Why is this in maintenance mode?

[thequailman]

Hello, I have been using lib/pq for a while with my project. When I tried to convert to pgx, I encountered a lot of issues with how it handles timestamps (jackc/pgx#863) and reconnects (jackc/pgx#672) --issues I never had with lib/pq. Overall, I think pgx has a lot of extras that I'm not sure I really need. lib/pq seems quite simpler, and I was wondering why you recommend pgx when it seems to have a much larger scope than lib/pq. It also has quite a few rough edges for those of us migrating to it.

Also, what does maintenance only mean exactly? Will this repo keep up to date with PostgreSQL 13+?

[agis]

Agreed - it'd be great to have some more insights as to what exactly this means. Are bug fixes accepted? What about security issues? Or is this project completely abandoned?

[Lekensteyn]

I would also be interested in whether contributions are still accepted. Travis CI is still being used instead of GitHub Actions, but Go 1.16 is not listed in there. There is one issue for which I would like to contribute a fix + test.

The note was added in April 2020 via commit c782d9f (via PR #962, by @mjibson), but without much detail. I wonder whether this is due to lack of active maintainers?

There is at least one report where someone was not happy with pgx, #1022. That might be caused due to an improper use of the API though.

[maddyblue]

I'm the only active person with commit access. I don't have permissions to give other people access, sadly. If a PR comes in that 1) passes all tests and 2) looks sane in a 5-second glance over the code, then I'll probably merge it. But I'm not reading issues, submitting PRs myself, or looking closely at all at the content of PRs.

[Lekensteyn]

That sounds reasonable. Do you know the admins of this repo who can add additional maintainers? (Is that @fdr ?)

Perhaps this issue (or another issue calling for help) could be pinned for broader visibility? Maybe some bigger users who have not switched to pgx for whatever reason will step up and help.

[fdr]

Hey, I can do that. @mjibson how about I give you the power to do that?

[fdr]

@mjibson see an invitation to do exactly that

[maddyblue]

Yay thanks, I'm in now! I tried emailing folks a few months ago but that didn't work. This should enable me to pass the baton on to other people who I trust and hopefully keep lib/pq in good hands.

[fdr]

Yeah, sorry about that. I spotted this via github notification.

[cyx]

So is it now in maintenance mode? While I admire the effort for building pgx, and don't have anything against it, the philosophical design choices of it vs this library is somewhat of a huge leap.

I would love to volunteer to help maintain it as well, and maybe we can get rid of the maintenance notice which is causing folks to treat this as abandonware.

[fdr]

Well, I suppose it is, but I'm basically just a caretaker for the project's hosting. There have been interruptions in continuity of responsibility, otherwise, (although perhaps I missed it), there have been people delegated to be able to add more committers. So when such an interruption occurs, I evaluate who has been submitting stuff and basically start a new continuity. If you think lib/pq has something very distinct to add and needs a fix here and there, you can feel free to do that. I will review the situation later.

[cyx]

Perfect. I'll start looking through the issues and see if I can triage / do the low hanging fruits to start.