Re: What to do about unmaintained ELPA packages

[Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net>]

Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> 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.

Considering the number of issues that have been gathering in the above
mentioned issue tracker, I find it increasingly difficult to say it is
"stable".  It is far from being "bitrotten", but there is plenty of
space between the two.

>> 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.

That would only be one option, perhaps the most drastic because it
burdens the ELPA maintainers and contributors the most.  An alternative
would be to announce a package is regarded as unmaintained and that we
are looking for a new maintainer to revive the package by start a fork.

My intention with this thread is to formalise some kind of workflow for
situations like these, so that people know what they can do if a ELPA
package stagnates.

> 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 have CC'ed them in this message, in case they have anything to say on
this specific case.