Question: Is this project alive and maintained

[Nosmoht]

Hi Folks,

i really like the idea of linuxkit and how it works and would like to continue using it, but i've a lot of concerns about it's future.

Why?

• Unmaintained issue: There are atm 299 issue which are pretty old (most over a year). Still there is no one assigned, no label to know if it's a bug, feature, etc., most of them are unanswered.
  • Is there no one who maintains the project issues?
  • Why did nobody answer?
  • How should the community work together with the project if it's like a black whole?
• Pull request:
  • nearly the same as for issues. No assignee, no labels ... nothing to get information about the PR state or why it is or is not merged already.
• unfulfilled expectations:
  • I just cloned the repo, saw a Makefile and executed make, which is the usual thing one would do and run into all the errors mentioned in Unable to build with 1.0.1 #3885. According to the issue, a fix was merged, but the error still exists. Besides that the answer from @deitch didn't use the simple make as mentioned in README.md, but a make command with several arguments. It looks like master is not a stable branch if i can't clone and make. Or is the docu wrong and a simple make is not enough?
• Golang (inconsitency):
  • Sometime the docs say use go get ... to install a binary, sometimes go install ... is used. As far as i got it with a modern go version one would use go install .... If thats true it should be consistent in all docs.

Thanks in advance.

[deitch]

Welcome @Nosmoht

Yes, the project is active. What it does not have is a major corporate sponsor like, say, weavenet or kubernetes or mongo (is that still OSS?) where some company dedicates serious engineering money to maintaining it. There are several maintainers, most either volunteering or receiving some small amount of time from their employers on it. In my case, I am a consultant, so it is a mix of volunteer time and need for it for some clients.

Because of that, I likely am the most active maintainer right now.

It has its genesis from Docker Inc, who have given some real time to it in the past, but little now.

Is there no one who maintains the project issues?

No, there is no one being paid to maintain issues. If there were a corporate sponsor, they would pay for it. It doesn't exist.

How should the community work together with the project if it's like a black hole?

That is a really good question, and one we would be open to discuss. I agree that the project needs a better operating model (read: way to maintaining itself financially). Ping me on Docker slack (there is a linuxkit channel there, but you can DM me) and we can discuss.

Pull request: nearly the same as for issues. No assignee, no labels

Answer is the same. This isn't an internal (or external) corporate project with a team of engineers and project manager and team lead etc. I would love to see them managed or closed.

Sometime the docs .... If thats true it should be consistent in all docs.

Agreed. The docs could use some hygiene. As above, this is mostly a volunteer maintained project. It is OSS, it would be great if the community could step up and propose those changes.

unfulfilled expectations

Yes to that issue. I will respond there.

[Nosmoht]

Hi @deitch ,

thank you very much for the answer. That brings light into the darkness. Crossing fingers a sponsor will soon be found.