Neal Gompa
Engineering Steering Committee Member at Lugaru Open Source Project
Norwalk, Connecticut, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolNeal Gompa is a seasoned software engineer and open source leader with 16+ years building and steering Linux distribution tooling, package managers, and build systems. He currently serves on the Engineering Steering Committees for AlmaLinux and Fedora, chairs projects like the Asahi SIG for Apple Silicon, and has driven cross-distro improvements in high-profile projects such as DNF, RPM, libsolv, and PackageKit. Neal blends backend and DevOps expertise—optimizing build and release pipelines, packaging for multiple distributions, and enabling reproducible appliance/image builds—while also contributing kernel-module and infrastructure work. He is an active community builder and board member across openSUSE, Mageia, CentOS, and KDE, with a knack for translating complex platform requirements into practical, cross-project solutions. Beyond code, Neal writes about mobile tech and co-hosts a podcast, reflecting a rare mix of technical depth, communication skill, and commitment to FOSS as an equalizer.
16 years of coding experience
17 years of employment as a software developer
Clinton High SchoolBachelor of Science (B.S.), Software Engineering, Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Software Engineering at Mississippi State University
English
Github Skills (56)
yum10
git10
compatible10
fedora10
c-language10
lib10
package-management10
cobbler10
python10
suse10
packaging10
configuration-management10
dnf10
linux10
bash10
Programming languages (39)
Github contributions (5)
OSInside/kiwi
Feb 2017 - Jan 2023
KIWI - Appliance Builder Next Generation
Role in this project:
DevOps Engineer
DevOps EngineerContributions:586 reviews, 155 commits, 385 PRs in 5 years 11 months
Contributions summary:Neal focused on improving the build and packaging process for the KIWI appliance builder. Their contributions primarily involved modifying the build configuration for different package managers like Yum and DNF. They implemented features such as package exclusion and ensured the correct file locations within the build environment. Furthermore, they addressed the integration of KIWI with the Open Build Service (OBS) and handled its modular package handling.
next-generationappliancebuilderkiwiiot
rpm-software-management/rpm
Oct 2015 - Apr 2020
The RPM package manager
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & Build Engineer
Back-end Developer & Build EngineerContributions:183 reviews, 47 commits, 55 PRs in 4 years 6 months
Contributions summary:Neal's contributions primarily focused on modifying the RPM package manager's build process and supporting platform compatibility. This included refactoring code to support μClibc and MUSL, as well as fixing issues related to fstat64 implementation. They also enhanced the Python dependency extraction functionality, optimizing performance by conditionally importing pkg_resources and refining the generation of pythonXegg dependencies. Further work involved modifying the build system, including conditional compilation and adding support for different architectures.
package-managerbuild-toolpackages
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