
Emacs-Helm development is now stalled - maximilianroos
https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/issues/2386
======
submeta
The Emacs package `Helm' is/was maintained by one guy alone named Thierry
Volpiatto who is not even a developer. He is 57, and a mountain guide in the
Alps!

See this rare interview from 2018:
[https://sachachua.com/blog/2018/09/interview-with-thierry-
vo...](https://sachachua.com/blog/2018/09/interview-with-thierry-volpiatto/)

~~~
patrec
I find it pretty amazing that someone who's been working for 20 years as a
mountain guide and spends as much time as possible outdoors picks up an
obscure piece of niche software like Emacs, learns to program in his 40ies and
then becomes one of the most significant package contributors, all as a side
hobby to his outdoor interests.

~~~
mikorym
A lot of mathematicians are oddities that by some stroke of luck, or perhaps
by consistent switching of hobbies, somehow figure out that they understood
the basic premises of mathematics.

After all, the issue is that mathematics is _simple_. Humans don't like simple
things. And when humans think they have found simple things they start wars or
some novel iteration of discrimination against others.

~~~
jmnicolas
> Humans don't like simple things.

I like simple things, am I not human?

~~~
ccozan
The brain obscures a lot of complexities.

Just take any simple thing and start thinking of any aspect of it. That itself
is not simple!!

------
hardwaresofton
A follow up issue[0]:

> Thanks so much for everything! #2388

Nice to see a positive response from the emacs community.

Helm only seems to have 15 issues, maybe it really is that close to complete
for most people using it. I know I use helm and haven't thought twice about
it.

[0]: [https://github.com/emacs-
helm/helm/issues/2388](https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/issues/2388)

------
didibus
Interesting, no details into why. Anyhow, for those who might want a
replacement in case no one else picks up development for Helm, I highly
recommend the Ivy package as an alternative in Emacs. I've always preferred it
over Helm for being more minimal and speedier.

~~~
submeta
I higly depend on `helm-org-rifle' [1]. Lets me search trough all my org files
(headars and content) and presents the results beautifully in a temp buffer. -
Would be very sad if development of helm would stop.

And yes, ivy is an awesome package. Higly recommend it.

[1]: [https://github.com/alphapapa/org-
rifle](https://github.com/alphapapa/org-rifle)

~~~
githubalphapapa
I'm glad you find it useful.

1\. Helm is not going to stop working anytime soon. I haven't even upgraded
Helm in my configuration for a long time, and the version I have installed
still works fine.

2\. The latest version of Helm should continue working for even longer.

3\. It shouldn't require much effort to make the occasional fix to Helm for
compatibility with newer Emacs versions.

4\. It's likely that Helm will continue to be maintained by someone, if not
Thierry after some time away.

5\. org-rifle already has a non-Helm interface built-in.

6\. See also org-ql, which supersedes org-rifle to some extent.

------
fluffything
Damn. Helm is the most important emacs package I use. It's what makes emacs
"emacs" for me, and the main reason I find every other editor "from the past".

Is there a way to help Thierry financially?

~~~
guywhocodes
I love helm but I've in the past years found ivy to work better in the
ecosystem at large. I still miss some aspects of helm but it could be an
option

~~~
stjohnswarts
It's a bit lighter on resources as well. Although with modern processors and
memory sizes, helm really is nothing compared to some of the things that go on
in vscode :)

------
gauchojs
Moved from Emacs to ST then VSCode a few years ago, but still miss how that
community feels (the software, the people, the discussions, EmacsWiki...)

IIRC I used to move around mostly using ido.el, when anything.el and later
Helm appeared with their alternative way of displaying results, using half the
window.

But then at some point got sick of the text UI and moved to Sublime Text.
Probably multi-cursors made me move?

For a few years I remember opening Emacs exclusively for
[https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/grep-
edit.el](https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/grep-edit.el).

I feel like Emacs is full of those hidden gems that only a hundred people use.

~~~
throwaway_pdp09
Emacs has multi cursors
([https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=emacs%20multi%20cursors](https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=emacs%20multi%20cursors))
though I never saw them as useful, search & replace seemed better. Perhaps I
was missing something.

~~~
gpderetta
I use multicursor all the time and it works great. Probably because I never
got used macros.

~~~
throwaway_pdp09
I'd say spend the time to get used to macros and and regexes. Each is so
capable, together they are more than the their sum.

------
emmanueloga_
I've been using selectrum lately, it works ok, no bells and whistles... The
readme [1] has a [probably very biased] comparison of alternatives, including
helm.

1: [https://github.com/raxod502/selectrum#why-use-
selectrum](https://github.com/raxod502/selectrum#why-use-selectrum)

~~~
jeromenerf
Thanks for this link.

For some reason, neither helm, ivy or selectrum allows to open a candidate
buffer / file in either the current buffer, a vertical or horizontal split
window, like what I have grown an addiction for with fzf.vim.

As I have also grown an addiction to org mode, emacs ergonomics always feel
weird to me, even with evil mode.

