Emacs-Helm development is now stalled

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• 6 years ago

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.

submeta4• 6 years ago

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...

graton• 6 years ago

I would consider him a developer if he developed this package. Maybe not a developer by professional occupation, but still a developer.

tyrust• 6 years ago

Does "developer" imply professional? By my definition they're definitely a dev.

gjvc2• 6 years ago

All too rarely.

gogopuppygogo• 6 years ago

I think you meant he’s not a professional developer.

Professional being a person who gets paid to do work.

Clearly his development of software that is widely used is not in question.

rgoulter• 6 years ago

I think to say "not even a developer" connotes surprise. I wouldn't expect to see someone whose dayjob doesn't involve programming work on something like an Emacs package.

patrec2• 6 years ago

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.

smitty1e2• 6 years ago

About as expected as the Spanish Inquisition.

TaylorAlexander2• 6 years ago

Open source is pretty interesting in how it functions and it’s something I really want to understand more deeply.

Fordec• 6 years ago

Obligatory XKCD https://xkcd.com/2347/

mikorym2• 6 years ago

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.

ComputerGuru• 6 years ago

(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• 6 years ago

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• 6 years ago

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

emidln• 6 years ago

The closest vim has (to my knowledge) is Unite/Denite, although fzf is functionally similar minus a couple limitations on starting new fzf searches from the callback of another.

Like helm, fzf and Unite can be fed arbitrary completion candidates, custom callbacks, mostly customized fuzzy matching. fzf is very fast, which is the main claim over what seems to be the more featureful Unite/Denite.

zimablue• 6 years ago

Helm allows one to specify their interface in the form of a class (helm-source) between (arbitrary searching code) and (helm-core = a standardized way to represent/navigate that in a buffer) which one can plug in his candidates for searching (anything).

So if one eg. used shell or remote tools, it would still plug into helm, one would write a "helm-source" which communicated to helm how the source was updated and provide actions to communicate back and update/filter the source.

cat199• 6 years ago

not very familiar with vim internals (other than knowing vim is not vi codebase), but emacs most everything is natively written in emacs lisp and has lots of hook points, emacs extensions tie into these or in some cases may carefully provide extensions/extra API's around builtin functions, etc.

Helm is itself a library loaded into a given emacs image which provides useful functionality, but also that many other packages build on top of. Not sure if the point about plugins as a process was just wondering about how it works or hinting at some kind of 'workaround' for not being maintained by isolating it; issue here seems aside from potential bitrot in helm itself to be the overall ecosystem of all 'emacs helm plugins' deteriorating if helm is not maintained, which separate process plugin architecture wouldn't solve.

notimetorelax• 6 years ago

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• 6 years ago

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

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

pas• 6 years ago

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

mayama• 6 years ago

I clicked in to see why would kubernetes helm would stop development without any indication all of a sudden.

roydivision• 6 years ago

Yup, that’s why I clicked

PrimeDirective• 6 years ago

Thanks for the mini heart attack. Thought it was the Helm synthesizer. https://github.com/mtytel/helm

Cyphase2• 6 years ago

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

marviio• 6 years ago

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

https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/commits/master?after=19d2...

innagadadavida• 6 years ago

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• 6 years ago

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

shermanmccoy• 6 years ago

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

tmalsburg2• 6 years ago

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.

didibus• 6 years ago

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.

submeta4• 6 years ago

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

fidelramos• 6 years ago

counsel has `counsel-org-goto` and `counsel-org-goto-all` to search and jump to any section in the current org file and all org files, respectively. However I think they only search in headers, not in content, so they might not be a full replacement for helm-org-rifle, but it could be worth a try.

githubalphapapa3• 6 years ago

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.

fluffything2• 6 years ago

Ivy is at best an alternative to ido.

It requires using return/tab to complete things, which is precisely what helm does not do.

githubalphapapa3• 6 years ago

Like all keybinds in Emacs, this is a matter of defaults and preferences.

    (use-package helm
      :bind* (:map helm-map
                   ([tab] . helm-next-line)
                   ([backtab] . helm-previous-line)
                   ("C-S-SPC" . helm-next-source)))

aasasd• 6 years ago

After migrating to Doom, I'm spending quite some time waiting for Ivy's buffer list to pop up, then process my input or just the cursor movement keys. Not really seeing the ‘speedier’ part. Haven't yet looked into what's taking it so long.

