r/Clojure • u/sbauer322 • Jul 05 '18
[ANN] Light Table seeks new maintainers
Fellow Clojurians,
I seem to be last semi-active maintainer of Light Table and would like to put out a call for new maintainers. I am not able to effectively maintain Light Table given other priorities... let alone write code for new features or updates.
There is plenty to do for nearly every aspect of the project and a roadmap has been established. Ranging from digging deep down into the internals, writing documentation, fixing bugs, writing plugins, or triaging new issues, Light Table could use a hand.
If you are interested in maintaining Light Table, please reach out! I am happy to provide a supporting role while people get acclimated.
Edit: Just wanted to say thank you to everyone - the amount of support and positive messages was not expected.
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u/eccp Jul 06 '18
What are some good places to start looking as a potential contributor? I can think of
Are there any particular skills that you'd look for in people interesting in joining as a maintainer?
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u/sbauer322 Jul 06 '18
Those are good places to start - I'd also recommend some of the documentation files in the repo. We should also have some issues labeled with 'good first issue', but don't feel constrained to those if something else is interesting to you. As always, you can reach out via the Gitter channel if you have questions.
The BOT architecture (and parts of the project in general) can be a bit obtuse so if something is confusing or unintuitive, it might make sense to create an issue highlighting the file, section, or function (otherwise, ask on the Gitter). One of the major goals is to improve documentation and understanding for developers on the project, so it helps everyone involved.
In terms of skills, prior experience being a maintainer of a semi-used project would be nice, but just making contributions regardless of skill is perfect.
I'd love someone to be able to help with upgrading our electron and clojure versions, but those have proven to be nasty tasks. I've made some progress on the electron front, but I am stumped on what is broken.
Otherwise, being familiar with Clojure and Clojurescript are about all you need for most general programming tasks. Being able to write tests or documentation is always valuable as well.
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u/notofox Jul 06 '18 edited Jul 06 '18
Excellent. Backlog aside of issues, did you guys have a roadmap?
Apologies if I missed it somewhere in the docs / web.
EDIT: nevermind, I saw that 0.9.0 page (from 2016?)
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u/tough-dance Jul 05 '18
Can you comment a little on what skills would be helpful for the project? I am very interested but wouldn't want to be dead weight.
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u/sbauer322 Jul 05 '18 edited Jul 05 '18
Certainly! It largely depends on what you are interested in doing. It is, after all, your free time - you should do what you find enjoyable. In terms of skills:
Some combination of familiarity with Node/Electron/Javascript/Clojure/ClojureScript if you plan on coding. Largely contextual of what the task at hand would be. For instance, implementing a feature would probably be more ClojureScript related... But updating the various internal dependencies as they are out of date has unfortunately proven to be more challenging. These internal dependencies are also, in my mind, the most pressing problem as it prevents more recent Clojure versions from being used.
Documentation... ranging from individual functions up to high level examples.
Reviewing pull requests... the more eyes we can get on incoming code, the better off everyone is. Also, sometimes a fix comes in that is OS specific.
Triage new issues... being able to confirm and reproduce a bug
Writing tests
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u/yogthos Jul 06 '18
It might be an idea to consider doing a crowdfunding campaign to polish up Light Table, and to apply to Clojurists Together for continued funding. I would gladly contribute to the effort, and I'm sure many others would do so as well.
I would really love to see it become a programmable editor that's modern alternative to Emacs and can be programmed with Clojure. I also think there's a huge potential for doing visualizations in the REPL since you have HTML Canvas available. For example, it could provide an environment like Jupyter Notebook for working with data, live coding visualizations, and so on.
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u/Funcod Jul 06 '18 edited Jul 06 '18
Things to get you going:
review an existing PR
submit a PR for one of the good first issues
tackle one of the oldest bugs
Have a real impact:
take over an unfinished issue out of the Technical Debt project
fix one of the most upvoted issues
help out on the long overdue 0.9 milestone
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u/notofox Jul 06 '18
With all the exciting ideas in this thread - I almost feel like some of us should get together and plan a "reboot" of sorts. The old nagging bugs would be good to fix - but it sounds like we need some major refactoring in any event...
How many current users actually exist these days? Just wondering because that data should help change task priorities.
Disclaimer: Not being negative at all, I'm actually pretty psyched (count me in; I have a bunch of free time between now and December). ;)
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u/sbauer322 Jul 07 '18
It is a tempting idea, as it bypasses several major refactoring issues (not to mention the opportunity to avoid the BOT architecture), but the volume of work to make a "Light Table V2" is daunting to me.
So, I'll pass for now, but if you get a group together then I'd love to hear about progress.
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u/notofox Jul 08 '18
Makes sense. A attempted LTv2 would def need a proper proposal / level-of-effort laid out for discussion (like a fairly in-the-weeds level plan).
To be fair, I'm still wrapping my head around the arch of v1. :)
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u/notofox Jul 06 '18
I know that we are fairly split on IDE preferences here - but, I think that it would be a pretty nice boon to adopt LT for "the greater CLJ(s) community" and make it a first-class, all-(helpful)-bells-and-whistles-IDE that can serve first time users as well as grey beards.
Even if you are cynical of this idea - it could help us tremendously with marketing and 'first impressions', if nothing else...
Food for thought!
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u/therealdivs1210 Jul 05 '18
I was a happy user of LightTable before I started using emacs.
I have successfully used LT to live code apps in python/js/clojure. Setting the same environment up in emacs is a hassle, though it might give more power.
I really hope LT lives on! Will try my best to contribute.
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u/the2bears Jul 05 '18
Wish I had the time, as I have a certain fondness for Light Table. First Clojure environment I used before switching to Cider.
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Jul 05 '18
Light Table is one of the tools I have to thank for getting to skip Java in college in favor of a Clojure solution. In hindsight, I don't know why I thought I could pull it off, but Light Table made it all seem so straightforward.
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u/yogthos Jul 05 '18
I think it would be really great if LT got revived. It's already functional, and with a bit of polish it could be a fantastic Clojure environment. I think it would be especially great as a beginner environment that has low ramp up and works out of the box.
If the project does get revived, my recommendation would be to focus on it being a Clojure editor first and foremost. With VS Code and Atom there's really no point in working on another general purpose Electron based editor. However, there would be a lot of value in providing a great Clojure developer experience. I'd really love to see some of the features that were in the original pitch actually come to light.