Request to be added as a maintainer
rnpnr opened this issue · comments
Hi, I have been a daily user of vis for multiple years now and would like to help maintain the project.
While I greatly appreciate the work by @ninewise in keeping the project mostly alive it seems like they have limited time for continued maintenance. It is now taking more than a month to merge simple bug fixes that multiple people have reviewed. I would like to continue to contribute more but it's pretty discouraging when even things like uncontroversial bug fixes don't get merged.
I see the value in having up to date mirrors on other platforms I still think the majority of people would prefer to contribute here. I didn't even know about the mirror on sourcehut until someone mentioned it in a pull request. Wanting to keep those alive shouldn't detract from updating things here.
I also really appreciate the reviews and responses to issues by people like @mcepl. Even if they aren't contributing code they are still providing a great service to the project. Particularly in the case of mcepl I might not agree with moving the project to an even less visible fork I completely understand where he is coming from. It will be a great loss to vis if he feels like his contributions are a waste of time.
I would like to save the project before it is completely dead.
Are you a good c programmer?
Yes. I guess the best example of this that is visible is my jdict program which includes a hand written parser for a format similar to JSON and is able to parse and search 300K+ entry dictionaries. I have also assisted in teaching an embedded systems programming/design course at my university which involves programming Atmel Microcontrollers in C.
I haven't yet contributed much C code to vis but I have been poking around at a few bugs. For example #1094 fixes #1090.
I can only reply the same here as I did to @mcepl when they asked: I have no access to the github settings and cannot add more people with push access. It's just me and Evan Gates currently. mcepl sent a mail to martanne to be added on march 3rd, but no reply that I know of so far. I'd love to have you join as well, so please do send a mail, too.
(Do note that I was in Australia without a laptop for a month, coming back last weekend. I plan to at least go back to the slow schedule I had before that.)
To be at least a little bit constructive let me suggest a solution: isn’t this the moment to abandon this repository and move somewhere else where you would have actual control over it? This situation where nobody active has any control over it is just not good for anybody (for all purposes, I would consider @martanne as fully MIA; no, I haven’t got any reply to my email).
Of course, I would prefer https://git.sr.ht/~ninewise/vis, but it could be even here on GitHub. I would be even willing to help copy tickets from here to there (I haven’t found a good way how to do it programmatically) and help with testing offered PRs.
I have no access to the github settings and cannot add more people with push access.
I see. I guess that also explains why you haven't been able to fix the action that updates the online manuals.
I was in Australia without a laptop for a month
That is fair. I didn't mean to attack you in anyway. I just think it would be better if there were multiple people who able to actively merge commits. Then it would be fine when someone takes a vacation or whatever. I haven't seen anything from Evan in ages so everything seems to have fallen on you. I will try sending an email even if it goes unread.
@mcepl I think that is a fine option as well if martanne can't be reached. I don't have any ties to github per se I just recognize that it is the most easily found and the most likely place to attract new contributors. I also think it is a big hassle to convince everyone to track a new fork. I will follow either way but that is my opinion.
I would like to apologize for my inactivity and thank @ninewise for his effort in maintaining vis.
I have now added @rnpnr and @eworm-de as collaborators to the GitHub repo. Let me know your sourcehut account, if you also would like to have access there.
In my opinion one of the main tasks of a maintainer is to steer the project in a coherent direction, say no to things which do not make sense and not just blindly merge all ideas. Other people referred to this as having good taste which is kind of hard to quantify. I briefly looked over @mcepl's branch and while it seemingly collects lots of random fixes, it also contains some fundamental changes (non-blocking process integration) which need some architectural considerations from someone with C programming experience.
As for moving the main git repo to another platform, I'm not particularly attached to GitHub. However, in the current state of the project it probably makes sense to go with the most main stream solution to attract what little developer interest there is. Also all the existing issue tracker data is already here.
Ultimately, I believe in the open development model and think that whoever steps up to actually do the work gets to decide these things.
Happy hacking,
Marc
it also contains some fundamental changes (non-blocking process integration) which need some architectural considerations from someone with C programming experience.
That’s #675, which I completely agree should be reviewed by somebody who actually knows what he is talking about, but on the other hand the results are so valuable (including that vis-lspci plugin, and I am thinking https://gitlab.com/muhq/vis-spellcheck could use it as well), that I have decided to include it. And I haven’t found anything wrong with it so far after half a year or so of using it.
Hi @martanne thanks so much for the great editor. I look forward to helping maintain it! I have created an account on sourcehut with the same username (rnpnr).
My only remaining concern is that without access to the repo settings I don't think we are able to fix the failing API documentation generation (see here for example). I'm guessing the token expired.
It is possible to just manually run those actions and commit to the gh-pages branch. I guess that might need to be the solution if the token is just going to expire again.
Hi @martanne thanks so much for the great editor. I look forward to helping maintain it! I have created an account on sourcehut with the same username (
rnpnr).
You should now also have access on sourcehut.
My only remaining concern is that without access to the repo settings I don't think we are able to fix the failing API documentation generation (see here for example). I'm guessing the token expired.
It is possible to just manually run those actions and commit to the
gh-pagesbranch. I guess that might need to be the solution if the token is just going to expire again.
This should probably be changed to use the automatic GITHUB_TOKEN secret.
More generally, let me know if need to change something in the repository settings.
You should now also have access on sourcehut.
Yes thanks! Everything is working from my end.
This should probably be changed to use the automatic
GITHUB_TOKENsecret.
Oh I see. that fixes the issue! I fixed things here. Next time someone touches those files everything should update. Just for reference I did a test run on my fork before including things here.
With that I believe everything is working here so I will close the issue. Thanks so much for your help Marc!