Application - Core Developer - Finn Rayk Gärtner

Community Ubuntu Developer Membership
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I, Finn Rayk Gärtner, apply for core-dev upload rights.

I am aware that going directly to core dev is a leap. I thought about this step quite a bit and hope that the following application demonstrates enough evidence to support this.

Contact Information:

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 be able to mentor other developers and especially Launchpad members, to re-establish Ubuntu knowledge in the Launchpad team.

  • I’d like to take on further responsibilities and challenges in the future (like ~ubuntu-security membership) which require core developer rights.

Who I am

Hi :waving_hand: , I am Finn and a member of the Launchpad team who joined Canonical roughly 1 year ago (originally as a Rust developer, now I get to write perl code). I am currently living in Germany, specifically in Nordrhein-Westfalen.

My Ubuntu story

Of course I have been using Ubuntu long before joining in Canonical. I think I first used the distro in high school (so likely bionic or focal) and helped installing it on a bunch of old Apple machines. Later I used Ubuntu basically always when I needed to maintain any kind of serious Linux infrastructure, so at school, in my open source projects and in my professional work before Canonical in the cloud.

After joining the Launchpad team I worked a lot on Ubuntu related topics and quickly became very involved in the ftpmaster and PPA publishers which led to me participating in the resolute release sprint to handle the Launchpad specific bits. The sprint and seeing the final release process definitely motivated me to start participating with actual distribution work to better understand all the processes, the pain points of using Launchpad and to be a part of the Ubuntu community. Through the Ubuntu Uploader program I was then assigned to Mate Kukri who brought me up to speed with all the required tools and taught me a lot of the required knowledge to apply for these upload rights.

Examples of my work / Things I’m proud of

Quick links

Core Work

These changes I would describe as some of my core work and uploads, meaning that they actually related to Launchpad in some way.

  • build-essential SRU: The patch itself here is trivial (a package from build-essential dropped a dependency and a number of packages expected that dependency to be available without specifying it as a build dependecy), but it required some knowledge about Launchpad chroots and buildd to debug and also an analysis of the impact to determine the best resolution. Specifically I found a set of packages which would have silently regressed due to the issue, which caused me to propose the build-essential SRU as the best path forward.
    • This later came up again in LP: #2161162 where I then suggested to copy the SRU’d build-essential to the security pocket to prevent regressions from builds in the security PPA
  • debootstrap SRU: I led the migration on Launchpad side in the stonking archive indices to SHA512 only indices. This was intentionally done early as a scream test during which we caught that debootstrap was not handling these indices at all. I then proposed the fix to Debian, as a devel patch to Stonking and SRUs to Resolute, Noble and Jammy
  • (ongoing) rmadison: We won’t migrate the madison.cgi endpoint to the new cloud, so Benjamin reached out to Launchpad a while ago to ask if we could offer a madison compatible endpoint. After some discussions I offered to instead do the necessary changes in rmadison to use the Launchpad API properly. Once this change has landed in Debian I will SRU it to all supported series.
    • Debian/Upstream PR: #658

Merges

These I mostly picked up early in the development cycle whenever I had some free time. This is chronologically, so the first ones will contain some beginner mistakes :slight_smile:

Syncs

The interesting ones are tasksel and blendsel where I noticed that they had an Ubuntu delta because of a simple Launchpad bug (it didn’t recognize the section of the package), which I fixed:

MIRs

I am currently working on the MIR for plzip (LP: #2154054), where I am currently collaborating with the Debian maintainer to improve the test situation. This also involved a PR to Debian to swap from lzip to plzip | lzip-decompressor in devscripts (devscripts#664).

SRUs

Besides the debootstrap and build-essential SRU already mentioned above, I did the following SRU(s):

  • python3.10, python3.11, python3.12: This involved backporting an upstream memory leak fix to the Python versions in Jammy and Noble. Getting all proposed-migration reverse dependency tests to pass was also quite involved.
  • (ongoing) openssh: A bugfix that was in itself relatively straightforward, but getting the build to succeed was challenging due to changing i386 requirements in the dependencies, ongoing merges and transitions and both series required pulling in other patches to get the autopkgtests to pass.

OpenSSL 4.0 Transition

While I haven’t led any transition, I did try to help out with the OpenSSL 4 transition. Of course most teams fixed their own main packages so a lot of these are universe leaf packages, which was still very interesting to work in and I often had to write the patch myself and forward to upstream.

