers may be.

When something goes wrong, or an interaction happened that was not quite up to par, I can always trust Rik to be honest with me, which I deeply value on a "person to person" level. This sometimes results in tense conversations, but nothing that has fallen outside of the Code of Conduct in my opinion, and in hindsight, all of the conflicts I've had with Rik have taught me a meaningful lesson: life, technical, or otherwise. He is an extremely intelligent, witty, cognizant, and sensible person, and I enjoy hearing his opinions and thoughts in discussions.

We are so incredibly lucky to have Rik in our community. I truly feel like I do not thank him enough for his work. I have nothing but support for his application, having worked with him on a near-daily basis (on and off) over the last 9 years.

In short, Rik is someone I look up to, and someone we should have granted these permissions to a long time ago. I appreciate everything you do, Rik.

I, Simon Quigley, strongly support Rik Mills' application to become an Ubuntu Core Developer, and believe he has already proved the necessary skills, technical and social, tenfold.

-- tsimonq2 2025-04-05 03:05:10

Utkarsh Gupta

Whilst I haven't directly sponsored any uploads for Rik, I've had the pleasure of working with on him on various Archive Admin and Release Team related tasks. Any bug, MP, or a ping from Rik would be clear, straightforward, and to the point - without needing any back and forth.

I've barely had to give any feedback to Rik - which clearly shows his readiness for core dev. I was actually surprised to know that Rik isn't a core dev yet!?!?!?!?

Him becoming an Ubuntu core dev would be a net win for Ubuntu.

-- -- utkarsh 2025-04-05 17:13:53

Gianfranco Costamagna

BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE

Hash: SHA256

Today, 2025-07-23 at 09:34 I started sponsoring Rik packages in 2018, and then over they years he has proven to be trustworthy, and to be able to work alone on his contributions. I usually sponsor snapd-glib, something he really deeply cares and prepares carefully, I never had to nitpick on his contributions, and usually my job is to just sign and upload. I believe he has the technical skills and social skills to be part of the CoreDev team, this will help a lot in lower our job as sponsors, and improve the reaction time for qt/plasma issues coming around on transitions. Please let him in, it is really a pleasure to work with him. Note: Since the wiki login doesn't work, I am asking other people to add this advocacy on my behalf, and I'm signing with my gpg key for verification

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Dmitry Shachnev

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

=== General feedback ===
Rik Mills is doing most of Kubuntu-related packaging almost alone.
This is a huge work that includes packaging core libraries like Qt
and KDE Frameworks, user-facing software, and taking care of the
infrastructure stuff. Kubuntu is the oldest Ubuntu flavor and it is
still in a very good shape, thanks to Rik's work on it. I always
wondered why he is not a core developer yet, since working on many
packages involves finding and fixing bugs in dependencies, many of
which are in main.

=== Specific Experiences of working together ===
During the past few years we were working together on Qt transitions.
Rik was taking care of Qt 6, and I of Qt 5. Sometimes, when I needed
help from him to fix some package for my transition, he always did
that.

Oh, and according to the Sponsorship Miner, I sponsored three uploads
for him back in 2017-2018: qtwebview-opensource-src, drkonqi and
plasma-vault.

=== Areas of Improvement ===
Become a Debian Developer, which will hopefully allow us to reduce
some delta.
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Graham Inggs

General feedback

I've sponsored five uploads for Rik since 2019. The quality has been good, and when I've had questions, Rik has always been quick to respond. Rik is always involved with transitions and helping packages migrate. I know Rik can be trusted with being a Core Developer, right now.

Specific Experiences of working together

I recently sponsored a merge of fontconfig, and migration hints for Qt 6.8.2 and kgeotag/marble.

Areas of Improvement

Nothing springs to mind. Keep up the good work, Rik!

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 ===

RikMills/CoreDevApplication (last edited 2025-08-04 14:03:22 by rikmills)