Re: [Pan-devel] Keeping Pan alive?

[Jack Ostroff]

It's now been over three weeks, and no responses at all.  (During which  
time there have been several new posts to some issues and MRs.)

On 2021.06.13 09:22, Detlef Graef wrote:
[snip .... and reordered so my responses flow a bit better, and some  
more detailed issues dropped for now.]
> I've asked a project member of Pan with Administrator role about the  
> status of Pan, I've got now answer at all.
I think several of us on this list have tried contacting various  
previous developers, all with no success.  Is there anyone else to try  
to contact?

> I don't know if it is possible to keep Pan alive because migrating it  
> to GTK3 would be a major task.
I am using Pan with gtk3 with no problems.  However, there are many  
features I do not use, and I've been told (and agree) there are still  
issues and bugs to be worked out.

> I don't need Pan.  For my requirements the following newsreader (or  
> even Thunderbird) is ok:  http://micha.freeshell.org/flnews/index.html
I doubt anyone NEEDS Pan, but many of us obviously prefer it to other  
newsreaders, as long as obtaining/compiling it isn't prohibitively  
difficult, which includes it being kept up to date, in terms of  
security issues and use of dependent libraries.

> Any opinions or suggestions if it is worth to keep Pan with minimal  
> effort a little bit alive and how to do this?
> What would be the best option to keep Pan a little bit alive a little  
> bit more independent from the Gnome project?
I agree that someone should create a fork - although I don't think it  
matters whether it's within the Gnome gitlab instance or elsewhere.   
However, as nobody has spoken up willing to take ownership, I don't  
think it would really help the cause in the long run.  I agree with  
you, and also believe I am not capable of properly evaluating any MRs.   
So, if either of us  would create a fork, I suppose we could accept MRs  
that work for us, and hopefully one or two other users could test  
before merging.  That would work for a while for those of us willing to  
compile from source.  Unfortunately, I don't think it would be adequate  
to get any distros (such as Gentoo) which have dropped Pan to bring it  
back.  On that secone item - I use Pan on a KDE Plasma system, so  
although Pan is currently hosted on Gnome infrastructure, it is not  
necessarily dependent on it.  This means a fork could as easily be on  
github or gitlab.  Might there be any point in trying to ask the Gnome  
project what it thinks should be done with apparently abandoned  
projects?

> Maybe the best way is if someone is keeping Pan up to date in a own  
> repository (and branch) as a fork from  
> https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/pan inside the  
> https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME infrastructure.
Unless one of the previous developers emerges from silence, I agree.

> But at the moment there are some pending Merge requests which are  
> worse to be merged to fix some urgent issues.
Anyone can do this in a private repo (even local and not in a publicly  
available repository) so I think this question can be deferred until  
the previous ones are answered.


> I've created a rpm package of Pan for Fedora:  
> https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/dgraef/Pan/build/2251959/    
> Builds for Suse, Mandriva, are maybe possible. At least  
> https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org offers this.
So there is at least a short term solution for some who don't want to  
compile themselves, and this can be relatively easily expanded for  
several other distros.

Jack