Launchpad work

I am aware that Launchpad is not part of the Ubuntu project, but I believe that my work specifically around the ftpmaster publisher is so closely related to the Ubuntu project to still be worth mentioning here.

Specifically earlier this year I made multiple very significant changes to the ftpmaster publisher to improve its performance and runtime, which involved understanding the structure of the Ubuntu archive and talking to other developers like mwhudson or cjwatson. In the end the publisher now runs 20 to 30 times more often per day. These are just some of the most significant MP’s

  • LP: #503377: Replaced apt-ftparchive with direct SQL queries for the Packages and Sources index files
  • LP: #504220: Fixed a bug where EOL series were incorrectly being published and processed
  • LP: #503258: Rewrote the dominator (which marks publications as superseded) to process publications more efficiently

Another change worth mentioning I believe is the change to SHA512 only publishing, which I implemented early in the stonking cycle as a scream test (which led to the debootstrap uploads mentioned above):

  • LP: #505278: Implement configurable hash publishing in the ftpmaster publisher

Other

This is mostly a collection of things that didn’t fit in any of the above categories and are supposed to show that I am familiar with the various smaller processes in Ubuntu

  • Resolved the Debian bugs lazr.config, lazr.delegates, lazr.restfulclient, lazr.uri with an upstream modernization of all 14 lazr.* Python packages (the Launchpad team maintains these libraries)
  • I presented in the (sadly internal) Ubuntu knowledge sharing session in Madrid about the publisher and the general structure of the Ubuntu primary archive.

Areas of work

  • Launchpad of course, but I also want to continue getting familiar with more areas of Ubuntu but of course I will ask for reviews and communicate with other teams before uploading things that I have no experience with.
  • I also want to help out more with the community work and things like +1 maintenance.

Things I could do better

I have a tendency to take on too many things at once, which can lead to delays, or if there is ongoing work, not communicating that so it looks as if a ticket is not moving. I’ve been trying in recent weeks/months to communicate status updates more often on bug tickets that take more time or where I encountered further issues.

Plans for the future

General

As I said above, taking on +1 maintenance tasks and starting with my path towards ~ubuntu-security membership and other roles.

Also very specifically improving packages like lptools, launchpadlib and other packages which are semi-abandoned, taking ownership of them back into Launchpad and properly maintaining them.

What I like least in Ubuntu

Too many different services, sites, pages, reports, tools etc. Also the entire process of creating a PPA, building the package, running autopkgtests is currently way too manual, but a fix is coming soon for that :slight_smile:

Endorsements and Comments

Ask your sponsors and people that closely worked with you to use the template below, and reply to your application with their packaging endorsement (sponsors) or comments (anyone including sponsors).


  

  
## Sponsoring feedback

* Please fill us in on your shared experience.
  * How many packages did you sponsor? A list of sponsored packages can generated [via UDD here](https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/ubuntu-sponsorships.cgi)
  * 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 and next steps

What is the journey you see ahead of the applicant, the next steps they should take, the next things they likely have to learn and the next mountains to climb?
6 Likes
Ubuntu Developer Membership Board Agenda
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Sponsoring feedback

I strongly endorse Finn’s application for core-dev.

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

I’ve uploaded about 10 packages (some might still be SRUs waiting for approval) for Finn, and despite the couple of beginners mistake in the first few ones, everything was generally well prepared. I fully trust him to be careful, self-improving, and seek for help whenever needed, which I believe are good qualities for someone with core-dev powers.

I’ll note that I very much appreciate his online presence on the various Matrix rooms, even in threads unrelated to his current work, always dropping little hints, links, knowledge, advices, etc…

Specific experiences of working together

Resolute release sprint

We both attended the Ubuntu Resolute Raccoon release sprint in London. Finn had joined the Launchpad team quite recently before that, but was already very knowledgable about the archive publisher, and was able to help a lot in some very late package migration for a smooth release. His publisher speed improvements were also very much welcome at that critical time, and the deployment was rolled out smoothly, with good coordination among all the teams involved.

SEEDMIRROR livecd-rootfs SRU

This one shows a little bit how deep Finn’s knowledge of the infrastructure goes. As he works within the Launchpad team, he’s very aware of the build farm infrastructure, and correctly included in the test plan the need for testing the patch on two different architectures, that would end up on builders in two different datacenters, thus hitting different firewall rules.

