Emacs Carnival: Maintenance

This month's [[Emacs Carnival]] theme is Maintenance.

I've always had an affinity with maintenance. From the digital realm, to the repair of physical things, to care for people and then right at the top, the maintenance and sustainability of the planet.

Call me strange, but I long remember getting excited about seeing software updates in Linux or F-Droid, seeing which packages have had changes. Marvelling that someone, somewhere, has taken the time to improve this thing and keep it going. Changelogs are great documents. The maintainer's logbook.

What is maintenance?

Maintenance and repair, the building of infrastructures, the mundane labour that goes into sustaining functioning and efficient infrastructures, si mply has more impact on people’s daily lives than the vast majority of technological innovations.

– [[Hail the maintainers]]

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.

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]].

Politics of maintenance

Constant creation is problematic Maintenance is a much longer project than creation

[[Permacomputing]]. [[sustainability]]. [[Environmentalism]]. [[Degrowth]].

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?

Care

[[Care]] is a type of maintenance, and maintenance is a type of care.

Parenting.

[[Hail the maintainers]] is a great article.