SpaceFM development (and developer) going on "hiatus"

[40hz]

Recently posted: a somewhat unusual notice from the developer of the SpaceFM desktop manager...

IgnorantGuru’s Hiatus

I will be beginning a hiatus from my public projects shortly, which means those projects will be suspended indefinitely, including development on SpaceFM and udevil, updates to this blog, and other little works. Suspended means all motion will stop, but most sites I maintain should remain accessible and unchanged. The duration of this hiatus is undefined. This may morph into a retirement, or I may restart some of it eventually in OpenBSD or another platform, or I may simply return and resume work on some or all of the projects.

If you are using SpaceFM or udevil, etc. and want to continue using them, I suggest doing so. Some distros may drop them automatically once they are ‘unmaintained’, but there’s nothing to stop you from using them indefinitely, and these are well-debugged at this point. Eventually some breakage may occur (eg GTK3), but there are probably enough people using SpaceFM now that someone can offer a patch if needed. It’s very easy to make and share a fork on github. I will also be using them myself, so if something major breaks I may come out of hibernation (like an angry bear woken early from slumber!) with an update.

With regard to Linux, I plan on falling behind the systemd wave in Debian, avoiding it. I may eventually move toward Gentoo, or over to one of the BSDs as well. But in avoidance of systemd, I won’t be keeping up with the latest edge of Linux for awhile, which makes for a poor developer’s environment. You’re welcome to join me, in which case SpaceFM and udevil should keep working as they are, even without current maintenance. To give you an idea, in the past six months I’ve needed to fix only a handful of bugs, none of them critical. So this isn’t abandoning ship, it’s more like setting sail for real.

I have weighed this decision carefully, because I know a lot of people really like SpaceFM, and I like to give projects decent support, even if free. I tried to put it on a back burner, but the project has too much energy and mass now for that, and I feel like I’m leaving people in limbo. So I decided to be realistic based on the last few months, and simply put these projects into suspension. I do sometimes continue such things, as I did last year after being on hiatus for several months. So overall, I again suggest that if SpaceFM works well for you, there’s nothing to stop you from continuing to use it indefinitely, supporting it indirectly, or forking it for any purpose.

This blog is now closed to comments in order to eliminate spam being added. If you would like to be informed of any temporary or permanent returns from my hiatus, you can subscribe for email updates. My other sites will shortly show ‘suspended’ notices just to let people know the status of projects. Yet I’ll do my best to merely freeze everything and keep it available. I may leave the issue trackers open, so any bugs can be tracked, yet note that only I have write access to the Github repositories I own, as well as this blog. The wikis should remain available for additions.

Thanks for all the support and interest, and good luck navigating.

So it goes...

[Edvard]

With regard to Linux, I plan on falling behind the systemd wave in Debian, avoiding it. I may eventually move toward Gentoo, or over to one of the BSDs as well. But in avoidance of systemd, I won’t be keeping up with the latest edge of Linux for awhile, which makes for a poor developer’s environment.

So what's wrong with systemd?  Upstart is broken by admission of it's developers, Sysvinit is solid and mature but doesn't address the realities of the modern computing environment, and OpenRC is cute, but...

Anyways, if enough people care about SpaceFM, it WILL be forked and development will continue, which is the beauty (or bane, your choice...) of Open Source software.

EDIT: Oh, I see, it's because udev: https://lwn.net/Articles/490413/

[ewemoa]

Thanks 40hz for this and mention of the Sunflower file manager

Will have to consider what to do for replacing udevil...