As for the ‘minimal’ part, indeed Helm has niceties thrown in, like recent files in the buffer list (I happen to been using that), or seeing docs from some completion lists.

nrmitchi2• 6 years ago

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.

josteink3• 6 years ago

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.

nrmitchi2• 6 years ago

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.

hardwaresofton• 6 years ago

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

josteink3• 6 years ago

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.

josteink3• 6 years ago

Post is flagged?!?

Why, oh, why?

dependenttypes• 6 years ago

Kubernetes people..

fluffything2• 6 years ago

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?

smitty1e2• 6 years ago

I have spacemacs configured to use it, too.

etiam• 6 years ago

The interview in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24450038 mentions there is a Patreon account https://www.patreon.com/emacshelm

I'm not at all sure whether that would be effective help today. Other ideas?

frereubu• 6 years ago

There was a Patreon linked to from the interview linked to in another comment, but it seems to be defunct: https://www.patreon.com/emacshelm/creators

However, sounds from that interview that being in the mountains is both his job and primary source of enjoyment, so I wouldn't be surprised if money isn't a factor.

guywhocodes• 6 years ago

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• 6 years ago

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 :)

mikorym2• 6 years ago

It appears that you may have to travel to the alps and leave a very surprising tip.

bbbobbb• 6 years ago

There were efforts of getting financial help ifyou check the README history. Sadly to no avail I guess.

Cyphase2• 6 years ago

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...

Here's how it looked before that change: https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/blob/23f32ec37dadea5656fb...

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...), 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...

Which looked like this prior to the change: https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/blob/1fbb3a9f6da328519162...

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

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.

submeta4• 6 years ago

Thank you for pointing to the Patreon and PayPal link. Was searching for ways to support the maintainer myself and found only the Patreon link that - as you indicated - does not work.

foxdev• 6 years ago

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.

mullikine• 6 years ago

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.

emmanueloga_• 6 years ago

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

jeromenerf3• 6 years ago

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" :(

hsitz• 6 years ago

Org-mode is another package that is due to "non-professional" developers. Carsten Dominik, the original creator of org-mode, is a professor of astronomy. [1] A lot of people who've contributed to org-mode are academics in fields other than computer science. Not as unrelated as mountain guides, but certainly not professional developers.

[1] https://staff.fnwi.uva.nl/c.dominik/

jorams• 6 years ago

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.

sirn2• 6 years ago

I recently switched from ivy to selectrum as well. I miss some stuff like ivy-rich, but I found integration with prescient.el[1] more important than an eye candy (where ivy-prescient breaks every few version). I still haven't got a chance to rewrite ivy-ag with selectrum^note1, but it has been working great so far.

My only issue with selectrum was, back when I'm using ivy, I rebind forward direction keys (<right>/C-l/C-f) to `ivy-partial-or-done` which either complete the input with the selection or visit a file depending on the context. Selectrum doesn't have equivalent implementation, but it's easy enough to implement. Reposting in here in case anybody needs it:

    (defun gemacs--selectrum-insert-or-submit-current-candidate ()
     "Insert current candidate or forward to `selectrum-select-current-candidate'
    if input text hasn't changed since last completion."
     (interactive)
     (let ((prev-input (selectrum-get-current-input)))
       (when (> (length (selectrum-get-current-candidates)) 0)
         (selectrum-insert-current-candidate))
       (when (string= prev-input (selectrum-get-current-input))
         (selectrum-select-current-candidate))))

[1]: https://github.com/raxod502/prescient.el

^note1: I don't use rg due to dependency on PCRE2 which doesn't play nice on my OpenBSD machine.

Nullabillity2• 6 years ago

^note1: I don't use rg due to dependency on PCRE2 which doesn't play nice on my OpenBSD machine.

FWIW, PCRE2 seems to be an optional dependency, and disabled by default (unless you build it with `--feature pcre2`).

elongatedMusku• 6 years ago

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.

jeffrallen• 6 years ago

Fork me!

zests• 6 years ago

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.

gauchojs• 6 years ago

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.

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

throwaway_pdp092• 6 years ago

Emacs has multi cursors (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• 6 years ago

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

onetom• 6 years ago

There is something about the multi cursors in ST and also in JetBrains IDEs, which just makes them more intuitive than whatever I tried in Emacs so far. Maybe it just can't be combined with evil mode reasonably?... Does anyone have a recommendation how to emulate the ST multicursor more closely in Emacs?

vzaliva• 6 years ago

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

Emacs-Helm development is now stalled

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