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Maintenance and future of Guile (was: [patch] Add instructions for sendi


From: Jean Abou Samra
Subject: Maintenance and future of Guile (was: [patch] Add instructions for sending patches)
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2021 23:18:44 +0100
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/91.3.1

Hi,

Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide schreef op za 11-12-2021 om 16:12 [+0100]:
>/+ (p "To contribute small improvements, please send patches to/
>/"/
>/+    (a (@ (href "mailto:guile-devel@gnu.org"; <mailto:guile-devel@gnu.org";>;))/
>/"guile-devel@gnu.org")/
>/+       ".")/

What about contributing _large_ improvements?
Where should patches for large improvements go?

>/+ (p "For larger changes, please discuss them first in the "/
>/+ (a (@ (href "https://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/guile->/
devel/")) "development mailing list")

What if I tried to discuss them, but nobody answered?
(https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=46258)
(Not 100% accurate though, because I discussed the interface on IRC a
bit IIRC? I can't find it in the logs anymore though.)

What if, I then proceed with writing the patches, and nobody responds
with some points to work on or applies it?
(https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2021-03/msg00026.html)
(The only response is a +1-style response.)

What if, eight months later, I send a simplified patch series, with
things made more consistent, and with much more tests, and this time,
there is exactly one response, with a minor point that is quickly
addressed
(https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2021-11/msg00019.html),
but the patches aren't applied?

There have been many commits and two releases since the first patch
series
(https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guile.git/log/?id=653cc0bf953a11432f77ade9c007848e947cc430&qt=range&q=653cc0bf953a11432f77ade9c007848e947cc430..HEAD&ofs=100
  
<https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guile.git/log/?id=653cc0bf953a11432f77ade9c007848e947cc430&qt=range&q=653cc0bf953a11432f77ade9c007848e947cc430..HEAD&ofs=100>)
, without any signs that it will actually ever be applied.

So I guess what I'm trying to say, is that while your patch documenting
how to contribute seems reasonable to me, it has been very inaccurate
for me in practice (not your fault!).

Greetings,
Maxime


I concur with this concern. The patch
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2021-07/msg00000.html
has been proposed five months ago and after
several pings still only saw responses from Maxime.
It comes from a LilyPond developer trying to fix
issues relevant for LilyPond.

https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=16364#19
is a patch allowing to silence the auto-compilation
logging, which is also somewhat relevant to our use
case. It has not seen any reaction.

I see a number of similar cases on the mailing list.

I understand the cost of reviewing and I know that
nobody is entitled to anything in the free software
world. However, I would like to voice the concern that
Guile's maintenance is not scaling, and the project
cannot attract new contributors if patches do not
make it to the main branch. If the current maintainers
need to drop their activity, it would be nice if
they could share maintainership so that at least
bug fixes can be applied.

(NB: Sending this as myself, _not_ after any sort
of discussion at LilyPond.)

Thank you for your consideration,
Jean Abou Samra




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