Package maintainers?

[MarcelWilson]

Is this project actively being maintained? I see a couple PRs submitted from last year without any movement.

[m8ttyB]

@kimberlythegeek / @davehunt - is Moz still maintaining this or has the project been sunsetted?

[m8ttyB]

Alternatively, can this project be shifted to a community ownership model? Happy to re-take the reigns.

[MarcelWilson]

I ended up forking the project as an alternatively named package primarily for myself but went ahead and published it to pypi in case it's useful for anyone else. (selenium-axe-python)

[m8ttyB]

I was the architect of axe-selenium-python and core maintainer. I lost access after leaving Mozilla. I'll contact moz via other channels to understand their intent with this project.

[thibaudcolas]

For what it’s worth, we’ve been investigating using this package for Django (django#16372), so I’d love to know what the maintenance status is as well – and help if help is needed.

[m8ttyB]

Mozilla staff are attending an All Hands meeting next week. I don't expect to hear back until after their meetings. The gears are in motion, we should receive a status update shortly. I appreciate everyone's patience while we get this sorted out.

[davehunt]

I can confirm that this project is no longer being maintained by anyone at Mozilla. I fully support @m8ttyB's suggestion of handing this over to a new owner or community for future development. My suggestion would be to initiate a repository transfer. If others are in agreement, I believe we would just need to know the new owner.

[m8ttyB]

thx @davehunt. I'm working to track down @kimberlythegeek to discuss the pypi maintainers list.

An open question to the community - @MarcelWilson + @thibaudcolas:
Deque's Python bindings appear to have significantly improved over the years. The initial goals of this project were to provide Python bindings for axe-core, where Deque (if I remember correctly) only supported JS at the time. This gap has narrowed quite a bit.

Is there an intrinsic reason to continue using axe-selenium-python instead of Deque's axe-devtools-api? I'm not against reviving this project, but I want a sanity check.

[m8ttyB]

I want to nudge this thread again -- I have not been able to locate @kimberlythegeek yet. I'll continue to work on getting ahold of her. In the meantime, @MarcelWilson or @thibaudcolas, have you given my question some thought? Should we suggest the community begin using axe-devtools-api instead of this project?

[thibaudcolas]

@m8ttyB thanks for following up! I’ve not come across Deque’s axe-devtools-api before. It seems to be a different product? Axe DevTools doesn’t seem to be open source / is only available on an authenticated packages registry. axe-core is what I’m looking for Python/Selenium bindings for. Deque seems to have a lot of language-specific axe-core bindings these days but not one for Python/Selenium. There is a third-party axe-core-python though, which advertises Selenium and Playwright.

As far as ownership, the options I can see working from my side are:

• https://github.com/django if there’s agreement from Django ops it makes sense to have a package on there that’s not just for Django use.
• A new dedicated organisation
• A personal account as a last resort (not keen on the bus factor)

We’d then try to replicate this as appropriate in PyPI, set up an Organization account and invite the relevant maintainers.

[thibaudcolas]

Hey all, my turn to nudge :)

[m8ttyB]

Hi @thibaudcolas -- I was hoping @MarcelWilson might have a moment to weigh in.

You make fine points, particularly around being pushed towards an authenticated package registry that ties usage to Deque. Is this a blocker? The underlying integration they use to inject Axe with Selenium appears curiously similar to our solution.

Again, I am not dismissing the value of axe-selenium-python; I just want to be clear that folks are comfortable creating/maintaining a solution that roughly parallel to Deque's that still relies on axe-core. Reinvigorating community engagement on this project would give us more fine-grained control and move it out of the pay-walled model that Deque's model suggests.

If you're a 👍🏼, let's move forward, can you approach the Django project to engage in a conversation and take a temperature check? I agree with your assessment. Once it's decided which organization to host this project under, Mozilla folks will assist with transferring the project - ty to @davehunt & @pdehaan.

• https://github.com/django if there’s agreement from Django ops, it makes sense to have a package on there that’s not just for Django use.
• A new dedicated organization

We’d then try to replicate this as appropriate in PyPI, set up an Organization account and invite the relevant maintainers.

There is a mechanism in place to recover abandoned pypi namespaces. I will begin the process.

[MarcelWilson]

@m8ttyB I'm not against paid libraries, but unfortunately it would be a non-starter for my projects (one of which is also open source).

Personally I would love to see axe-selenium-python continue to thrive. It already seems to have roots, just needs a little TLC. (it would also mean I can ditch my forked version 😆)

[m8ttyB]

ty @MarcelWilson. Let's do it.

• @thibaudcolas, if you will, please approach the Django community about hosting this project.
• @m8ttyB will work to transition the pypi project to a state where new maintainers can be added, removed, or deprecated.

[tushar5526]

I love the efforts everyone is making here to push this forward. I would be happy to volunteer to help in any manner possible and want to contribute some features inspired by https://github.com/pamelafox/pytest-axe-playwright-snapshot, majorly interested in having inbuilt snapshot testing as starters.

[thibaudcolas]

Quick update – took me a while but this is now in front of the right Django people for review. I’ll keep you all posted.

[m8ttyB]

Brilliant, ty. That's great news.

[thibaudcolas]

Hi folks, I have good and bad news. The bad news is we can’t get this under the django organization in GitHub, because of the concerns I mentioned earlier about there being a package on there that’s not Django-related enough. The good news is – we can still proceed with the other options I mentioned :)

• A new dedicated organisation
• A personal account as a last resort (not keen on the bus factor)

Now I’m not keen on the personal account because of the bus factor – so I think the "separate organisation" is the way to go. I’m happy to set that up if that works for others here. Over the last few months I’ve had a good experience moving django-recaptcha to this type of model.

@m8ttyB what do you think? If this works for you, you can initiate the transfer to me and I’ll take it from there, coordinating with other volunteer maintainers to set up the package in a separate org. And then go through the needed maintenance.

For reference, here are people affiliated with Django who have offered to help maintain this: @tushar5526 @thibaudcolas @knyghty @sabderemane. And @MarcelWilson if you’re up for it, the more the merrier.

[MarcelWilson]

I agree a separate github org would make the most sense.

One very minor correction, I'm not affiliated with Django. I use the axe in conjunction with selenium.

I mention this because I feel it's important that the purpose of the package isn't/shouldn't be specifically limited to one umbrella.

[thibaudcolas]

@m8ttyB 👋 checking in where we’re at with this – do you think we could make the GitHub + PyPI transfer happen? I’m happy to have the package transferred to my personal account and take it from there, or you can create a new separate organization yourself and add the above people to it.

Re the PyPI package, same. You mentioned a mechanism to recover packages there, I’m not aware of it but am happy to take care of that if needed.