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+#+title: IS CARBS DEAD? (Or February 2024 News Post)
+#+author: Cem Keylan
+#+date: <2024-02-22 Thu>
+
+Every once in a while (maybe like once a month) I check the IRC logs and see
+someone asking for help while I was not available. Unfortunately, the amount of
+outdated packages are rising, 125 at the time of writing this post, which
+inadvertently causes issues for people trying to setup or maintain Carbs
+installations.
+
+I have just recently seen two messages that were posted on the IRC channel a
+couple of days ago asking if Carbs was still maintained so I decided to make a
+post addressing the state in hand.
+
+#+TOC: headlines 3 local
+
+** Is Carbs Dead?
+
+I am fully aware that I haven't been doing a proper job as the maintainer for
+the last couple of months so I can really see where the question is coming from.
+Carbs is not dead, but it would be quite valid to say that it is in a comatose
+state. I have been spending these last months focusing mainly on my university,
+and doing that, I even missed the 4th anniversary of Carbs, and forgot to make a
+post as I usually had done.
+
+However, Carbs is a project that is very dear to my heart, and I still use it
+personally as my daily system, so I have no intention on killing it any time soon.
+Still, there is good need for better communication on how my maintenance of the
+distribution will be moving forward.
+
+** Future of the Distribution
+
+I am still working hard on my tasks as a university student. This means that I
+can only work on the distribution periodically. Luckily, Carbs is a very
+self-sustainable project and it can be easily updated without the need of a
+maintainer. However, leaving a distribution unmaintained is rarely healthy for
+an open-source project, so let's talk about my views on each component that
+makes Carbs a functioning Linux distribution:
+
+*** CPT
+
+Apart from the occasional bug fix, performance improvements, and documentation,
+I don't think CPT needs active maintenance, and I consider it to be feature
+complete. I haven't made any release over a year, and it's likely that I won't
+be adding any new features any time soon.
+
+*** Package Repository
+
+This is in general the tricky part. A user can update packages on their own
+without the requirement of a maintainer. The Carbs Linux repository is part of
+[[https://repology.org][Repology]], a hub that monitors a very large number of repositories to provide
+packaging information. Since tracking hundreds of software packages for updates,
+and issues is near impossible for a person alone without a unified interface, I
+use Repology API to [[https://repology.org/projects/?inrepo=carbs&outdated=1][follow outdated packages on our repository]]. Any user on the
+event that I leave the distribution unmaintained, can go to Repology and look
+for more information on outdated packages to update their own.
+
+I have also written some tools that help me follow these information on my
+terminal instead of requiring a browser, which I plan on releasing somewhat
+soon. Here are some screenshots, as a teaser:
+
+#+ATTR_HTML: :width 800
+#+ATTR_HTML: :alt title
+#+ATTR_HTML: :title Image Title
+[[file:/img/repology-tui-1.png]]
+
+#+ATTR_HTML: :width 800
+#+ATTR_HTML: :alt title
+#+ATTR_HTML: :title Image Title
+[[file:/img/repology-tui-2.png]]
+
+This leads to what I believe is the most important part of this post.
+
+*** Maintainership
+
+I am planning on delegating maintainership for certain parts of the repository.
+This will start with me orphaning some packages found in the community
+repository and leaving them for adoption. Packages orphaned for more than a 3
+month period will be dropped from the repositories. The dropped packages will be
+moved to a graveyard repository where someone wanting the package can request to
+maintain it.
+
+Once the repository back to its usual state, I will also start looking for a
+second maintainer to help me with overall repository management. If this sounds
+interesting to you please do reach out to me from my maintainer email (or on
+Mastodon [[https://mas.to/@cem][@cem@mas.to]])!
+
+See you on the next post!