Tim Cross writes: > Dmitry Gutov writes: > >> On 30.05.2022 00:34, Philip Kaludercic wrote: >>> There are some popular packages on GNU ELPA (and I expect NonGNU ELPA) >>> that are practically unmaintained. One example would be Yasnippet that >>> has been gathering issues and pull requests on GitHub, mostly without >>> any comments whatsoever. For example, see >>> https://github.com/joaotavora/yasnippet/issues. Does anyone know of any >>> other packages of this kind? >> >> Talking about yasnippet in particular, it more in the "stable" rather than >> "bitrotten" category, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. >> >> Or definitely not resort to measures like removing the reference to the >> upstream. >> >>> I'd like to ask, if there some point at which should one should go from >>> regarding packages like these from "de facto unmaintained" to "actually >>> abandoned"? Perhaps if there was no real activity for over a year, >>> despite constant contributions? Would it make sense to call for anyone >>> new to take over maintaining the package? Or depending on how long the >>> package has been unmaintained, how popular the package is, how much >>> effort it would take to apply the changes one could modify the package >>> in elpa.git/nongnu.git and inform the maintainers that if they decide to >>> start working on the package again, that there are downstream changes >>> that they should look at. >> >> Personally, carrying over the development on ELPA would seem counter-productive. >> Both due to the reduced potential community of contributors and reporters, and >> because of the wealth of reports, discussions and docs that reside at the >> currently dormant upstream. Kinda passive-aggressive, too. >> >> I think the best step right now would be to try to contact Noah and ask to share >> commit access. And if not Noah, then Joao -- he's definitely still around. > > > I would agree. First step is to try contacting the repository owner. I > notice in the case of yasnippets, they are active in other projects, so > there may be a good reason none of the issues or PRs are getting action > in that repo. I agree. If the maintainer doesn't respond then we can think about taking any other step. > > I'm not sure there is a 'one size fits all' answer here. We probably > need to look at each case individually. That right, because each case differs and has something unique. > > I do think both ELPA and non-GNU ELPA would likely benefit from some > statistic showing number of weekly/monthly downloads and/or possibly > some heuristic quality metric i.e. number of open issues, whether the > package has a test suite, number of compiler warnings, days since last > update etc. While none of these are likely sufficient metrics on their > own, perhaps a combination could be useful as an indicator. Yeah, these will help users to make a better choice. Although compiler warnings count and time since last update can be easily calculated, how can we check a package has a test suite? And how can we figure out the number of open issues (or whatever)? That would need to use many APIs like GitHub API, GitLab API, Gitea API. I would also suggest showing the license of a package (for NonGNU only, as all ELPA packages are GPL). By the way, is it OK to use Expat (or MIT) license for elisp packages? > > One unfortunate tendency in the current climate is to consider anything > which has not had an update in some time to be abandoned. However, it > could simply be it has reached a stable point of maturity where fewer > updates are necessary or critical enough. > That's exactly me! I start writing package, and when I have implemented everything I want, I just put it aside, until I think it needs attention (either because I or someone else found a bug or because I would like to add another feature). -- Akib Azmain Turja This message is signed by me with my GnuPG key. It's fingerprint is: 7001 8CE5 819F 17A3 BBA6 66AF E74F 0EFA 922A E7F5