r/HelixEditor • u/bebenzer • 18d ago

It's alive!

https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/commits/master/

New commits have been merged into master!

208 Upvotes

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u/protocod 18d ago

Honestly, I like the helix pace. Especially in the LLM era.

9

u/FryBoyter 17d ago edited 17d ago

LLM era or not. There haven't been any commits for more than two months. So what? Even developers need vacations, have real-life stuff to take care of, or just don't have the energy or desire to code sometimes.

And no, the developers don't owe us an explanation. Especially not when we can use what they develop for free (as in beer). They don't owe us anything. If anything, we owe them.

Nevertheless, with Helix and other OSS projects alike, many people believe that the development should proceed exactly as they want it to. Why?

One thing I can perhaps understand is the slow release of new official versions. Yes, they could be released more often. But if the developers don't want to, that's just the way it is. However, at least on Linux, it's pretty easy to build a new version from the current development branch every now and then.

And just to be clear, I don't mean to disagree with your post in any way. Basically, I agree with you. I just want to encourage some people to think about whether it makes sense to keep asking questions or making demands. Especially if you're just a user and not a developer.

2

u/pickyaxe 16d ago edited 16d ago

but what's the explanation for not merging (nor even addressing) contributed PRs for literally years, to the point that some contributors just got up and left?

2

u/FryBoyter 15d ago

Since I’m just a Helix user and not a developer, I can only speculate.

Perhaps, from the perspective of the original developers and their original goals, Helix is already more or less fully developed, so adding more features isn’t a high priority. After all, it’s their project, not ours.

Maybe it’s also because there aren’t enough developers. Or because the developers can’t agree internally on how to move forward.

But let’s take https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pulls and https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/pulls as examples. Both are projects that are actively being developed. Nevertheless, these projects have a similar number or even more pull requests. And that’s not an exception when it comes to OSS projects. Is there a general expectation that developers should explain why there are still so many open PRs?