On 12/21/20 10:46 AM, Darren Duncan wrote:

This also raises the question, if development of Dancer has stalled, is its user base also shrinking and going to other things?  If users are migrating away, there might be less point in having a course on it. -- Darren Duncan

That's a good question. But please note that we can't compare development of Dancer and Mojo. Dancer only supplies the core and IMHO most things needed are there, so that also explains the stalled development while Mojo is a whole eco system in a box. 110 open issues and 32 open pull reports are way too much of course. Regards Racke

On 2020-12-20 10:14 p.m., Gabor Szabo wrote:

...

Hi,

as I am working on the Perl Dancer video course I need to look up lots of things in the documentation on https://metacpan.org/release/Dancer2 <https://metacpan.org/release/Dancer2> and many times I feel either that it is difficult to find what I was looking for

For example looking for the full list of words in the DSL: I clicked on both links saying DSL, neither of them had the list, nor a link to the manual where I findall found it: https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/Dancer2/lib/Dancer2/Manual.pod#DSL-KEY... <https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/Dancer2/lib/Dancer2/Manual.pod#DSL-KEYWORDS>

Another thing I was looking for is the list of types one can use out of the box to describe the routes. I could not find it.

-------------------------------------

It is frustrating, but this is open source, I can help improve it, right?

I thought I'll open a ticket, maybe even send a pull-request.

Looked at https://github.com/PerlDancer/Dancer2/ <https://github.com/PerlDancer/Dancer2/>

and this made me even more frustrated. There are 110 open issues and 32 open pull-request. That's 32 things some people have worked on and have not been integrated.

(If you like, you can compare the numbers with Mojolicious https://github.com/mojolicious/mojo <https://github.com/mojolicious/mojo>  47 3 Flask https://github.com/pallets/flask <https://github.com/pallets/flask> 18 4

You can also look at the commit history and you see there was hardly any activity recently.

I keep recording the course, but I feel reluctant to open issues or work on pull-request because I don't want to waste my time on something where the chances of integration seem to be so low.

-------------------------------------------

Why has the development slowed down? How could it be fixed? Have the core developers (almost completely) lost interest? Do they lack the time? Could companies that use Dancer help financially? Could new people step up to become core developers?

regards      Gabor

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-- Ecommerce and Linux consulting + Perl and web application programming. Debian and Sympa administration. Provisioning with Ansible.

Hello everyone. Let's separate the core from the plugins. For example, looking over I see that an update for this plugin <https://metacpan.org/release/CROMEDOME/Dancer2-Plugin-Minion-0.3.3> was released yesterday. At the core level, it is true that there is some stagnation. In addition to the pending PRs, the traffic on the list itself dropped considerably It is also true that the project reached a certain maturity and the need for new functionalities decreased (many are expected to come from the plugins and not from the core). Personally, I continue to use Dancer intensively and I am very satisfied. I hope the Core developers will raise their hands if they feel they can't spend enough time on the project. It's definitely not an easy year Thanks, Peco El lun, 21 dic 2020 a las 11:43, Russell Jenkins (< russell.jenkins@strategicdata.com.au>) escribió:

While I have no immediate answers, everyone is aware that the last 9+ months, and possibly the year ahead are somewhat unprecedented.

Personally, in 2020 I've had a significant transition in working conditions plus supporting schooling children from home for a decent chunk of the year, yet I consider myself one of the lucky ones. As a core developer the amount of time I could contribute has been severely impacted. I've contributed where I can, checked in on, poked and prodded other core devs where I thought needed.

While I'll gracelessly accept the (virtual) golden dancer award (thanks @cromedome!), I'll happy to acknowledge there is more to be done. But this is not the time to jump to conclusions that Dancer2 development is stalled, perl is dead, or whatever phrase is the flavor for today. It's always been said that issues and pull requests are always welcome. The core team will get to them as time allows. Recent PR's have been approved by two core devs ready for merge. If something has stalled, a gentle prod or bump can go a long way too.

Advent driven development is also a thing, expect the reported numbers to change soon. I'd better go write up my advent article...

All the best for the silly season.

Russell @veryrusty Jenkins.

ps. The definite list of keywords is in Dancer2::Core::DSL.

On 21/12/20 5:14 pm, Gabor Szabo wrote:

Hi,

as I am working on the Perl Dancer video course I need to look up lots of things in the documentation on https://metacpan.org/release/Dancer2 and many times I feel either that it is difficult to find what I was looking for

For example looking for the full list of words in the DSL: I clicked on both links saying DSL, neither of them had the list, nor a link to the manual where I findall found it:

https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/Dancer2/lib/Dancer2/Manual.pod#DSL-KEY...

Another thing I was looking for is the list of types one can use out of the box to describe the routes. I could not find it.

-------------------------------------

It is frustrating, but this is open source, I can help improve it, right?

I thought I'll open a ticket, maybe even send a pull-request.

Looked at https://github.com/PerlDancer/Dancer2/

and this made me even more frustrated. There are 110 open issues and 32 open pull-request. That's 32 things some people have worked on and have not been integrated.

