[Question] Is this project still being actively maintained?

[alshdavid]

I see there are no changes in 7 months and 38 open pull request - is this project still being actively maintained?

[ariasuni]

More info:

• @ogham gave me a lot of rights on this project, though our agreement was still that it was his project (at the time), but it seems he’s less available than ever (but so am I)
• I’m more or less in burnout and also have physical health issues, [one hundred other things in my life] and I couldn’t find enough focus to properly review some of the big, older PRs
• The best way to help is maybe for people to review some of these big PRs, especially the Windows one since I don’t know anything about Windows dev (I could merge PRs that have enough serious reviews)
• I still want to take care of this project, but I don’t know when I’ll have time again (hopefully soon, but well…)

Edit: also, as some have maybe seen, I still worked hard to triage issues even when I couldn’t work on code reviews.

[jnordwick]

i could her with some of the prs. im generally in favor of rewriting old unix utils to be more power and better to use, but i refuse to support snap in any way. so im a little torn.

[polarathene]

I think there are some rust organizations on Github where exa could perhaps be migrated to given the limited availability of maintainers here to review and merge? That should allow for trusted maintainers to keep the project healthy?

The last release was April 2021 v0.10.1 and that remains the version in Cargo.toml, at first I thought Github releases just weren't being made anymore (likewise for the cargo install exa crate).

Any bug reports since that reference git builds may also need to take into account when the report was made as the amount of changes continue to pile up. A release is probably worthwhile pursuing, but if current maintainers of the project aren't likely to be available to do that (for understandable reasons, no pressure), it's not good for the projects health? (I noticed the Oct 2022 issue requesting a new release was closed recently to link back to here)

• There is this org, but it's difficult to see at a glance if that's relevant anymore.
• There's quite a few popular rust CLI projects actively maintained by sharkdp. Might be an option, but I could understand if that is less appealing than a proper community org.
• I'm not sure if the Rust CLI WG org would adopt the project, but at a glance it looks like it might be appropriate?
• Could additionally reach out to communities like r/rust?

[hernangonzalez]

I think @polarathene has a sensitive suggestion here. Even very small PRs have been hanging for a while, and would be sad to see people moving away cause of maintenance.

[InCogNiTo124]

There is this org, but it's difficult to see at a glance if that's relevant anymore.

Regarding this, I deep dived a bit so I'll live a couple of my cents here: @rust-unofficial states that the project should have an active maintainer before joining the organization, something this project does not seem to be having. But, I can see it being relevant.

nevertheless great suggestions @polarathene. I think the best course of action is contacting r/rust or other communities for a possible replacement maintainer, and if someone decides they're willing to either contact rust-unofficial or create a new organization for exa. In the meantime, a great addition would be a list of PR's that are ready to be merged.

[syphar]

@ogham @ariasuni

I would love to help maintaining this project. I'm actively using exa, and would really like to see some of the improvements get released.

If not possible / wanted I would alternatively create a fork, and start merging open PRs from this into it.

[rollingmoai]

• The best way to help is maybe for people to review some of these big PRs, especially the Windows one since I don’t know anything about Windows dev

Alternatively, you can check out https://github.com/lsd-rs/lsd. It's quite active and supports Windows a long time ago. Works great for me 🙂

[wyot1]

Nothing comes close to exa. It's more than just a 'look at me I got colors' toy. But health comes first. I wish you well!

[cafkafk]

I would love to help maintaining this project. I'm actively using exa, and would really like to see some of the improvements get released.

If not possible / wanted I would alternatively create a fork, and start merging open PRs from this into it.

It would probably be wise to get someone with the ability to merge PRs that is actually active on the project, maybe @syphar should consider a deadline for a reply until you just fork it, it's a shame to see all these wasted contributions piling up.

Right now I'd love to try and help by reviewing some PRs, but it is unclear if that would even matter, given it doesn't seem there's anyone to merge them that's active.

[sbatial]

@syphar Should there be any development regarding the fork: I can try and help with reviews as well. I should have some more spare time in the next few months so feel free to ping me.

General thought:
I'm not sure if I'm missing something but a fork should not go against @ariasuni stated desire to be able to maintain again.
As far as I understand if that is the case the fork can just be merged into the original if a maintainer is willing to do so.?

And to @ogham and @ariasuni: Thanks for the project.
But health is more important. Take care.

[syphar]

@syphar Should there be any development regarding the fork: I can try and help with reviews as well. I should have some more spare time in the next few months so feel free to ping me.

@sbatial this sounds awesome!
For now I just created the repository, merged the one PR that I wanted (relative time-style, #1061 ), and reduced the documentation / automations for installation procedures.

Then I got sidetracked by needed work on docs.rs itself so I couldn't invest more time into it around the open PRs. Any help is appreciated.

General thought:
I'm not sure if I'm missing something but a fork should not go against @ariasuni stated desire to be able to maintain again.
As far as I understand if that is the case the fork can just be merged into the original if a maintainer is willing to do so.?

yep, merging back should totally be possible.