Selectrum seems to explicitly exclude "alternate actions" :(

~~~
jorams
> For some reason, neither helm, ivy or selectrum allows to open a candidate
> buffer / file in either the current buffer, a vertical or horizontal split
> window, like what I have grown an addiction for with fzf.vim.

I use ivy and counsel, and both counsel-find-file and ivy-switch-buffer offer
the alternate action "other window" under M-o j. I'm not sure if that covers
your entire use-case, but it works fine for me.

~~~
jeromenerf
Thanks, I have found this "menu", but it felt awkward and limited to either
horizontal or vertical.

I have come to split first and search second.

It’s all about personal preferences.

~~~
githubalphapapa
Being Emacs, it's just a matter of customization. In your example, it would
probably be enough to apply advice to one of the Ivy functions to split the
window appropriately when a candidate is selected. A few lines of code.

~~~
jeromenerf
> being emacs ... customization ... a few lines of code

I see where you are heading and I am not following you in this rabbit hole ;)

I came to use emacs for org mode, when what I really wanted was to use org
mode in vim. We can’t have All the nice things, so it’s okay, I’ll live with
that. I actually found out I could use emacs as a "org mode beautifier" in
neoformat.vim; it is slow, but it can tangle the org file and output back to
vim. Good enough.

------
innagadadavida
For those unfamiliar with the alternatives, you can switch to ivy and counsel,
it's pretty lightweight and a nice alternative. Works well with Doom Emacs and
out of the box.

~~~
JacksonGariety
I switched from helm to ivy-counsel-swiper earlier this year and I haven't
looked back.

------
josteink
That’s too bad. Once I discovered helm, that was a complete game changer for
how I used Emacs.

Guess I’ll still hang on as a user, and see how it pans out over time.

------
kstrauser
That’s too bad. I personally didn’t use helm and found it a little strange
after being use to vanilla Emacs for many years, but I know a lot of people
liked it a lot. I wonder what happened there?

~~~
reddit_clone
Helm has a slight learning curve (more like un-learning curve). Need to forget
Tab completing/narrowing. (It is hard for long time Emacs users)

Just start typing snippets of what you want.

Once you get used to it, you want it everywhere.

FZF on zsh works the same way and is a pleasure to use for people with 10 of
thousands of items in shell history.

------
Cyphase
Nineteen minutes before opening the linked issue announcing that the
development had been stalled, he removed a chunk of text from the README:
[https://github.com/emacs-
helm/helm/commit/9a5258db9c7bb12698...](https://github.com/emacs-
helm/helm/commit/9a5258db9c7bb12698d8feb7b255006f134594e5)

Here's how it looked before that change: [https://github.com/emacs-
helm/helm/blob/23f32ec37dadea5656fb...](https://github.com/emacs-
helm/helm/blob/23f32ec37dadea5656fb73f49a487b8136952015/README.md)

Here's a representation of the text for those who don't want to click through:

> Maintaining Helm requires a [lot of work]([https://github.com/emacs-
> helm/helm/commits?author=thierryvol...](https://github.com/emacs-
> helm/helm/commits?author=thierryvolpiatto)), Thanks to all the people that
> are helping or have helped Helm development,

> but they are actually too few.

> If you feel Helm is making your daily work easier,

> please consider making a donation.

> Thank you! — Thierry Volpiatto

> [PayPal link image][Pateron link image]

The Patreon link doesn't seem to be working (the page is mostly blank, which
seems like a bit of a bug on Patreon's end if nothing else).

The PayPal link is still active.

\---

There was also this README change in May that removed some text:
[https://github.com/emacs-
helm/helm/commit/3be1389e3912d6580a...](https://github.com/emacs-
helm/helm/commit/3be1389e3912d6580aac9c5532e2fa8fee88527c)

Which looked like this prior to the change: [https://github.com/emacs-
helm/helm/blob/1fbb3a9f6da328519162...](https://github.com/emacs-
helm/helm/blob/1fbb3a9f6da3285191621263660f3b3a9791f806/README.md)

Compressed representation:

> Maintaining Helm requires a lot of work, which I have done voluntarily since
> 2011. As it demands lots of my time it gets increasingly difficult
> maintaining it without financial help. Thanks to all the people that are
> helping or have helped Helm development, but they are actually too few to
> continue serenely. By the way, after the release of version 3.0 I will have
> to stop developing Helm seriously until I get enough financial support, only
> providing a minimal bugfix maintenance. Thanks for your understanding

> If you feel Helm is making your daily work easier, please consider making a
> donation. Thank you! — Thierry Volpiatto

Development was also apparently stalled for a time in 2018-2019:
[https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/issues/2083](https://github.com/emacs-
helm/helm/issues/2083)

From my brief skimming, it seems like this has been coming on for a while,
which is a sad thought.

