Community Process Question – dependencies, forking, maintainer contact

[mbklein]

I submitted a couple PRs to a library that were both accepted and merged, but without a new release. I have a library I’ve been waiting to release, but it depends on the aforementioned library (and those changes), and Hex (obviously, reasonably) won’t let me publish with a github-based dependency. I’ve tried to ping the maintainer in a couple PRs and issues, but I’m also wary of becoming a PITA and I hate calling people out publicly (which is why I haven’t mentioned either the library or the maintainer here). I understand everyone has plenty of competing priorities, and being a pest to people who share their code for free isn’t a great way to make friends or have productive collaborations.

It’s been about three weeks since my last Github issue about it. So, from a community standpoint, is my best option:

1. Fork and release the dependency so I can release my own package, with the intention of switching the dependency back over if/when the original gets a new release?
2. Release without a hard dependency, but document the fact that the github version needs to be added to mix.exs also for the time being?
3. Fork and don’t look back?
4. Keep being patient and try to approach the maintainer via other means?

[kokolegorille]

I cannot answer your question, but I can tell some projects have been forked for the same reasons.

Shall we start an ElixirLS fork?

I use Visual Studio Code, and the ElixirLS extension is a must have to code in Elixir. Unfortunately, it seems to have gone stale over the past few months, and I seem to have read that the author didn’t have much time nor energy to keep track of the open issues and PRs. At the time of writing the last commit is from August, but what concerns me the most is that it depends on the elixir_sense repo which has been renamed since April, has received more than 130 commits since but has not yet been …

I've forked Arc to Waffle and merged all open PRs

Hi, I would like to tell about my initiative to further maintain and develop Waffle project which is the fork of Arc library. The progress I made during the last couple of months is that I’ve merged all open pull requests, published the library to the hex.pm. Also, I’m streaming my work on the project on Twitch The next changes I’m working on right now is to cover all available features in the documentation and also implement the proper file validation with magic bytes. I would…

If You try to contact the maintainer, but have no responses… You might have no choice but to fork.

BTW If You publish on hex, your solution 1 might not work because I am not sure it can be reverted. See this post

Benchee & formatters - easy and extensible (micro) benchmarking

Parking names or package squatting is against the code of conduct so if you notice it please let us know at support@hex.pm. The bunny package does not break this rule since it has functionality. Unused or abandoned packages will always stay on hex.pm because there is no way of knowing if they are in fact unused in reality. We have never gone through and deleted unused packages, but we may delete packages with no functionality or with only “hello word” because they are against the squatting poli…

[mbklein]

Thanks, @kokolegorille. I did see a bunch of hard forks, but I think this is a somewhat different case. The project hasn’t been unmaintained or abandoned; it just has a pretty slow turnaround. The creator/maintainer has a bunch of actively maintained libraries, and I imagine it’s hard to shift focus and keep up. I might try reaching out via a DM on this forum and volunteer as a co-maintainer in case that helps.

[mbklein]

@mbklein

I might try reaching out via a DM on this forum and volunteer as a co-maintainer in case that helps.

Success!