Xiyue Deng

My name is Xiyue Deng. I am a software engineer, and have been a long time user of GNU/Linux since 2004 and mainly used Debian as my main distribution. I was introduced to GNU/Linux back in college when I reinstalled my Windows machine with Redhat 9.0 (before Fedora Core era), found that it didn't have DMA support for my hard disks, learned how to recompile the kernel, and eventually changed to Debian which worked out of the box. I had tried many other distributions, even LFS and Gentoo where I had a lot of fun, but I kept coming back to Debian with which I could actually spend my time learning how the system works and do things I wanted to do instead of figuring out how to fix the small inconveniences of the system. Through all these years, I am amazed by how stable a Debian Linux system can be, how it handles security issues like the SSH key vulnerability[1], how it handles migrations, how it keeps evolving its infrastructures to handle new requirements and challenges.

I actually first got involved with Debian around 2008[2] when I found interested in maintaining C++ related packages in the Debian Gnome Team, and I learned and helped maintaining the C++ binding libraries of GLib, GTK+, etc for a few years. I became Debian Maintainer in the process, and applied for Debian Developer later. But due to increased daily workload I didn't finished the DD application and got disconnected from all Debian maintaining work at the time, though I kept using Debian as my choice of Linux distribution. Fast forward to 2023, I rekindled my interest in maintaining packages in Debian through Emacs addons[3], where I started helping maintaining packages in the Debian Emacsen Team. I have gathered more experiences with how to work with Debian tools over the years and will try my best to keep this momentum this time.

My primary areas of interest is still helping improve packaging of Emacs addons as well as C++ related libraries and applications. I would also like to help experimenting with packaging tools to improve validation and automation of developer work so as to minimize human errors (which I have made a ton and would like to avoid.) I'd also like to try to take care of packages that needs help or orphaned which may benefit from tools that perform automated validation and improvements.

[1] https://wiki.debian.org/SSLkeys

[2] https://nm.debian.org/person/xdeng/

[3] https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=manphiz%40gmail.com