[dhruvkb]

I would like to point out an alternative I'm working on, called pls: https://github.com/dhruvkb/pls. It's still fairly new and not as mature as exa but the core functionality is there. I appreciate your feedback.

Here is a comparison of pls and exa.

[eggbean]

I would like to point out an alternative I'm working on, called pls: https://github.com/dhruvkb/pls. It's still fairly new and not as mature as exa but the core functionality is there. I appreciate your feedback.

@dhruvkb This looks promising, but "pls does not maintain compatibility with ls(1) at all" put me off. I made exa work as closely to ls as I could by making this wrapper script. Would this not be possible in pls using its yaml configuration?

[dhruvkb]

@eggbean I meant that the CLI API is not the same between pls and ls (different flag names and more customisation options). The YAML configuration is meant to customise the output. You can use something like a wrapper script or shell aliases to get outputs very similar to that provided by ls or exa.

[cafkafk]

I made another fork.

I duplicated all PRs from exa using a shell script.

Currently I've got 24/63 PRs left, so 39 PRs are closed/merged, and a lot that have been labeled/gotten comments on next steps.

So far I've found more than a few duplicates.

I'm trying to make it so exa can pull all the pr's when they are merged, if exa ever becomes active again.

https://github.com/cafkafk/eza

currently merged includes:

• selinux contexts support
• git repo statuses
• hyperlink support
• relative time

I'm working through the PRs now, and seeing how many I can get through this weekend. I've made a first pass on all PRs.

But there are many places I'd like to get some feedback and I'm also looking for people willing to test PRs.

https://github.com/cafkafk/eza/pulls

I've also updated some dependencies, as there were a lot of security issues.

[ariasuni]

Hi all.

I’m starting to feel a bit better after quitting my dayjob. I’ll try to go through the backlog of issues and MRs on here, but it’s a lot and I may not be very active so it could take some time. I also want to finish some older MR that I think would greatly benefit exa.

Ideally, I would like to create a community-owned fork, so we could start having new releases under a proper org. I didn’t have the bandwidth to do then, and I don’t have it now — at least do launch the thing alone.

If you’re interested, we can try to figure out something together and have a real team of maintainers for exa (or whatever the name of the fork), so that we can truly go forward.

[cafkafk]

Hi all.

I’m starting to feel a bit better after quitting my dayjob. I’ll try to go through the backlog of issues and MRs on here, but it’s a lot and I may not be very active so it could take some time. I also want to finish some older MR that I think would greatly benefit exa.

Ideally, I would like to create a community-owned fork, so we could start having new releases under a proper org. I didn’t have the bandwidth to do then, and I don’t have it now — at least do launch the thing alone.

If you’re interested, we can try to figure out something together and have a real team of maintainers for exa (or whatever the name of the fork), so that we can truly go forward.

I'd really love if you could take a look at eza, I (and a few others) have already gotten a lot of backlog and bugs cleared, and I'd be fine with adding you as a contributor and down the line creating a community org.

[cafkafk]

Ideally, I would like to create a community-owned fork, so we could start having new releases under a proper org. I didn’t have the bandwidth to do then, and I don’t have it now — at least do launch the thing alone.

To keep the ball rolling I created https://github.com/eza-community, and transferred the ownership of eza to it.

For now I have invited you, @sbatial and @syphar. If anyone else wish to join the efforts, they should feel free to ping me.

Of course, all of you are free to go in some other direction, I just am trying my best to take initiative on this so we don't end up in a situation again where we are months without progress. Since last friday, we've gone from 63 open pull requests from exa to 16.

[cafkafk]

Also, @mwaitzman, you keep adding those thumbs down emojis, but I have no way to parse what they are actually critical of, could you please elaborate a bit? I'm very open to feedback, if there is some misstep I'd rather know about it sooner than later so I can adjust accordingly.

[ariasuni]

I’ll take a look at eza, this sound promising. I can try to revive important work to open an MR there.

Sadly I don’t have access to exa’s repository setting (to put it in an archived state) but I can put a link in the README to an active fork.

[polarathene]

So, going forward the project won't continue as exa? I'd have thought that would have been ideal to retain the name and eza was going to merge all the work back into exa which would then be migrated to an organization to ensure ongoing maintenance/development continues without this issue occurring again?

[cafkafk]

So, going forward the project won't continue as exa? I'd have thought that would have been ideal to retain the name and eza was going to merge all the work back into exa which would then be migrated to an organization to ensure ongoing maintenance/development continues without this issue occurring again?

Without oghams stamp of approval, I felt it was wrong to take the name.

[mentalisttraceur]

Without oghams stamp of approval

Well then... @ogham can you please bless an active community-maintained fork using the exa name?

[polarathene]

@mentalisttraceur you'll have to reach out via other means. They've not had any github activity since Oct 2021 (on their profile activity graph at least), close to 2 years.

[bb010g]

@mentalisttraceur you'll have to reach out via other means. They've not had any github activity since Oct 2021 (on their profile activity graph at least), close to 2 years.

I took the liberty of emailing Ben about this. Hopefully we'll get a response soon.

[ariasuni]

Unpinning this issue in favor of this new one I created, to redirect people to eza: #1243