Looking for new maintainer

[rhblind]

In the past few years I've not been able to prioritize maintaining this library. Due to lack of time, and since I'm currently not involved in any projects using the library, lack of interest.
I know there's people out there relying on this library and I therefore think it would've been better to have a person which have a bit more time and passion to put in to have the maintainer role.

So if anybody feels like taking over, please let me know!

[decibyte]

Hi Rolf

First of all, thanks for all the work so far. And thanks for responsibly trying to pass on the project, instead of just letting it slowly rot away.

As someone actively using this library, I wouldn't mind helping. But I'd feel much more comfortable sharing the responsibility with others.

[rhblind]

Hi Mikkel,
Thanks for the kind words. I was actually having you in mind last night when I posted the message, so thank you very much for stepping up. I'd love to have you on board, so I'll add you as a maintainer to the repo, and I'll stick around for a while until you get comfortable. Does that sounds like a plan to you?

[rhblind]

Also, if anybody else would like to be a part of this, that would've been awesome!

[decibyte]

It sounds like the least bad plan for the moment :) I still hope others will join as well.

[rhblind]

Great, thanks!

[rhblind]

@decibyte What's your username on PyPi? I'll add you to the project there as well.

[decibyte]

@rhblind believe it or not: It's decibyte!

[fedosov]

Hello everyone who is kindly maintaining this project right now! Would you mind to release 1.8.11 with support of ES7 to the PyPI? Thank you!

[fedosov]

@decibyte sorry, can you please release 1.8.11 to the PyPI? Thank you.

[rhblind]

@fedosov Uploaded new release to pypi now.

[rhblind]

I have opened a proposal to move this repository to Jazzband

[decibyte]

I don't know whether I should start a new issue for this or just post it here, so I'll do the latter. Let me know if it's better to split this into a separate issue.

I suggest we do some sort of sunsetting of drf-haystack.

Nobody stepped up to take on the maintainer responsibility, which this issue asked for 5 years ago.

I agreed to take care of the absolute bare minimum, occasionally pushing new versions with updated dependency brackets just to keep things afloat. A few times, I also merged in PRs with small fixes and improvements.

The upstream django-haystack package is no longer maintaining their integration to Elasticsearch (ES). This means ES 8 – which has been around for several years – is not supported.

As my search is ES based, I decided to switch to another chain of ES packages for Django, in order to be able to run on the most recent versions of ES. Thus, I am no longer actively using drf-haystack.

I don't mind sticking around until the end of 2025 to take care of updating dependency versions of Django and DRF. After that, I'd prefer to hand in my badge. That gives everyone a little more than a year to sort out how to move on from here.

As Haystack has support for other backends than ES, drf-haystack might still be relevant to some people going forward. But without any maintainers here that are using the package themselves, I think everyone is better off with a notice that we're sunsetting the package on January 1st 2026. Unless someone else is stepping up to take on the maintainer responsibility, of course.

Most people are probably using other packages as a starting point for search in new Django projects anyway. And having just refactored my own project to use another chain of packages for search, I think I can safely claim that it's worth the effort for anyone who is actively maintaining/developing a DRF based project with search – even if it may seem like an immense task.

In my opinion, moving the project to Jazzband is a great idea, but only if someone(s) takes on the maintainer role. Otherwise, we're just using Jazzband as a graveyard, which I see as a disservice to the Jazzband project.

[rhblind]

Hi Mikkel,
I completely agree. I'm very grateful that you stepped up and took responsibility ❤️
I did apply for acceptance in the Jazzband organization a (long) time ago, but as you say I don't think there's any point unless someone is willing to take the maintainer role.
I'm have not really been involved in the Python community for a few years now, and don't really have any time nor interest in maintaining this library, so I suggest we put up a notice in the README file and unless anybody has stepped up by Jan 1, we archive it.