Emacs blog carnival: Maintenance
*This month's Emacs blog carnival theme is maintenance.
I've always had something of an affinity with digital maintenance.
Always had a bit of excitement doing a software update in Linux or F-Droid, seeing which packages have had changes. Marvelling that someone, somewhere, has taken the time to improve this thing. Changelogs are fascinating.
1. Creation vs maintenance
The act of creation is perhaps harder? More intensive. But the act of maintenance runs for much longer.
The stream is mainly creation, the garden is mainly maintenance.
When does creation end and maintenance begin?
2. Software maintenance
In software, I remember reading that most people wanted the greenfield projects - the chance to create something new. But I always enjoyed the brownfield projects. Keeping things running that are already working. Maybe making them better, maybe just getting them back to how they were working before.
3. Emacs maintenance
Emacs itself has been maintained for over 50 years. That seems like a fair indicator that it will keep going for another fifty.
The community around Emacs maintains hundreds of packages.
Communities maintain distributions of Emacs. I use both Spacemacs and Doom.
I maintain my own personal configuration at My Spacemacs User Config.
4. Politics of maintenance
Constant creation is problematic Maintenance is a much longer project than creation
5. Care
Care is a type of maintenance, and maintenance is a type of care.
Parenting.
Hail the maintainers is a great article.
6. Elsewhere
6.1. In my garden
Notes that link to this note (AKA backlinks).