Is pyxdg still actively maintained?

[Elsie Hupp]

Hi Alex,

In a comment on a pull request, the maintainer of pyxdg, Thomas Kluyver, described it as "only exist[ing] for historical reasons”:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xdg/pyxdg/-/merge_requests/13

> Thomas Kluyver @takluyver commented 1 year ago
> 
> Hi Elsie,
> 
> My argument is essentially that a single Python XDG package makes no sense, and it only exists for historical reasons. XDG has a whole lot of specifications and software for a really wide range of things, and it makes no sense to try to combine them in one big Python package. So I'd say you're better off making a new library for dealing with user dirs and publishing it independently.
> 
> If you still want it to be part of PyXDG, and you have (or can get) XDG commit rights, you're welcome to take over as the maintainer of PyXDG. 😉 It's been 9 years since I volunteered to take it over, and I'm not sure anything I work on actually uses it now, so I'd be quite happy to pass on responsibility to someone else.

There is another package, xdg-base-dirs, that is actively maintained, and I asked the maintainer there, Scott Stevenson, about taking over pyxdg, and he declined:

https://github.com/srstevenson/xdg-base-dirs/issues/83

> Scott Stevenson @srstevenson commented on Oct 30, 2022
> 
> Thanks for opening this @elsiehupp. I'm not looking to take on maintainership of other packages at this time, however, I've commented on #75 to try to renew efforts to find a solution to the namespace collision that doesn't break existing code for either xdg or pyxdg users.

IMHO at the very least pyxdg should be updated with a proper README for PyPI explaining the scope and status of the project. I touched on this in another pull request, but it wasn’t really the focus there.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xdg/pyxdg/-/merge_requests/12

So to answer your question, pyxdg is not actively maintained, but Thomas seems receptive to handing over maintainership of the project to someone who is qualified and willing to take on the responsibility.

I don’t know if he’s on this mailing list (though it would make sense if he was), but if he doesn’t reply here you could just try opening an issue on the main pyxdg repository if you want to offer to be a new maintainer.

Best,
Elsie Hupp

> On May 9, 2023, at 11:51 AM, Alex Lowe <lengau at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi there
> 
> There seems to have been no maintainer activity for pyxdg in the last few months. Obviously folks are busy with their own things, but that leads to the question of whether it can be considered actively maintained or not. If not, how can someone apply to become a maintainer?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Alex Lowe