Emacs Carnival: Praise the patchers
*This month's Emacs Carnival theme is Maintenance.
I've always had an affinity with maintenance. Call me strange, but I long remember getting excited about checking for updates in Linux and seeing the resulting list of packages with changes - marvelling that someone, somewhere, has taken the time to improve this thing and keep it going and then share that with the world. Beyond the the digital realm, I like the repair of physical things. (I work for an organisation that promotes community repair and the right to repair).
And, as an even broader concept, maintenance can encompass caring for others and the planet as a whole.
1. Software maintenance
Back when I built software, I remember once reading that most people wanted to work on greenfield projects - to create something new. But I always enjoyed the brownfield projects. Keeping things running that are already created - maybe making them better, maybe just restoring them to the state they were in before.
Changelogs are great documents. The maintainer's logbook.
2. Emacs maintenance
There's a lot of maintenance in the Emacs world. Core Emacs itself has been maintained for 50 years. Compared to the built environment, 50 years might not seem that long - but in the software world it's ancient.
The community around Emacs maintains thousands of contributed packages. Individuals and communities package all these packages together into full blown distributions of Emacs. I use both Spacemacs and Doom - the former on my laptop, the latter on my phone.
With all this activity, it seems fair to surmise that Emacs will be maintained for a long time to come.
For my own small part of Emacs-related maintanence, I maintain my own personal configurations - My Spacemacs User Config and My Doom Emacs config.
3. Care and repair
Caring for the planet also means caring for the material foundations of digital technology: our hardware. Every chip and component is made from Earth’s finite resources, and once discarded, becomes part of the growing e-waste crisis. By acknowledging that these devices are not self-sustaining, we underscore the importance of extending their lifespan through intentional maintenance and thoughtful use.
- permacomputing principles
4. Creation vs maintenance
"In the beginning, god created the heavens and the earth". Nice work, but maintenance of them has proven to be a longer-term project.
Maintenance and repair, the building of infrastructures, the mundane labour that goes into sustaining functioning and efficient infrastructures, simply has more impact on people’s daily lives than the vast majority of technological innovations.
At a macro level, constant creation is problematic. We need to invest more time in the maintenance of those things that already exist. In the digital realm, movements like permacomputing are pushing this. With its long lifespan, it's freedoms and its conviviality, Emacs feels like it could be a key part of this.
5. Elsewhere
5.1. In my garden
Notes that link to this note (AKA backlinks).