11 ms·

Emacs-Helm development is now stalled

220 points by maximilianroos 6y ago

minitech 6y ago
(The Emacs thing, not the Kubernetes thing.)
- smcleod 6y ago
  Yeah was quite surprised when I saw the title. Naming things and stuff, but the title should probably say emacs-helm.
  - xcambar 6y ago
    Helm (for Emacs) and was there before Helm (for k8s). Maybe Helm (for k8s) should have been named k8s-helm to avoid confusion. Or not-emacs-helm. And maybe helm is confusing as well for boat enthusiasts and should have been named emacs-helm and... oh... oh, I see, naming things and stuff... Gotcha.
    - smcleod 6y ago
      Yeah, naming things is hard, talking about how things are named is even harder! hahah
    - alphabettsy 6y ago
      Popularity and familiarity certainly matters. When someone mentions Tesla most think cars not person despite the person coming first. There was also an iPhone before the Apple iPhone, but of course hardly anyone means the product meant by Linksys/Cisco.
      - xcambar 6y ago
        Agreed. But if Tesla (the company) even remotely helped some people learn about Nikola Tesla, that's already something good, in my book. NB: I've had this thought that naming a company Tesla, once you know the history of Nikola Tesla, his legend and legacy, is bold and it says something about E. Musk's self-esteem. :shrug:
        alphabettsy 6y ago
        Elon didn’t name the company, it already existed when he got on board, but I see your point.
        xcambar 6y ago
        TIL. Thanks!
- vortico 6y ago
  Also not the synthesizer thing. https://tytel.org/helm/ https://tytel.org/helm/
  - arvinsim 6y ago
    Made the same assumption too.
- paxys 6y ago
  Yeah..I almost had a heart attack reading the title.
kstrauser 6y ago
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 6y 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.
submeta 6y 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-volpiatto/ https://sachachua.com/blog/2018/09/interview-with-thierry-vo...
- graton 6y ago
  I would consider him a developer if he developed this package. Maybe not a developer by professional occupation, but still a developer.
- tyrust 6y ago
  Does "developer" imply professional? By my definition they're definitely a dev.
  - gjvc 6y ago
    All too rarely.
    - gjvc 6y ago
      "in a commercial context"
- gogopuppygogo 6y 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 6y 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.
ComputerGuru 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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
    - rthomas6 6y ago
      > emacs has two main contenders for "fuzzy search" - ido-mode and helm. Also Ivy.
  - emidln 6y 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.
    - 6y ago
notimetorelax 6y 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.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- unicornporn 6y 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/ https://tytel.org/helm/
  - pas 6y ago
    Is it actually under active development? Are pull requests getting reviewed and merged?
- mayama 6y ago
  I clicked in to see why would kubernetes helm would stop development without any indication all of a sudden.
- roydivision 6y ago
  Yup, that’s why I clicked
PrimeDirective 6y ago
Thanks for the mini heart attack. Thought it was the Helm synthesizer. https://github.com/mtytel/helm https://github.com/mtytel/helm
- Cyphase 6y 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 6y ago
    What? More like commits every other day for several years. https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/commits/master?after=19d2ba9d36615f1dea6be6cd6dcf5792dfefc45b+34&branch=master https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/commits/master?after=19d2...
    - kalium-xyz 6y ago
      The comment you are replying to is not talking about the emacs helm but rather the synth.
innagadadavida 6y 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 6y ago
  I switched from helm to ivy-counsel-swiper earlier this year and I haven't looked back.
shermanmccoy 6y ago
Helm is a mess of code, I'd suggest it probably has become unmaintainable. Ivy is my preferred completion plugin.
- tmalsburg2 6y 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 6y 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.
- submeta 6y 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 https://github.com/alphapapa/org-rifle
  - fidelramos 6y 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.
  - githubalphapapa 6y 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.
- fluffything 6y 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.
nrmitchi 6y 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.
- josteink 6y 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.
  - nrmitchi 6y 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 6y 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 https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/issues/2388
josteink 6y 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.
josteink 6y ago
Post is flagged?!? Why, oh, why?
- dependenttypes 6y ago
  Kubernetes people..
fluffything 6y 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?
- smitty1e 6y ago
  I have spacemacs configured to use it, too.
- etiam 6y ago
  The interview in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24450038 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24450038 mentions there is a Patreon account https://www.patreon.com/emacshelm https://www.patreon.com/emacshelm I'm not at all sure whether that would be effective help today. Other ideas?
- frereubu 6y 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 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 6y 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 6y 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 :)
- mikorym 6y ago
  It appears that you may have to travel to the alps and leave a very surprising tip.
Cyphase 6y 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/9a5258db9c7bb12698d8feb7b255006f134594e5 https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/commit/9a5258db9c7bb12698... Here's how it looked before that change: https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/blob/23f32ec37dadea5656fb73f49a487b8136952015/README.md 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=thierryvolpiatto 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/3be1389e3912d6580aac9c5532e2fa8fee88527c https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/commit/3be1389e3912d6580a... Which looked like this prior to the change: https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/blob/1fbb3a9f6da3285191621263660f3b3a9791f806/README.md 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 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.
mullikine 6y 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_ 6y 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 https://github.com/raxod502/selectrum#why-use-selectrum
- jeromenerf 6y 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 6y 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/ https://staff.fnwi.uva.nl/c.dominik/
  - jorams 6y 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.
    - jeromenerf 6y ago
      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.
elongatedMusku 6y 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 6y ago
Fork me!
zests 6y 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 6y 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 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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    I use multicursor all the time and it works great. Probably because I never got used macros.
    - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
      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.
- onetom 6y 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 6y ago
I hope somebody will step up a new maintainer. Helm is very popular and part of many people daily emacs workflow.

