AutoPkgr past, present, and future

Hello AutoPkgr community!

We stand at a crossroads for AutoPkgr development, so I’d like to take this opportunity to review the past, present, and future of this fun little project that’s filled an important niche for so many Mac administrators.

When Linde Group released AutoPkgr 1.0 to the world in front of the MacBrained crowd in July 2014, we had no idea that this app would become so popular. It was rough around the edges, but it was good enough to win over the judges and a few early adopters. For many Mac admins and organizations worldwide, AutoPkgr has served as a first step into saving time with Mac packaging automation. We’re proud of that.

AutoPkgr would probably still be at version 1.0 if it hadn't been for Eldon Ahrold contributing from afar. His work reshaped AutoPkgr with new features, bug fixes, and frameworks over a period of two years. Without his critical contributions, AutoPkgr would not include many of the integrations and abilities that makes it useful to so many Mac admins.

As the years passed, the core AutoPkgr team has moved on to other projects and careers. We’ve all been lucky to have Elliot Jordan shepherding AutoPkgr as its primary maintainer and support provider. After almost 6 years with Linde Group, Elliot is leaving IT Consulting and moving to Los Angeles to work as part of an in-house IT team. Although we are sad to see him go, we are incredibly happy for him and expect great things from his continued work as one of the best Mac administrators we’ve had the pleasure of working with.

Elliot’s departure throws the continued development of AutoPkgr into question. Linde Group is an IT consulting firm and we’re not set up to do software development. We’ve enjoyed creating and maintaining AutoPkgr, but at this crossroads we need to turn to the strength of the community for continued development. We’ll continue to control the signing certificate and manage the new version release process, but we will no longer actively develop the software.

We’d like to ask your help by officially opening development to the community. If you’re interested in contributing to AutoPkgr’s future, please get in touch via e-mail at autopkgr@lindegroup.com Or feel free to submit a pull request to our GitHub repo!

What if you want to test your development build of AutoPkgr? We plan to make that possible soon, but it will require you to be an Apple Developer with your own signing certificate.

How will people get help with AutoPkgr? Same as always: MacAdmins Slack, GitHub, or the AutoPkgr Google Group. Lots of people already answer questions and provide help.

We want to end by thanking the community. Thousands of Mac admins have downloaded and used AutoPkgr. You’ve turned a small, fun project into a critical part of many Mac administrators’ infrastructure.

This is far from our last word on our involvement on the project. We’re still discussing what comes next and that discussion will be informed, in part, by the response of the AutoPkgr community. If those of you who use it want to help move it forward, we’ll continue to invest in it as well.

Please send us your thoughts and questions. We’re looking forward to collaborating with you!

Sincerely,

Josh Senick and everyone at Linde Group