Long-term maintenance of PCRE2

[PhilipHazel]

I am posting this message on pcre2-dev@googlegroups.com and also as an issue on the PCRE2Project on GitHub so that it gets to as many people as possible.

I implemented PCRE in the summer of 1997, never expecting it to be still going strong 27 years later, nor be as widely used as it seems to be. Except for the JIT code that is Zoltan's, the development and maintenance of PCRE has been my own project, though of course many others have offered patches and suggestions over the years.

The time has come to think about my successor. I have recently had a Big Scary Birthday and am unfortunately beginning to feel my age. It would be a good thing if the PCRE2 project could be passed on to others while I am still around to help with the transition.

If anybody has any suggestions as to how best to go about this, please get in touch.

[conartist6]

Thanks for everything you've put into it!

[addisoncrump]

I'll happily contribute to testing code where I am able, esp. automated testing. @carenas has been associated with the project for some time and of course @zherczeg develops the JIT.

Any maintainer who answers this call would have support in these regards.

[alexdowad]

@PhilipHazel Thanks very much for providing this fine tool to the world and maintaining it for all these years.

Maintaining PCRE2 sounds fascinating, but a bit intimidating. How do you ensure that each new release works on all supported platforms? For example, I see in the source tree that there is a port to OpenVMS. Do you have a test machine running OpenVMS?

[PhilipHazel]

The short answer is that I cannot test everything. The OpenVMS stuff comes from a contributor who sends updates from time to time. Likewise the Zig and Bazel support files. All I have is a 64-bit Arch Linux system - I can no longer test on a 32-bit machine - hence the recent SNAFU with the tests on 32-bits. GitHub actions are used to run automated tests in some other environments and the builds for the oss-fuzz tests sometimes pick up issues. I used to put out a Release Candidate for each release but found that not many people tested them. On the whole, if PCRE" builds, it will work because the main library is pure C code.

I have had a couple of other people express interest in taking on the maintenance; I'm leaving it a few more days before proceeding. Would you like to be involved in the discussions?

[MatthewVernon]

I'd just like to say thank you for all your work on pcre (and, indeed, Exim)! As the current Debian maintainer for PCRE, I'd be interested in discussions about PCRE's future, although I think I am not the right person to be "upstream" as Debian puts it.

[alexdowad]

Would you like to be involved in the discussions?

Dear @PhilipHazel, certainly, I am interested. :smile: My privmail address is in my GitHub profile.

[PhilipHazel]

@MatthewVernon , please can you let me have an email address to add to my (private) list of interested parties. I'm planning to start a discussion by email in a few days' time.

[MatthewVernon]

@PhilipHazel sure - best to use matthew at debian dot org

[Neustradamus]

@PhilipHazel: Good job since this long time and for @Exim project too.

Do not forget to add the new team here:

• https://sourceforge.net/projects/pcre/

And to send access to the website...

Linked to:

• https://github.com/PCRE2Project/pcre2/issues/154
• https://github.com/PCRE2Project/pcre2/issues/385
• https://github.com/PCRE2Project/pcre2/issues/386
• https://github.com/PCRE2Project/pcre2/issues/387

[PhilipHazel]

I am not responsible for the sourceforge site, nor pcre.org. The webmaster has not been responding for quite a long time now.