(If you like, you can compare the numbers with Mojolicious https://github.com/mojolicious/mojo 47 3 Flask https://github.com/pallets/flask 18 4

You can also look at the commit history and you see there was hardly any activity recently.

I keep recording the course, but I feel reluctant to open issues or work on pull-request because I don't want to waste my time on something where the chances of integration seem to be so low.

-------------------------------------------

Why has the development slowed down? How could it be fixed? Have the core developers (almost completely) lost interest? Do they lack the time? Could companies that use Dancer help financially? Could new people step up to become core developers?

regards Gabor

_______________________________________________ dancer-users mailing listdancer-users@lists.preshweb.co.ukhttps://lists.preshweb.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/dancer-users

_______________________________________________ dancer-users mailing list dancer-users@lists.preshweb.co.uk https://lists.preshweb.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/dancer-users

Confidential

-----Original Message----- From: dancer-users <dancer-users-bounces@lists.preshweb.co.uk> On Behalf Of Yanick Champoux Sent: 21 December 2020 17:50 To: Perl Dancer users mailing list <dancer-users@lists.preshweb.co.uk> Subject: Re: [dancer-users] Development of Dancer stalling? What to do?

I am not actively working on Dancer these days, but I feel the need to raise my hand and just point out that

1. yes, it's been a heck of a crazy year. As far as I can say, anybody who managed to spend any meaningful period of time since March doing anything but rocking back and forth under a running shower are bloody heroes with more fortitude than I have.

2. every time the 'why the project isn't more active?' discussion comes around, I want to point out that all of the people working on Dancer (as far as I know) are doing it in their spare time. I know that often the question is not born out of malice, but for the people working on the project, it comes out as "oh, you're giving out stuff for free. But how come you're not giving more?"

As I said, very often it's asked with the best intents. But it is soul-crushing. If I can recommend anything, in those scenarios I think it's more constructive to

1. explicitly thank the maintainers for the work they are already doing / have done in the past. You'd be surprised how often projects are met with long, looooooong stretches of absolute silence, only interspersed with occasionals "that's broken, fix it!".

2. is it a project your company rely on to make money? Then have them contribute.

3. thank the maintainers, for they are the little fairies making your lives easier.

4. if you are a developer who want to see something happens in the project, roll up your sleeves and pitch in. Sometimes it's... not possible because the bottleneck exists somewhere else. In those cases? :look right: ... :look left: :whisper: fork the project and go wild.

5. don't forget to thank the maintainers, if for no reason that there is a chance that the next time they roll their eyes to the sky and shout "why do I even bother?" to the heavens, this is the memory that will stop them from giving up and running to the desert to become hermits.

*ahem* Soapbox speech ending. We can now resume our regular program.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot:

A big thanks to all the Dancer crew. I miss working on the project, and I miss you peeps. <3

Seasonal joy, `/anick

Well as someone pointed out, Dancer is a lightweight core and is actually (for our purposes) very mature and stable. We have always found a way to do things, and find the light weight nature of Dancer is a benefit in terms of on boarding new team members and keeping the code clean and easy to understand. So for my part anyway - thank you to all who have helped! Z

Hear, hear, Sawyer! The company I work for has a lot of interest in Dancer2, since we use it in *every* app we build for our customers. I created a plugin this year, and am working on a couple of personal projects using it, as well. I even let Cromedome talk me into writing Advent articles for the first time. I just finally got around to joining the list; partly because a few of my favorite people are on this list, including you, and partly to give myself the opportunity and permission to do more with this great community. I'd need to check, but given our heavy usage of Dancer2, I suspect that my bosses would let me give back to this great framework and community on a one-day Zoom hackathon, if we plan it a bit ahead of time! D Ruth Holloway GeekRuthie On Mon, Dec 21, 2020, at 12:17, Sawyer X wrote:

The set of accumulating tickets might warrant a fun hacking sprint. I would love to host a day-long one over Zoom with breaks for talks. Dancer2 had always been the most lovely community (or sub-community?) I've had the pleasure to be in.

Confidential

...

The goal of my mail was, as I tried to include that in the last part of the message, to try to figure out what could be done to improve the situation: - accept or close the PR - fix or close the issues

I can even imagine that there are companies out there - e.g. the employers of those on this list - that might be ready to finance some work around Dancer. There might be some core maintainers who would be ready to accept payment for some extra work on Dancer (or lets say Dancer* meaning also all the plugins).

As a user of Dancer in a system that makes us money, I am sure I can convince our company to subscribe to a "maintenance plan" of sorts. There is nothing specific I need from dancer, but security fixes, compatibility with perl/package updates will be crucial for us. And if that means end users have a way of contributing to a maintenance fund, I would support that... Z

Do I understand correctly you are talking about an in-person meeting? A virtual Hackathon or virtual sessions of pair or mob programming could be organized much sooner. Those would be also much cheaper and would need a lot less investment from your personal time than an in-person hackathon. Gabor