Discussion: Maintenance of Project Hamster

[toupeira]

Since @tbaugis's priorities have shifted the project is currently unmaintained. I was recently given commit access for a PR and would be willing to take over maintance. Any other interested collaborators are welcome to join the discussion!

Open questions:

• What's the current state of development? (AFAICS the Gtk3 migration is mostly done, and other than the Python 3 upgrade no bigger changes are in progress)
• Who is maintaining the project? (proposal: me if nobody else is interested)
• How should development be handled? (proposal: pull requests for everything)
• Does anybody have experience with Debian packaging? Otherwise I'll look into this myself.
• Who curates the blog at http://projecthamster.wordpress.com/?
• Who updates the extension at https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/425/project-hamster-extension/?
• Are there any other resources contributors should know about?

Pending tasks:

• update READMEs of all repositories (similar to changes in this PR)
• update MAINTAINERS and other files

Pinging some interested parties: @kristopolous, @svaens, @kazeevn, @sanjayankur31, @miguel-guedes, @tbabej, @a-m-s

[tbabej]

I'm really glad somebody took the project over. I don't wish to maintain, but I might contribute some features or bug fixes over the time. Pull requests are my preference too.

[a-m-s]

Likewise, I was given commit access, to the shell-extension, following a pull request.

However, I'm not really interested in maintaining the project. I was just scratching an itch (open source is great).

That said, I use project hamster all day, 5 days a week, so I'll probably dip in from time-to-time, as and well itchiness and spare time coincide.

As for future direction, I already submitted GH issues for the minor items I have thought of.

[tstriker]

give me a shout with your wordpress details if you feel like taking over the blog.

[toupeira]

@a-m-s good point, I've split up the README changes now.

[toupeira]

@tbaugis sure why not, my Wordpress account is toupeira@gmx.ch.

[toupeira]

Another point regarding the version: It seems we've started at 1.0 again at some point, but that will require distributions to change the package name. That might possibly be a good thing since the new version doesn't support the same DEs as the old one, but on the other hand we could also just continue at 3.0. Any ideas?

@tbaugis was there a specific reason for the version reset?

[kazeevn]

Dear Markus,

I apologize for the delay. I'm a student, so I had to adjust to the end
of summer vacation, and that was a bit chaotic.

I'm delighted to hear you are taking over the project. Hamster is great,
would have been a shame to see it die.

On 08/09/14 12:42, Markus Koller wrote:

Since @tbaugis https://github.com/tbaugis's priorities have shifted
the project is currently unmaintained. I was recently given commit
access for a PR and would be willing to take over maintance. Any other
interested collaborators are welcome to join the discussion!

Open questions:

• What's the current state of development? (AFAICS the Gtk3 migration
  is mostly done, and other than the Python 3 upgrade no bigger
  changes are in progress)

About the Py3 migration. My latest code is there:
https://github.com/kazeevn/hamster-py3 It's runnable. Right now there
are two major problems:

1. Installation. I'm not familiar with waf and don't know how to tweak
   it to use py3. BTW, why are we using waf anyway?
2. GTK error. Ubuntu constantly complains about something. Needs fixing.
   I'll create an issue with details tomorrow.

How do you feel about the whole migration? If you like the idea, I can
look into fixing those two problems.

• Who is maintaining the project? (proposal: me if nobody else is
  interested)

Agree.

• How should development be handled? (proposal: pull requests for
  everything)

Agree.

• Does anybody have experience with Debian packaging? Otherwise I'll
  look into this myself.
• Who curates the blog at http://projecthamster.wordpress.com/?
• Who updates the extension at
  https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/425/project-hamster-extension/?
• Are there any other resources contributors should know about?

Pending tasks:

• update READMEs of all repositories (similar to changes in this PR)
  *

  update blog about current development status

  Pinging some interested parties: @kristopolous
  https://github.com/kristopolous, @svaens
  https://github.com/svaens, @kazeevn https://github.com/kazeevn,
  @sanjayankur31 https://github.com/sanjayankur31, @miguel-guedes
  https://github.com/miguel-guedes, @tbabej
  https://github.com/tbabej, @a-m-s https://github.com/a-m-s

---

    You can merge this Pull Request by running

git pull https://github.com/projecthamster/hamster maintenance

Or view, comment on, or merge it at:

#181

    Commit Summary

• Update README

  File Changes
  

• A README.md
  https://github.com/projecthamster/hamster/pull/181/files#diff-0 (55)

• D README.textile
  https://github.com/projecthamster/hamster/pull/181/files#diff-1 (47)

  Patch Links:
  

• https://github.com/projecthamster/hamster/pull/181.patch

• https://github.com/projecthamster/hamster/pull/181.diff

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#181.

С уважением, Никита Казеев
+7915-188-32-71
kazeevn@gmail.com

[toupeira]

Hey Nikita, thanks for your input! No worries about the delay, we're all very busy here it seems ;-)

I definitely think the Python 3 migration makes sense now (and will be inevitable at some point), so if you find the time to rebase it and fix the issues that would be very much appreciated! Not sure about waf, if you prefer something else I'm open to changing it, otherwise I'll look into what changes waf requires for Python 3.

[matthijskooijman]

@toupeira, I'll see about the Debian packaging. There was an ITP (intent-to-package) from Etienne BERSAC last year, I'll see if he's still interested. If not, I'll consider maintaining the package myself (I'm already a Debian Maintainer).

Regarding the version number, for Debian, this isn't really needed. The current package is called 'hamster-applet', which doesn't really apply anymore, so switching to hamster-time-tracker is probably a good idea anyway. In general, it might be less confusing to have non-overlapping version number,s but now that there are already a few 1.x releases, it might be even more confusing to switch to 3.0?

[jonbrett]

Hi there,

Glad somebody is taking this on.

For my 2p's worth I also thought that the version number reset confused a
lot of people who were not familiar with the project - it certainly
confused me when I started using it.

I ported the applet to Cinnamon some time back when I had more time to
spare, so more URL that is worth mentioning is the Cinnamon applet on
Cinnamon spices site: http://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/applets/view/140

Not really maintaining this now due to real life priority shift, but the
repo is part of this Github project if anyone is interested in maintaining.

Jon
On 1 Oct 2014 15:08, "Matthijs Kooijman" notifications@github.com wrote:

@toupeira https://github.com/toupeira, I'll see about the Debian
packaging. There was an ITP (intent-to-package) from Etienne BERSAC last
year, I'll see if he's still interested. If not, I'll consider maintaining
the package myself (I'm already a Debian Maintainer).

Regarding the version number, for Debian, this isn't really needed. The
current package is called 'hamster-applet', which doesn't really apply
anymore, so switching to hamster-time-tracker is probably a good idea
anyway. In general, it might be less confusing to have non-overlapping
version number,s but now that there are already a few 1.x releases, it
might be even more confusing to switch to 3.0?

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#181 (comment)
.

[toupeira]

Looks like I overestimated the time I have available to put into this as well ;-) But I'll try to get some things done Real Soon Now™.

@matthijskooijman thanks that's good to hear! I concur that changing the version again now might be even more confusing, so I'm fine with sticking to 1.04 for now. The name hamster-time-tracker seems sensible to me as well.

@jonbrett thanks for your input as well!

[bersace]

Hi,

I'm not willing to maintain the debian package now. I have RSI :/

Regards,
Étienne BERSAC