Maintainer wanted

[matthiasbeyer]

This project needs more/new maintainers.

I took over maintainership in 2019 (IIRC) during a project at my employer back then, because I needed fixes/changes in this crate to fulfill my task at work. It worked nicely and the tool is still used at that company today and also maintained (AFAICT).

But for me, a lot of things happened since that time. I got a new employer, got new projects, had little time to work on this crate - definitively too little to fulfill my obligations as maintainer.

I started the "rethink" project for a complete overhaul of the crate, but I wasn't able to keep up the motivation and progress as much as I would have liked it. Not with this crate, but also not with the -ng efforts.

In the meantime, issues piled up here. Stuff did not work as users thought it would, changes made it in (and I only blame myself for that) that broke stuff (just look at the issues). Two years after the 0.13.0 release I thought it would be time for another release and released 0.14.0 - which seems to be even more broken than the release before.

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Long story short: I feel burned out (wrt this crate) and think I cannot keep up with the self-inflicted obligations - I want to step down as a maintainer.

I will continue to merge dependabot updates (as long as CI is green) and very simple fixes (in the realms of typos in complexity), until (a) new maintainer(s) are found.

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The process is as follows:

If someone wants to maintain this, please comment here and I will contact the owner of this repository (I do not have access to settings) to add them. If I see progress I will after some time ask them to remove me from the repository.

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My wishes for this library are rather simple: Make it work. Of course, a new maintainer has no obligations with me, I have absolutely no issue with a complete rewrite of everything in this repository - as I tried it myself with config-rs-ng. New maintainer: Feel free to take everything from that "config-rs-ng" repository and rebuild config-rs based on it if you like.

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So long, and thanks for your patience and all the contributions!

[alerque]

Long time user here, and possibly interested in helping. I've used this for years but never dug into the code to see how the sausage is made. I'll have a look later when I'm at a computer and see if it seems reasonable to take on.

[prmadev]

Hey there! I've dabbled in contributing to Rust crates, particularly with the Pimalaya/Himalaya project. I've also had the pleasure of creating and maintaining a similar internal library for our company, but this time using Go. It's been an absolute blast, and I've found so much joy in the process. I'd be thrilled to tackle something similar here, but of course with more rigor!

I totally get where you're coming from with the burnout and feeling a bit overwhelmed by the complexity of the overhaul.
So, here's what I'm thinking: I'm more than happy to get involved with the maintenance side of things, but I might need a bit of a ramp-up period to really grasp the ins and outs of the codebase. If there's a chance for some mentorship or guidance to help me get up to speed on the decisions behind the code, count me in! Unfortunately, I understand if that might not be feasible given the current circumstances.

Alternatively, if there are specific tasks or areas where you and future maintainers could use an extra set of hands, I'm all in. Just point me in the right direction, and I'll do my best to assist however I can.

Let me know how you'd like to proceed, and I'm eager to jump in and help out wherever I can!

[epage]

Ill put the idea out there again for this to move into the rust-cli org. We can keep the current owner as admin.

[alerque]

I've had a look over my current usage downstream and I'm not using anywhere close to the whole feature set. I've certainly bumped into a few bugs and inconveniences along the way (hence apparently already set one contribution, I'd forgotten about that!) but I also haven't stressed it very hard and I don't have a grand scheme for rebuilding it from the ground up. Looking through open issues there seems to be quite a bit of discussion along those lines.

That being said, I would very much be interested in helping to keep the lights on … and at a level more than just bumping minor dependencies now and then. I'd like to facilitate it staying useful and relevant and even competitive. I still don't see anything else out there that fills quite the same goals. In particular it looks like there is quite a bit of PR material to work through (for better or worse).

If you want me to start chipping in, feel free to send an invite and we can work out details (repo location, org migration, crate ownership, etc.) I have quite a bit of experience across the spectrum of contributing and maintaining on both solo and team led projects.

[matthiasbeyer]

Thanks for your replies.

Moving the crate to the rust-cli org as suggested by @epage would be a really nice indeed and I would really like that. I am sending a message to @mehcode, asking you three (@epage , @alerque and @prmadev to be added to the repository and it be moved to the rust-cli org) now.

[pksunkara]

If it's moved to rust-cli, I will be able to help out too automatically.

