Re: [Pan-devel] Keeping Pan alive?

[Christopher Conforti]

Hi! I have been here for a minute, but I had given up hope of ever
getting a response; I thought the mailing lists for this software were
dead. A while ago I submitted a patch here, but I doubt anyone ever
read it.

On Tue, 06 Jul 2021 12:40:10 -0400
Jack Ostroff <ostroffjh@aya.yale.edu> wrote:
 
> 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 am having an issue posting; it's something related to double quotes
being put around the email address (even empty) that my server doesn't
like. The aforementioned patch presumably fixed the issue, but I
couldn't get it to compile. I am using Pan 0.146 on Debian.

I can't tell you which version of Debian because my install is FUBAR; I
mangled the package database in a way that I don't quite know how to fix
anymore, and now it's /somewhere/ in between 10 and 11. (Imagine a
distribution in the form of the Transporter Horrors from Star Trek: The
Motion Picture. But it didn't die, because I wrote this email on it.)

When I couldn't get my patched version of Pan to compile, I chalked it
up to my FORD (F***ed Over Re-built Debian).

> 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.

I certainly like it. It has its issues. 

> 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 think everyone should read these:

https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Distributed-Git-Distributed-Workflows
https://drewdevault.com/2019/05/24/What-is-a-fork.html

Getting one's own git repo onto a server isn't out of the realm of
possibility for most people. I'm dirt poor and I have a small server
cluster that serves websites and email, and over the next couple of
days I'm going to build a git server under my domain. Domain names are
cheap, and servers are also pretty cheap if you find a good host. And
I'm sure many of you have these same things already,

I will host my "fork" of Pan on my own personal git server, and I will
get it to compile on my machine (which I will fix); I'd advise anyone
interested in continuing development on this software to do the same,
to protect the project. It's safe if it's in YOUR hands, especially if
it's in everyone else's too. We can share our repos in the pan-devel
mailing list, and for those who don't want to run a server, send
patches there too.

Cheers!

-- 
Christopher Conforti

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