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[fetchmail]fetchmail fork?

2004-05-23 01:53:21
We seem to be in an interesting situation with fetchmail.  Last year, ESR 
got sucked into writing his book and didn't have time for fetchmail for a 
while, and patches piled up. Then there was a spurt of activity, 
eventually resulting in 6.2.5 around mid-October. But more patches piled 
up, and in January we were told that 6.2.6 would come any day, after which 
some longstanding concerns could be addressed. Then ESR disappeared again, 
until a few weeks ago I pulled him into a discussion relating to one of 
those longstanding concerns.  At that time he muttered something about not 
having list admin privileges but never explained what that had to do with 
fetchmail 6.2.6.

And now we actually have a decent development discussion going, from which 
ESR is conspicuously absent.  (Could have something to do with the list 
admin problem?) These developers want to improve things in fetchmail, but 
the most recent release needs too many bug-fix patches before it's a 
stable base for the development people want to do.

ESR has also mentioned wanting to totally rewrite fetchmail, probably in 
python. Based on previous upheavals ESR has initiated, I suspect that the 
result of this will make a lot of people unhappy, even if he ultimately 
has the right idea. (And based on ESR's penchant for surprising people 
with mostly-finished projects, it wouldn't entirely surprise me if the 
6.2.6 delay is actually due to this rewrite happening in secret.)

I understand if ESR is too busy for fetchmail these days, or doesn't want 
to look at C code anymore, or just doesn't care about fetchmail at all 
anymore. I'm not too far from these states (I don't even use fetchmail 
anymore!), but I see people who care a lot and seem to have time to think 
about it.  Anyway, I may be the only one still paying attention who was 
using popclient in 1994, so I feel some sort of responsibility here.

So I propose that fetchmail development change.  There are many options, 
but the most productive might be to follow the sylpheed-claws model, and 
start a high-development branch run by the community, coexisting with the 
more stable branch controlled by ESR. Maybe we could start a 
"fetchmail-claws" or "fetchmail-ng" project at berlios.de or sourceforge.  
(I've heard enough sourceforge horror stories that I'd suggest berlios or 
another smaller-scale clone.)

Meanwhile, I've collected some key messages from the fetchmail-friends list 
going back about a year, but mostly from after the release of 6.2.5.
  http://funknet.net/fetchmail/recent/
And I've saved off notable patches from that collection:
  http://funknet.net/fetchmail/patches/
Hopefully this will help in putting together a stable release to build on. 
I'd be happy to put the results of such efforts on my site as well.

-- 
==============================| "A slice of life isn't the whole cake
 Rob Funk <rfunk(_at_)funknet(_dot_)net> | One tooth will never make a full 
grin"
 http://www.funknet.net/rfunk |    -- Chris Mars, "Stuck in Rewind"