New maintainers wanted!

[swsnr]

Dear Emacs & Cask community,

TL;DR: @rejeep and me are stepping down as Cask maintainers and are looking for new maintainers.

Cask has become a core tool for Emacs package developers, yet development activity in this repository has ever decreased since quite some time. @rejeep and me have less and less time to dedicate to Cask; we can't work on new features, and often struggle to even find time to review incoming pull request. We have to admit that we are not longer able to maintain Cask at the level the Emacs community deserves.

Consequently we need to step down as Cask maintainers, and are looking for motivated people to take over. I will step down immediately (I'm not watching this repository anymore and will waive commit access soon), and @rejeep will continue to answer questions and try to review pull requests until new maintainers are found.

If you're interested please join this thread, and we'll make sure to smoothly transition Cask to new maintainers.

Inviting @purcell, @tarsius, @magnars, @bbatsov, @phillord, @syohex and @Fuco1 to make you aware, and to spread the information to the wider community.

Greetings,
@rejeep and @lunaryorn

[randre03]

Hello, I've used Cask before but am just starting with elisp (familiar with other lisps). I'd be happy to help out!

[joelmccracken]

I've hacked on Cask a bit. I think I may have submitted a patch a couple of years ago, I'm not sure. I'm not the most qualified person, but I think Cask is really important and would work to maintain it.

I guess what I'm saying is, I will volunteer as maintainer, if no one else more qualified steps forward!

[swsnr]

Thanks folks, that's amazing!

[bharath1097]

I use Cask a lot and i use python in my day job and i am also familiar with elisp. I'd be happy to help out.

[dgellow]

Maybe, add a note in the Readme to let people know the project is looking for a new maintainer?

[joelmccracken]

I recently realized that use-package and cask offer similar value. Its hard for me to be sure that use-package. Can anyone comment on the value of working on cask and not adopting use-package?

[Fuco1]

I don't quite see how the two relate. use-package is a configuration macro while cask is a build tool.

How would you use use-package in a CI environment to install dependencies and set up load paths and run tests?

How would you use cask to configure a package, e.g. smartparens or flycheck?

[joelmccracken]

I should have explained this: look at the :ensure and :pin options in the use-package readme (https://github.com/jwiegley/use-package#for-packageel-users)

So, you can use use-package for both.

[dgellow]

Oh, that's great. I didn't know those options. At least for my use case (user who wants to share his config between multiple machines) that should do the job

[phillord]

@joelmccracken I use both -- use-package for configuring my working Emacs, and cask as a build tool and execute tool for doing CI, packaging and so forth. I've never really used cask as a non-developer tool. As you say :ensure does that job.

[rejeep]

@joelmccracken Use-Package can be used instead of Cask for your personal configuration. I use both actually. The real important issue that Cask solves (that Use-Package) does not is a proper way of developing Emacs packages.

[sambrightman]

Closing this for now, since I've been doing maintenance.