Areas of improvement and next steps

For improvement ideas, since Finn is very keen on squashing bugs in any package he finds, I’d advise him to more actively seek coordination with the usual maintainers of the packages.
This is particularly true for packages maintained by flavor teams, that might have specific workflows or plans worth knowing about before uploading. The example I’m thinking about here is around the lxqt-panel bugfix where it was good to have a quick chat with Aaron before sponsoring to make sure everything was alright (and it was! :-)).

As for next steps, as usual, I’ll simply encourage him to take on Patch Piloting, and +1 Maintenance. These are fun times, and definitely help leveling up the packaging skills.

2 Likes
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Summary

Finn has my full support in becoming an Ubuntu Core Developer, he is insightful, and the work he submits for review is always up to a high standard.

Sponsoring feedback

I have sponsored the following list of packages for Finn, some targeting the latest development release, some SRUs, I am confident he has a good understanding of Ubuntu standards and eager to always do good work.

2026-07-12 22:57 Mate Kukri Finn Rayk Gartner gdb 17.2-1ubuntu1 stonking 2160470
2026-07-16 00:14 Mate Kukri Finn Rayk Gartner debootstrap 1.0.142ubuntu2 resolute 2160111
2026-07-16 22:08 Mate Kukri Finn Rayk Gartner debootstrap 1.0.134ubuntu2 noble 2160111
2026-07-16 22:11 Mate Kukri Finn Rayk Gartner debootstrap 1.0.126+nmu1ubuntu0.9 jammy 2160111
2026-07-17 13:38 Mate Kukri Finn Rayk Gartner blendsel 0.11willsync1 stonking 2161104
2026-07-18 21:29 Mate Kukri Finn Rayk Gartner ffmpeg 7:8.1.2-2ubuntu1 stonking 2158001 2161215
2026-07-20 01:37 Mate Kukri Finn Rayk Gartner libavif 1.4.2-1ubuntu1 stonking 2153313
2026-07-29 02:12 Mate Kukri Finn Rayk Gartner rspamd 4.0.1-1ubuntu1 stonking 2154903 2162067
2026-09-07 08:00 Mate Kukri Finn Rayk Gartner openssh 1:10.2p1-2ubuntu3.7 resolute 2150273

Specific experiences of working together

I have worked with Finn as part of the Ubuntu Uploaders Mentorship program (myself formerly) at Canonical. However, little mentorship was necessary in Finn’s case. His experience working on the Ubuntu archive related portions of Launchpad, and through the initiative he always takes, Finn was quickly familiar with most of what is required to work on Ubuntu packages, and has produced great work from the start.

Beyond me reviewing Finn’s work, we have covered a range of topics relating to Ubuntu knowledge, processes (SRUs, MIRs, transitions, etc), etc. I am also confident that beyond producing high quality work, Finn also has a good understanding on how to involve himself with Ubuntu processes.

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While I did not sponsor any uploads for Finn, I reviewed many for the OpenSSL 4.0 transition. They were consistently of top quality.

Finn worked with upstream first to get the changes accepted, added test cases whenever required, and made every effort to reduce the delta. He not only fixed the specific build failure caused by the OpenSSL ABI change, but also addressed other issues in the package to ensure it could make it into the release pocket.

Finn understands Ubuntu processes very well, and I can trust him to take on the responsibilities of a Core Developer.

1 Like
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Sponsoring feedback

I sponsored the following 3 uploads for Finn:

Specific experiences of working together

The 3 uploads I sponsored were of high quality. The following traits were exhibited:

I haven’t worked with Finn on the many other core-dev areas we typically require, like seed management, debian merges, driving a transition. I see some examples of merges above, and transition participation, and an ongoing MIR. I’ll leave the overall picture for the DMB to decide :wink:

Areas of improvement and next steps

Besides the obvious Launchpad angle, there is always:

  • ubuntu documentation or processes. Given your journey in acquiring upload rights, what are the most urgent pain points that can be addressed?
  • You are now interacting with Launchpad “from the other side”. That’s a valuable perspective, and I can’t wait to see what you will come up with for Launchpad now that you have seen this side :slight_smile:
  • driving a +1 maintenance week is an excellent way to better understand how ubuntu works, I fully encourage you to do it even without upload rights
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Sponsoring feedback

Specific experiences of working together

  • I worked with Finn at the Resolute release sprint in London in April, 2026.
  • We worked together on several fixes for OpenSSL 4.

Areas of improvement and next steps

  • I’d like to see Finn doing +1 Maintenance and Patch Pilot work ASAP!
  • I think with Finn’s knowledge of Launchpad, he is well on his way to archive-admin.