\---

One more thing that might be meaningless, but which I think indicates a level
of ongoing care about the project (which is not surprising given his past work
on it). The commit that most recently modified the README accidentally undid
the latest change he'd made, from two days before. He added another commit a
minute later to re-apply it. A small thing, but I figured I'd mention it.

~~~
foxdev
The state of the Patreon page is what it looks like when someone has an
ordinary patron account. In this case, it probably means the account was
reverted from a creator account to a patron account.

------
ComputerGuru
(neo)vim user here; is this like the myriad of ctrl-p vim plugins like fzf,
cpsm, etc? In the vim world the core functionality is often shelled out to a
task-specific process via a plugin, and the vim code is only used to
communicate with it. Is that not the case with emacs?

~~~
hashkb
It's more like fuzzy search for everything you could possibly do, with docs
and completion. I'm a vimmer, emacs people should correct me.

It's magic because everything is a single lisp environment. So the
client/server thing vim does isn't as unified.

~~~
AJRF
No that is right, emacs has two main contenders for "fuzzy search" \- ido-mode
and helm. They act as completion engines for all kinds of search; file, word,
buffer, commands etc.

Helm acts similar to Ctrl+P, ido is like an incremental search so finding a
file named BasketViewController.swift in path ~/Code/MyApp/;

In helm would be 'bvc', whereas in ido it would be c -> code (hit enter), m ->
MyApp (tab across if its not first result, enter) Bas ->
BasketViewController.swift

~~~
rthomas6
> emacs has two main contenders for "fuzzy search" \- ido-mode and helm.

Also Ivy.

------
mullikine
My one point of contention with helm is it's too controlling. There is no
built in function for enumerating the candidates list, if you happen to want
that. The current contents of the minibuffer (whatever you have typed or have
not typed) up until recently couldnt be used as as the selection. Now there is
a must-match parameter, but it can only be set upon invoking helm and not via
a key binding (if you wanted both behaviours). The parameter must-match also
doesn't solve the problem of selecting the empty string and selecting the
empty string breaks out of helm. I still use helm for when I want strict
control over the candidates, such as for running elisp functions with M-x.
Ivy, on the other hand, is a much simpler fuzzy-finder. It's more like fzf. I
use ivy as the default completing-read function.

------
zests
Helm is amazing in that you can add it to your workflow, read practically no
documentation and get a significant boost to productivity and user experience.
Its a must have for me.

------
vzaliva
I hope somebody will step up a new maintainer. Helm is very popular and part
of many people daily emacs workflow.

------
jeffrallen
Fork me!

------
notimetorelax
Could you please rename the title to state that it’s Emacs-Helm search
extension? Otherwise it’s too click baity for the Kubernetes crowd.

~~~
unicornporn
Eh, and I almost lost my breath when I thought my favorite open-source
synth[1] was being discontinued.

[1] [https://tytel.org/helm/](https://tytel.org/helm/)

~~~
pas
Is it actually under active development? Are pull requests getting reviewed
and merged?

------
minitech
(The Emacs thing, not the Kubernetes thing.)

~~~
vortico
Also not the synthesizer thing.
[https://tytel.org/helm/](https://tytel.org/helm/)

~~~
arvinsim
Made the same assumption too.

------
elongatedMusku
Helm and Magit are why I use Emacs. This is really sad. Can this repo be
handed over to someone else? I'd really like to support Helm in my own way, by
making code contributions if possible.

------
josteink
Post is _flagged_?!?

Why, oh, why?

~~~
dependenttypes
Kubernetes people..

------
PrimeDirective
Thanks for the mini heart attack. Thought it was the Helm synthesizer.
[https://github.com/mtytel/helm](https://github.com/mtytel/helm)

~~~
Cyphase
Well.. it looks like that hasn't had any commits for over two years anyway.
Which might be okay; it could be done.

~~~
marviio
What? More like commits every other day for several years.

[https://github.com/emacs-
helm/helm/commits/master?after=19d2...](https://github.com/emacs-
helm/helm/commits/master?after=19d2ba9d36615f1dea6be6cd6dcf5792dfefc45b+34&branch=master)

~~~
kalium-xyz
The comment you are replying to is not talking about the emacs helm but rather
the synth.

------
nrmitchi
This title is extremely misleading and terrifying for a Friday night, since
the most common "helm" tool is the Kubernetes one. To avoid further SRE/devops
mini-heart-attacks the title should probably be updated.

~~~
josteink
Most common for you. I’ve never even heard of that thing.

But yeah, if the title can be more specific, that can’t possibly hurt anyone.

~~~
nrmitchi
I admit that, yes, it's more common for me.

I felt comfortable calling it the "most common" on a wider scale based on a
quick search for "helm" using the HN Search. At quick glance ~90% of "Helm"
mentions are the Kubernetes tool.

------
shermanmccoy
Helm is a mess of code, I'd suggest it probably has become unmaintainable. Ivy
is my preferred completion plugin.

~~~
tmalsburg2
Why the negativity? Helm has served me really well for pretty much every day
for the last 10 years. I'm extremely thankful for it.

