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<p>I think that we should understand what exactly does CLC do? What
should it do?<br>
<br>
What is the problem at hand? Important packages in haskell
ecosystem are not<br>
properly maintained. Solution? They need maintainers. Should they
be members of<br>
CLC? I'm not sure. CLC membership is 3 years, maintainers usually
maintain<br>
package until they stop. Should someone stop maintaining package
if he's no<br>
longer member of CLC? <br>
<br>
Furthermore I would argue that:<br>
<br>
> several maintainers who are not CLC members have been forced
to step up to<br>
> help take on some of the maintenance burden for many of the
CLC<br>
> libraries. Namely, `vector`, `bytestring`, `random`, `unix`,
and more.<br>
<br>
is step in the right direction. Committee in charge of maintaining
package is<br>
basically designed to just keep packages on life support without
any significant<br>
development. And it's exactly what happened. Package will be
improved only when<br>
maintainer cares about it. And it's not possible to care about all
core libraries.<br>
<br>
Should CLC maintain packages or find maintainers, resolve disputes
etc? Does it<br>
do software development or does it organize software development?<br>
<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 12.02.2021 02:54, Emily Pillmore
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:kl1iq8ns.e4c99428-b8ee-4af8-9862-3fb66249772a@we.are.superhuman.com">
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<div>
<div>Hi All,<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Over the past year, two things have become increasingly
clear to me as I've carried out my CLC duties:<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>1. The CLC is under-resourced. This is evidenced by the
fact that several maintainers who are not CLC members have
been forced to step up to help take on some of the
maintenance burden for many of the CLC libraries. Namely,
`vector`, `bytestring`, `random`, `unix`, and more. The
current CLC head count is not enough to dedicate at least
one maintainer per package, which is leading to us all being
spread thin, and the less-loved packages are falling into
disrepair as a result. Couple this with the fact that
roughly half the CLC do not have these packages actively
within their maintenance cycles, and we arrive at the
current problem.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>2. The current set of "core" libraries does not cover
what is generally considered "core" in the community. From
now on, I'll refer to "core" packages as "boot" packages,
and identify core packages to be those that are have proven
to be incredibly popular tools for building things in
Haskell. For example `zlib`, `parsec`, `regex-base`,
`regex-posix`, `network`, etc. In particular, if any of
these core packages saw their current authors disappear, or
incapacitated in any sense, it would seriously harm the
Haskell ecosystem. `cabal-install`, for example, requires
several of those packages as upstream dependencies.
Currently, we are dealing with this nightmare situation
where work is stalled across many packages due to a
particular set of maintainers being very difficult to reach,
one of whom having disappeared completely for all
maintenance intents and purposes.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Ergo, we have a problem. Thankfully, many people have
stepped up showing renewed interest in maintaining such
packages with the latest crop of CLC folks, and this poses
an interesting opportunity.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>My proposal is this:<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>1. We expand the CLC from 9 members to 22 members such
that we have at least 1 CLC maintainer per boot package.
There are a large number of fantastic candidates already
available, who would be perfect for the role. In fact, many
of the candidates whom we would ask are already maintaining
these packages. In particular, Andrew Lelechenko, Simon
Jakobi, Viktor Dukhovni, Dominic Steinitz, Alexey Khuedyakov
are already serving within this role (and thank you for
it!). Andreas Abel has also offered to help take on one of
the core packages.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>2. We consider a dedicated "Haskell Action Team" (name
and idea courtesy of Carter Schonwald) to oversee packages
in the Haskell github repo that can act as supplementary
maintainers for many of the core packages contained therein.
Currently, there are many in need of help. `zlib` comes to
mind, which is currently blocking `bytestring-0.11`
migration work due to having no available maintainer with
the permissions to do a release. This, in turn, is stalling
`cabal-install`. Short of taking over the package, we would
have to ask for an emergency Hackage release if the neither
maintainer shows up to do it in a reasonable time frame.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>This is just one step towards helping ease the burden of
maintenance of so-called core and boot packages. I hope you
agree that this is a good idea, and if we get enough thumbs
up, then Chessai and I will draw up the necessary changes to
the CLC remit and we'll get started!<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Cheers,<br>
</div>
<div>Emily<br>
</div>
</div>
<div>
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