Is MochiKit Dead?

[machineghost]

So, given that:

* There hasn't been a blog post on the website in ... ever (according
to the front of the site; in reality there was a post back in 2008)
* There hasn't been a release since 2008
* This mailing list gets a post (with no response) once every other
month or so, if that
* MochiKit is less popular than random frameworks I've never heard of
(xajax? what's that?) by a factor of six (http://www.readwriteweb.com/
hack/2011/08/javascript-framework-popularit.php)

it really seems like MochiKit is a dead project, or at best a zombie
project. Is that accurate? I mean, obviously people currently using
it aren't going to stop, but is new development, promotion of the
framework, improvement of the website/docs/etc. dead?

[Bob Ippolito]

Zombie sounds about accurate to me, we still use it but it's done what
we've needed it to do for quite a few years so we haven't bothered to
make any changes to it. We don't have a lot of incentive to encourage
other people to use it, especially at this point. If someone is
interested in making improvements they're more than welcome to do so,
it's all pretty much github based these days so accepting pull
requests, adding contributors and updating the site is very easy.

-bob

[Per Cederberg]

Agreed. Nowadays I'm also in maintenance-only-mode with respect to
MochiKit. Meaning that I'll only address critical bugs or merge
well-documented & tested patches. The MochiKit.Text module and version
1.5 won't progress further unless someone else steps up to do the
work.

That said, I'm still using MochiKit where it makes sense. Preferably
in conjunction with jQuery. Would be nice to eventually package up
MochiKit into separate pieces that glue better into jQuery in some
ways. But the custom packaging solution we have right now also allows
to strip out some obvious duplicated stuff...

Cheers,

/Per

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MochiKit" group.
> To post to this group, send email to moch...@googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to mochikit+u...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mochikit?hl=en.
>
>

[Bob Ippolito]

I agree, if I had a good reason I would split MochiKit up into smaller
components that built on top of jQuery and perhaps backbone and/or
underscore. I only have direct experience with jQuery but I've heard
good things from smart people about backbone and underscore. jQuery is
a fine library for DOM stuff but it really just doesn't do much of the
more interesting stuff that MochiKit has done for years.

[Chris Snyder]

Not Dead: Feature Complete.

Since this issue comes up every year or so, I think there should be a
simple explanation on the website homepage, something like:

MochiKit is considered "feature complete" at version 1.4, and is
therefore not in active development. It simply does what we have

needed it to do for quite a few years so we haven't bothered to make

any major changes to it. Contributions and improvements are welcome
via GitHub.

[Bob Ippolito]

Good idea. Done!

[Fredrik Blomqvist]

I've had similar thoughts. jQuery is "king of the DOM" nowadays, no
need/use to compete with overlapping low-level features there. I think
the Python heritage should continue to be embraced though. When
looking at underscore lib I kindof like it but that's mostly because
lots of it already exists in MK ;) Looks like MK.Base + Iter interface
(but without actual iterator code).

I added couple of draft libraries to my MochiKit fork last year.
https://github.com/blq/mochikit - http://blq.github.com/mochikit/doc/html/MochiKit/index.html

To keep things moving perhaps parts of these could be added?
Improved binding etc
http://blq.github.com/mochikit/doc/html/MochiKit/Base-ext.html
Resembles "rest of" the Python itertools module:
http://blq.github.com/mochikit/doc/html/MochiKit/Iter-ext.html
Resembles the Python Bisect module
http://blq.github.com/mochikit/doc/html/MochiKit/Bisect.html
Resembles the Python HeapQ module
http://blq.github.com/mochikit/doc/html/MochiKit/HeapQ.html
http://blq.github.com/mochikit/doc/html/MochiKit/Random.html
... (see the changelog)
Code annotation and build scripts to integrate with Google Closure
compiler is also added.

Feedback welcome!
Regards
// Fredrik Blomqvist

On Aug 15, 5:56 am, Bob Ippolito <b...@redivi.com> wrote:
> I agree, if I had a good reason I would split MochiKit up into smaller
> components that built on top of jQuery and perhaps backbone and/or
> underscore. I only have direct experience with jQuery but I've heard
> good things from smart people about backbone and underscore. jQuery is
> a fine library for DOM stuff but it really just doesn't do much of the
> more interesting stuff that MochiKit has done for years.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 11:27 AM, Per Cederberg <p...@percederberg.net> wrote:
> > Agreed. Nowadays I'm also in maintenance-only-mode with respect to
> > MochiKit. Meaning that I'll only address critical bugs or merge
> > well-documented & tested patches. The MochiKit.Text module and version
> > 1.5 won't progress further unless someone else steps up to do the
> > work.
>
> > That said, I'm still using MochiKit where it makes sense. Preferably
> > in conjunction with jQuery. Would be nice to eventually package up
> > MochiKit into separate pieces that glue better into jQuery in some
> > ways. But the custom packaging solution we have right now also allows
> > to strip out some obvious duplicated stuff...
>
> > Cheers,
>
> > /Per
>
> > On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 20:45, Bob Ippolito <b...@redivi.com> wrote:

> >> For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/mochikit?hl=en.

[Bob Ippolito]

Sure, if you'd like to roll these upstream and make a new release of
MochiKit out of it I think that's a fine idea. It looks like you've
already got access to the MochiKit team, so go for it whenever you're
ready.

[Fredrik Blomqvist]

Ok. I'll see what I can do.
Most of it are obviously pure additions and should be fairly easy to
add. But for example the changes to bind to support placeholder
arguments and introducing value propagation in the Deferreds might
require some more discussion. Happy to get some comments here.

I'll see if I can create an initial draft and get back.
See you at github :)
// Fredrik Blomqvist

On Aug 17, 5:34 pm, Bob Ippolito <b...@redivi.com> wrote:
> Sure, if you'd like to roll these upstream and make a new release of
> MochiKit out of it I think that's a fine idea. It looks like you've
> already got access to the MochiKit team, so go for it whenever you're
> ready.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 6:17 AM, Fredrik Blomqvist <fblomqv...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I've had similar thoughts. jQuery is "king of the DOM" nowadays, no
> > need/use to compete with overlapping low-level features there. I think
> > the Python heritage should continue to be embraced though. When
> > looking at underscore lib I kindof like it but that's mostly because
> > lots of it already exists in MK ;) Looks like MK.Base + Iter interface
> > (but without actual iterator code).
>
> > I added couple of draft libraries to my MochiKit fork last year.

> >https://github.com/blq/mochikit-http://blq.github.com/mochikit/doc/html/MochiKit/index.html