(The Emacs thing, not the Kubernetes thing.)

smcleod 6y ago
Yeah was quite surprised when I saw the title. Naming things and stuff, but the title should probably say emacs-helm.
- xcambar 6y ago
  Helm (for Emacs) and was there before Helm (for k8s). Maybe Helm (for k8s) should have been named k8s-helm to avoid confusion. Or not-emacs-helm. And maybe helm is confusing as well for boat enthusiasts and should have been named emacs-helm and... oh... oh, I see, naming things and stuff... Gotcha.
  - smcleod 6y ago
    Yeah, naming things is hard, talking about how things are named is even harder! hahah
  - alphabettsy 6y ago
    Popularity and familiarity certainly matters. When someone mentions Tesla most think cars not person despite the person coming first. There was also an iPhone before the Apple iPhone, but of course hardly anyone means the product meant by Linksys/Cisco.
    - xcambar 6y ago
      Agreed. But if Tesla (the company) even remotely helped some people learn about Nikola Tesla, that's already something good, in my book. NB: I've had this thought that naming a company Tesla, once you know the history of Nikola Tesla, his legend and legacy, is bold and it says something about E. Musk's self-esteem. :shrug:
      - alphabettsy 6y ago
        Elon didn’t name the company, it already existed when he got on board, but I see your point.
        xcambar 6y ago
        TIL. Thanks!
vortico 6y ago
Also not the synthesizer thing. https://tytel.org/helm/ https://tytel.org/helm/
- arvinsim 6y ago
  Made the same assumption too.
paxys 6y ago
Yeah..I almost had a heart attack reading the title.

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 6y 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.

submeta 6y 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-volpiatto/ https://sachachua.com/blog/2018/09/interview-with-thierry-vo...

graton 6y ago
I would consider him a developer if he developed this package. Maybe not a developer by professional occupation, but still a developer.
tyrust 6y ago
Does "developer" imply professional? By my definition they're definitely a dev.
- gjvc 6y ago
  All too rarely.
  - gjvc 6y ago
    "in a commercial context"
gogopuppygogo 6y 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 6y 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.

ComputerGuru 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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
  - rthomas6 6y ago
    > emacs has two main contenders for "fuzzy search" - ido-mode and helm. Also Ivy.
- emidln 6y 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.
  - 6y ago

notimetorelax 6y 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.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
unicornporn 6y 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/ https://tytel.org/helm/
- pas 6y ago
  Is it actually under active development? Are pull requests getting reviewed and merged?
mayama 6y ago
I clicked in to see why would kubernetes helm would stop development without any indication all of a sudden.
roydivision 6y ago
Yup, that’s why I clicked

PrimeDirective 6y ago

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

Cyphase 6y 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 6y ago
  What? More like commits every other day for several years. https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/commits/master?after=19d2ba9d36615f1dea6be6cd6dcf5792dfefc45b+34&branch=master https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/commits/master?after=19d2...
  - kalium-xyz 6y ago
    The comment you are replying to is not talking about the emacs helm but rather the synth.

innagadadavida 6y 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 6y ago
I switched from helm to ivy-counsel-swiper earlier this year and I haven't looked back.

shermanmccoy 6y ago

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

tmalsburg2 6y 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 6y 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.

submeta 6y 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 https://github.com/alphapapa/org-rifle
- fidelramos 6y 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.
- githubalphapapa 6y 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.
fluffything 6y 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.

nrmitchi 6y 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.

josteink 6y 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.
- nrmitchi 6y 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 6y 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 https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/issues/2388

josteink 6y 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.

josteink 6y ago

Post is flagged?!? Why, oh, why?

dependenttypes 6y ago
Kubernetes people..

fluffything 6y 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?

smitty1e 6y ago
I have spacemacs configured to use it, too.
etiam 6y ago
The interview in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24450038 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24450038 mentions there is a Patreon account https://www.patreon.com/emacshelm https://www.patreon.com/emacshelm I'm not at all sure whether that would be effective help today. Other ideas?
frereubu 6y 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 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 6y 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 6y 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 :)
mikorym 6y ago
It appears that you may have to travel to the alps and leave a very surprising tip.

Cyphase 6y 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/9a5258db9c7bb12698d8feb7b255006f134594e5 https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/commit/9a5258db9c7bb12698... Here's how it looked before that change: https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/blob/23f32ec37dadea5656fb73f49a487b8136952015/README.md 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=thierryvolpiatto 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/3be1389e3912d6580aac9c5532e2fa8fee88527c https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/commit/3be1389e3912d6580a... Which looked like this prior to the change: https://github.com/emacs-helm/helm/blob/1fbb3a9f6da3285191621263660f3b3a9791f806/README.md 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 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.

mullikine 6y 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_ 6y 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 https://github.com/raxod502/selectrum#why-use-selectrum

jeromenerf 6y 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 6y 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/ https://staff.fnwi.uva.nl/c.dominik/
- jorams 6y 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.
  - jeromenerf 6y ago
    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.

elongatedMusku 6y 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 6y ago

Fork me!

zests 6y 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 6y 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 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 6y ago
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 6y ago
  I use multicursor all the time and it works great. Probably because I never got used macros.
  - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
    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.
onetom 6y 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 6y ago

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