Introducing New DDEV Maintainer Stas Zhuk

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Randy Fay

October 24, 2023 4 min read

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Stas Zhuk, DDEV Maintainer

I’m so happy to introduce new DDEV maintainer Stas Zhuk. He now has all privileges on the project and is beginning the onboarding to know how to use all those privileges, including maintaining tests, test runners, code, contributions, and everything else. He joins Simon Gilli and me as maintainer.

It’s your support that has made it possible for the DDEV Foundation to pay Stas on a part-time basis, so THANK YOU for supporting DDEV! This is a part of our path to a long-term sustainable project.

Stas’s arrival is very timely, as my wife Nancy Lewis and I will be traveling in Patagonia for 2 months in December and January, and I’ll have very limited internet access. I’m so happy to have Stas on board to help with project support and maintenance!

I asked Stas to introduce himself and here’s his introduction:

Introducing Myself

I’m Stanislav Zhuk, but you can call me Stas. I’ve recently taken on the role of DDEV maintainer, joining the team in October 2023. My journey with DDEV began at the end of 2021, and since then, I’ve made several contributions. I’m thrilled to be part of the DDEV community and excited about the opportunities that lie ahead!

I was born and live in Kremenchuk, Ukraine. This is an industrial city in the central part of the country. It stands on the banks of the Dnieper river.

My background

I started my programming journey with Pascal and Delphi at school, like many others in my country. At the university I learned the basics of C family languages, and later gained professional experience with PHP, which I now use in my work. I work in a small team of up to 10 people, my main specialization is Laravel, MySQL, PostgreSQL, AWS, GitLab CI/CD.

My work environment

GNU/Linux is my operating system of choice. I used Windows until early 2020 (back then, WSL 2 was still raw), then I used Ubuntu for a while and ended up with Manjaro Linux (an Arch-based distro) due to better software availability (AUR has everything I need).

My favorite things in development

I like to get to the heart of everything I work on. It is exciting to live in these times when software development is taking huge steps and to be a part of it.

How did I find out about DDEV?

Two of my favorite methods of learning are books and video courses. I usually prepare a new development playground (like a LEMP stack) to repeat everything I’ve read/watched for better understanding. At first I used Laravel Valet, but it only worked well for basic setup without a database or other additional services. Then I tried Lando and DDEV almost at the same time and chose DDEV. My main reason was the documentation. The DDEV docs cover not only how to use DDEV, but also various things related to setting up Docker and other services.

My favorite DDEV features

The level of customization in DDEV is incredible and I like that some things can be done in more than one way. DDEV has so many built-in integrations for everyday use:

  • mkcert - HTTPS support is a must-have, and DDEV automatically takes care of any TLD I want to use locally.
  • Xdebug - no difficulties with the configuration, everything works as it should.
  • Mailpit (formerly MailHog) - no need for a separate container to test emails locally.
  • Add-ons - you can integrate any service into a project and share it publicly.
  • Custom Dockerfiles - you can add/change/remove literally anything in the container for your needs.

I still have a lot to learn about DDEV and I’m excited to start this journey. I aim to bring fresh perspectives and innovation through my role as DDEV maintainer.

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