The future of perun?

[allentiak]

Hi,
I think it is time to put into words what we have been discussing informally: we need a new stable release!
I have created a new milestone for 0.5.0. I have also started this thread to decide what to put in it :-)

What do you think?

(To open up the discussion, I am mentioning here every single person who has contributed code so far, and every single person who has an open PR, in no particular order.)
@podviaznikov @bhagany @Deraen @martinklepsch @arichiardi @nicorikken @munen @edannenberg @eccentric-j @ballpointcarrot @wiseman @jstaffans @ikitommi @daemianmack @alandipert @Robsteranium @MartyGentillon @MageMasher @AdamFrey @devurandom @agzam @rqcy

[arichiardi]

Probably I should look at #208

[munen]

@allentiak Generally speaking, I would be happy about a new release^^

There's many good changes since the last release! That why, for deployment of https://200ok.ch, we're cloning the repository and don't use the released version anymore.

Since you asked for an opinion, I personally would opt to integrate automatic releases for PRs merged to master. That's more work to be done once, but afterwards (except for CI maintenance) every fix or feature will be available in a release automatically.

[allentiak]

I'm happy this ticket sparkled some positive discussion!

@munen AFAIK, the only person with the needed credentials to publish new releases is @podviaznikov
Maybe he has something to say about this?

(BTW: I am writing a list of the things I would like to see in a 0.5.0 release. I will post it here shortly, so we can discuss about it.)

[allentiak]

Some ideas towards 0.5.0

Perun is a great project. That being said, the code's current internal quality could be definitely improved. This would make the project more easy to maintain and debug.

Rather than adding new features, I would like to first perform a general code cleanup and quality improvement.

1. Get the CHANGELOG up to date. (There is a record of only 2% of the changes occurred since the only stable release, in early 2016.)

2. Refactor the tests (e.g., the main test file is 848! lines long).

3. Refactor the main code (e.g., a simple configuration change or dependency update may involve changes scattered across many files - there is no central place to change config parameters.)

4. Get the example sites and the documentation (tutorials, HOWTOs) up to date.

Task 1 would be the first and easiest thing to do. I could take care of it. Once it is done, we could start working on tasks 2 and 3, concurrently. The degree to which we could work on 4 would depend on the difficulty of 2 and 3.

What do you think about this?

[podviaznikov]

All the ideas are good. If we can improve tests, documentation and add automatic releases (as suggested) that would be amazing.

Automatic releases - was my big wish too for a long time, but I wasn't able to do it.
Of course if someone setups up releases (I was waiting for GitHub actions to be enabled on the repo) - I will enter clojars credentials as a secret.
Also if someone knows a better way to manage access to Clojars - let me know (maybe they added some new options to manage permissions and access).

@allentiak I agree with your list. Feel free to create GH milestone with separate issues and we can move forward. Those are all very good ideas!

[allentiak]

I have created the milestone for 0.5.0.
https://github.com/hashobject/perun/milestone/1

Should we wait a few more days so we can get more feedback from the rest mentioned above?

[allentiak]

Also if someone knows a better way to manage access to Clojars - let me know (maybe they added some new options to manage permissions and access).

@podviaznikov
Perhaps you could start by adding current perun members to the clojars group?
https://github.com/clojars/clojars-web/wiki/Groups#adding-members-to-a-group

[jaidetree]

#227 to provide Clojure 1.9 support

[allentiak]

(Moving my answer from #247, where @arichiardi proposes a move to babashka)

Ciao, @arichiardi, all,

Thanks for bringing this up.

Personally, I have been moving away from boot for some time, in favor of a leaner, deps.edn-based approach. So, in principle, I would favor a migration towards there.

That being said, I doubt I would implement such a change right now. After @podviaznikov gave me the proper permissions to publish releases, about a month ago, my plans were to release a 0.5 beta. This release would be a great way to get contributions from other perun users, like @munen, who had to fork perun due to its lack of releases, merged back here. However, I haven't found the time to do that either...

The project hasn't had a release in over a year now. It is quite obvious that all (or, at least, most) of the perun contributors have other priorities now. Given that, I think that if you (or anyone else) is willing to invest the required time and energy to move this project forward, that person should be able to do so in the direction he/she considers the best. On the sole condition that person can (try to) implement such features him/herself.

For the conditions set above, I don't consider myself capable of taking that place myself. But I think that everybody mentioned in this thread should have their saying, and that it would be great if someone can step up to take over the project.

[allentiak]

UPDATE: I have just updated the README to ask for help.