[SamuelMarks]

https://github.com/spf13/viper is an interesting and very popular solution (in Go)

In the Rust world I was recently made aware of: Figment https://docs.rs/figment

[matthiasbeyer]

@mehcode is unresponsive 😞

[alerque]

@matthiasbeyer His activity graph strongly suggests he isn't dead though so there is hope. It's possible he's got notifications turned off for the repo and/or filtering going on (whether programmatic or mental). I know what it's like, sometimes one just puts a project on the back burner and it's hard to even notice when the existing notifications turn from generic to specific attempts to be reached.

Has email/etc. been tried? Sometimes a side channel that isn't already buried in notifications is the easiest way to get through.

[matthiasbeyer]

Yes, I mailed him 2024-03-17, but no response either.

[mhovd]

I too would like to offer my help in maintaining the crate. I have e-mailed @mehcode , but no response after some time.
Hopefully this crate can be revived and continue to receive support and active development from the community.

[mehcode]

Is the move to rust-cli still wanted?

[polarathene]

Is the move to rust-cli still wanted?

Will that affect the current issues / PRs in any way?

I know I'll lose my ability to get my PRs revised and merged at that point, but I've not been able to find time to return yet :(

I think it would be good to move to rust-cli if it'd improve project maintenance but I'm really not sure how many would actively work on config-rs going forward that the changes users may want may not be as easily reviewed vs general maintenance PRs?

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We can see that projects are migrating to figment crate instead.

Moving to rust-cli is probably better than the current status of this project where there is no active maintainers available for it, but otherwise the README (and crates.io / docs.rs equivalent) could be updated to highlight the project status and direct users to a more actively maintained alternative? Especially given all the known issues with this crates current design?

I am not that familiar with the rust-cli org, but I assume there wouldn't be much difference to contributors interacting there and a better process for adding new maintainers when needed? That's the only difference worth considering I think, is you have several volunteers that'd be happy to help maintain this project specifically, but I'm not familiar with org administration, if rust-cli can add maintainers just for config-rs then there's really no reason not to move to rust-cli?

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If issues and PRs will not be transferred over smoothly (broken issue/PR ref links), or comment/review history lost completely, please let me know so that I can backup information I have stored there 😅

[epage]

Github generally makes org changes smooth. They redirect from the old location to the new.

To me the benefits are

• Being in an existing org with several points of contact, both for org admin and publish rights improves the bus factor for at least adding new maintainers
• If i help, its under the condition that I run it like other projects I'm involved in to minimize overhead which will need admin access

[matthiasbeyer]

Is the move to rust-cli still wanted?

IMO yes.

If @epage takes over, I am more than happy. I consider them more than competent to take over this crate!

[mehcode]

You don’t have the permission to create public repositories on rust-cli

I tried but I don't have the ability to do so.

cc @codesections @matthiasbeyer @Dylan-DPC

[alerque]

The two options are either @mehcode needs to be added to the @rust-cli org with enough privs to create repositories (just member level) or alternatively @mehcode can invite someone with that access to this repository in it's old location with admin/owner level privileges so they can trigger the namespace transfer.

[mehcode]

@matthiasbeyer is already a collaborator. I'm not sure how to raise perms higher than that in an open-source/personal repo.

[epage]

@mehcode I've temporarily added you to rust-cli. Hopefully I gave you sufficient permissions

[mehcode]

Moved

[alerque]

@mehcode Great! Just a heads up on one gotcha so you don't make the mistake: do not fork the new location back to your own user space. Right not GH has redirects in place for everything at the old URLs (the repo, issues, Git clones, everything) which is quite convenient for keeping the migration low friction. However if you were ever to fork it back your namespace would become active again and all the redirects go away, so people would stop landing on the canonical repository as much.

@epage et all, as I mentioned back in May I'd be willing to jump in some if you want me involved. I don't have a ton of bandwidth at this moment, but do continue to use this crate and am happy to jump in to some maintainer roll stuff as needed and time allows.

[epage]

@mehcode can you add me as a maintainer on crates.io? I'll then add an org group so its easier to maintain going forward

@alerque would appreciate help. My focus will mostly be on keeping the lights on / unblocking people.

[matthiasbeyer]

Awesome 🎉 this is much appreciated everybody! Thank you all a lot!

[mehcode]

@mehcode can you add me as a maintainer on crates.io? I'll then add an org group so its easier to maintain going forward

Done