Project status?

[Brandon Wilson]

Is this project still alive? I haven't heard any updates for a very long time.

[Craig Muth]

Very much alive. I've got a major new release on the way, with some
ground-breaking new collaboration features that'll take Xiki into
whole new territory. I've been flying a little under the radar while
getting this out there, but I've been working on Xiki full time (60
hour weeks) since the Kickstarter in 2014.

After I get it out there I'll be reaching out to people to remote (or
local) pair with me to try it out, and to help getting people started
making and sharing their own notes and commands.

--Craig

On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 4:04 PM, Brandon Wilson <bwi...@me.com> wrote:
> Is this project still alive? I haven't heard any updates for a very long time.
>

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[Kurt]

Is there an ETA for the new release?

[Jonathan Hogue]

I've quit jobs for less :-)

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Thanks,

Jon Hogue
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(740) 474-9170

[Brandon Wilson]

I think it's getting safe to say this project is all but dead. Shame as this really held a ton of potential. It really should have been open sourced.

[Craig Muth]

> all but dead.

Dead by no means. As I've mentioned in previous emails, I've been
working on it full time ever since the Kickstarter campaign in 2014.

> Shame as this really held a ton of potential.

I've had a pretty decent version of Xiki out there on github for many
months, that runs in a shell terminal. There's a one-line installer
for it on http://xiki.org. I encourage you to install it and try it
out.

> It really should have been open sourced.

It is open sourced.

I'm hard at work on a huge enhancement to the open source Xsh client,
as well as a central repository for notes and commands people create
(sort of a github+google for Xiki).

You'll be hearing a lot about Xiki in the coming months. I'll have an
alpha version of the repository out there within the next few months.

--Craig

[Martin Bähr]

Excerpts from Craig Muth's message of 2016-04-01 19:23:20 +0200:

> > It really should have been open sourced.
> It is open sourced.
> I'm hard at work on a huge enhancement to the open source Xsh client,
> as well as a central repository for notes and commands people create
> (sort of a github+google for Xiki).
>
> You'll be hearing a lot about Xiki in the coming months. I'll have an
> alpha version of the repository out there within the next few months.

that may be the problem right there.
i believe in general people are used to seeing the development happening in
public.

"release early and often"

a project that does not see any code changes for months is easily
mistaken for dead.

it's all perception of course.
but perception is a good part of what drives adoption.

when evaluating any kind of project for my own use, the public development
activity is one of the things i take into consideration. generally that is more
important when comparing multiple similar projects, where i'd choose the more
active one (everything else being equal), while for something unique like xiki
it doesn't make a big difference, but it can be a factor.

not having development public also makes it harder to contribute, because i
can't see what you have in your private repo.

to summarize, it would be nice if you could sync your private repo more often
(say at least weekly) even if it is just a development branch with a large
warning. but we'd like to see what you are working on.

greetings, martin.

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[Kurt]

Agreed! Craig, would you be willing to push your incremental work in progress? Might get more people to chip in and help with pieces.

I know I would. 

(and, conversely, knowing there is a huge change coming is a disincentive to provide pull requests now because you figure that they might just be irrelevant).

Looking forward to whatever is coming.

- kurt

[Chuck Hoffman]

I'm with Kurt, I've been considering trying to contribute for a while

--

[Matt Pass]

Agreed on all of this too. Xiki has huge potential but not knowing what's happening and a silent Google Groups channel made me think it was dead too.

[Chuck Hoffman]

I knew it wasn't dead, there was some talk about what's coming up next just a couple weeks ago, month and a half at the most. Sounded exciting.

On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 1:13 PM 'Matt Pass' via Xiki <xi...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Agreed on all of this too. Xiki has huge potential but not knowing what's happening and a silent Google Groups channel made me think it was dead too.

--

[Craig Muth]

Thanks for the feedback guys. Unfortunately things aren't in a state
to push. I haven't even been committing to my local repository. With
all of the experimental stuff I'm doing it would be more trouble than
it's worth to have to sync with a repo. (Side note, I am backing up
the code to a safe place though).

> knowing there is a huge change coming is a disincentive to provide pull requests now because you figure that they might just be irrelevant

Yes, very valid point. Sadly this is mostly unavoidable at this point,
since I'm changing so much it's hard for even me to keep track of, let
alone another person who doesn't have all of the context that I do.

Having said all that...

I'm finally going to get something out there soon (the repository,
which I'm calling "xikihub") that will let people contribute in a
major way, and help us all collaborate together. It will let people
contribute by sharing the notes, commands, and actions that they
create in Xiki. You'll be able to search (kind of like a search engine
that runs right from bash/zsh) and pick and choose the best parts of
other users' interfaces to make your own interface for commands. This
will generally be much more interesting/appealing than modifying the
Xiki source.

> I've been considering trying to contribute for a while

I'm really looking forward to collaborating with people again and
getting your insights and contributions. It's been a long time since
I've done Xiki pairing sessions and I miss them a lot. I'll be
reaching out on the mailing list after I get the next Xsh / Xikihub
out there.

--Craig

[K Rhodes]

On Friday, April 1, 2016 at 2:19:04 PM UTC-4, Craig wrote:

Thanks for the feedback guys. Unfortunately things aren't in a state
to push. I haven't even been committing to my local repository. With
all of the experimental stuff I'm doing it would be more trouble than
it's worth to have to sync with a repo. 

Please consider speaking with someone who really understands git, its branching model, and how stashes work. There are NO circumstances where incremental backups up to a "safe place" is a better option than using git appropriately. 

If you are able to articulate your use case and why you believe version control is a hinderance rather than a help, I will happily pair with you to show you how to use git in a way that will help you to perform your experiments in a safer and probably faster manner.  Hit me up on twitter @masukomi and we'll arrange a time to get you sorted. It's highly probably that the result will be a codebase that people can help with even while you do radical experiments. 

[Chaz Straney]

I concur with the previous messages about how the lack of incremental development out in the open has been the largest 'pain point' for those of us who've either backed the KS or just general users/fans of Xiki. 

While I can absolutely understand the perspective of a creator who wants to grow their project without having to spend time deflecting others' ideas for features/refactors which don't necessarily align with the creator's intent, the damage to done to Xiki's potential by not using a more "conventional" OSS development model in this regard cannot be underestimated. I firmly believe that it is possible to run popular OSS projects without diluting your vision, if you are able to set up good procedures and ground rules for how you balance your vision with the needs, wants and feedback of the community. 

As a certifiable xiki fanboy, KS backer and fan of both emacs and ruby I would second Rhodes' statement - its a safe bet that the benefits to your workflow as well as to Xiki's profile would be significant. I'd also be happy to pair with you on operationalizing a git workflow as well, if you'd like - I still haven't redeemed my KS command pairing session, after all ;P

As a final tidbit for your consideration, Craig - perhaps looking at how some other ambitious projects handle this sort of thing would be helpful - For example, see taskwarrior's docs (specifically the sections on Philosophy and Developers) and ZeroMQ's C4 procedures, which are a fantastic detailed set of suggestions for how to structure collaborative software projects.

Thanks for the discussion,

Chaz

--

[Steve Baker]

Yep - "Commit early, commit often"...and..."Many eyes make bugs shallow".

Even if you have to make a side-branch for unstable work - even if the side-branch doesn't even compile - it's by far the best way to do development.

Keep one or more "stable" branches for things you think end-users should download - but keeping bleeding edge code hidden is a bad idea.

  -- Steve